#very specific standards of what a woman should be and youre less of a woman if you fall outside of that. u know the divine feminine energy

[conceptofjoy]

Hold up, terfs have beef even with cishetero white women just because they're not conventionally attractive??

anyone who dont look like a disney animated woman has a chance of being a stealth twoman and theyre not about to “take that risk”. ohhh my god the european beauty standards and white femininity and colonization and orz we live in a ficking society

[annawayne]

Anna I'm just curious how old are you?

Sorry if I'm being intrusive I just overthink too much if I'm too old to be in fandom You can not answer if it's uncomfortable, so please don't feel pressured to answer

Much love!

Hi anon!

I'm 27, and it's all fine, don't worry!

And you know, I would say that fandom is the place that doesn't have any restrictions: we gather together not by the age, but for our love for the same things. And this, this love doesn't know no age, it always go beyond. So, anon, no matter how old you are - 20, 38, 45, or 60 - you're welcome in any fandom because you share the same love like other people do :3

I know that a lot of people think that being in fandom is not "serious", when being an adult, but the truth is that the only "not serious" behaviour is to judge other people by their interest (as long as this "interest" is not harmful or insulting others, of course).

I actually had a situation when some very toxic man (lol, of course) said to me regarding my love for AruAni, "You're obsessed and it's not very good for you. You're already a grown-up woman, you better act like one". Well, there's always an ultimate answer to it, the one I said to him, "You're right, I'm a grown up and, unlike you, I act like one, so I don't listen to rude shitbags like you who tell me what to do with my life" ┐⁠(⁠ ⁠∵⁠ ⁠)⁠┌

And this is really it, you don't have to listen to anyone what you should love or not. Your interest is yours.

I understand that, of course, it's also difficult because of the social pressure, but if we will listen to anyone's what to do with our lives, what will be left for us? Life is a very fragile thing. And this fragility is for us to keep, not for other people with malice on their fingers trying to touch it.

I'm just like anyone else - I have a full-time job, mundane chores, health problems, taxes, medical check ups, sleep deprivation, maintaining my finances (I also have another quite specific condition - living in a war, but it's another thing), but I also have my love for theater and classics and rock concerts, my obsession with literature and ethno/vintage, my love for cinema, for art, for studying, for silly socks with hilarious print under the black palazzo pants and massive boots, my love for AruAni, who I adore with all my heart, for creating - writing and drawing, for wheezing when I see kitties or doggies, for cuddling with my plushie shiba-inu (his name is Mochi, I love him).

I can go to the opera, and then come back, write some AruAni angsty scenes and scream here with everyone on Tumblr on some headcanons - if Armin loves sharks, how Annie tries not to lose herself during the Ambassadors meeting when Armin looks like that etc etc - before starting working usually 8 hours. And it doesn't make me less or "weirder", or special or anything else. It just makes me - me, and there's nothing bad about it. In fact, it only brings me joy.

So, anon, no matter how old you are, what matters is your genuine passion and love, and if anyone tells you how to live your life - the only thing I can tell, is that such people are just jealous deep inside that you can openly love something and enjoy something, when they are not capable of it, being embarrassed or losing all the interests in general, caging themselves into "adult" frames, too pressured by social standards or simply not even having time for it - the whole list of reasons is enormous, and it's very sad, in fact.

We all sometimes lose our interests and hobbies in this adult life hurricane, but if you have it - defend it like the tree defends its roots in the storm: like its life depends on it, because being able to have the interest and being passionate about something, this is what is worth fighting for. It's a blessing and we should cherish it. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

(sorry for the sudden long read, I'm sorry if I bored you. It just seemed to me that this topic bothered you and I wanted to support you)

[alexanderwales]

Pitchposting: a wayward mother's litrpg

[cw: child abandonment, bad mothers]

I came up with this idea while trying to describe a non-standard litrpg that wouldn't sell, and it gripped me enough that I've been thinking about it. Now's the time to set that idea free.

Our protagonist is a woman in her thirties or maybe forties. She's divorced with two children, but she left the children with their father. She's got all kinds of issues, and felt trapped in the marriage and her life, and overwhelmed by taking care of the kids what felt like day in and day out. I don't think the age of her children really matters that much, but they need to be old enough to play videogames.

She gets isekaied into the world of a videogame that her children most loved, the one that they had been talking to her about for years, the source of their obsession. She gets a videogame interface.

Let's start with what I find compelling about the premise: the litRPG isekai stuff is being used to examine a relationship between a mother and her child(ren). We can have some power fantasy, as a treat, but mostly we have this very firm and unique lens through which to look at the world, and we have things that we surely must want to confront, revelations about motherhood and about this specific character, whoever she ends up being. In theory, the thing we're moving toward is a synthesis where we have excised the tension.

So, some questions that pop out to me:

How many children does this woman have? I don't know that it matters all that much, but where you have multiple characters who fulfil the same role, it's almost always better to condense them down. The flip side to this is there's maybe less to explore, and I think there's a different tenor to a single child and what we must assume is true of the character.

Does it have to be a woman? Is there not as much meat on the bone if it's a father who left his children? I think that this could also work, certainly, the reason it was initially a mother instead of a father was that I was trying to pick a protagonist that would lose as much RoyalRoad audience as quickly as possible while still being technically in the litRPG genre. (There are obviously different stereotypes about men and women. I kind of think the central idea of "your mom gets isekaied into that game you were obsessed with and she never really understood" probably hits right for more people, but I don't know.)

What kind of game? Alright, yeah, fair. The main point of the idea is that it's a game the mother is only passingly familiar with. Maybe she went so far as to throw a themed birthday party at one point, but she does not understand it, and maybe over the course of the story, gradually comes to understand (though really, understanding her child(ren) through the game is the main point). I'm thinking some kind of JRPG. Definitely better if it's a game with a story.

Should this game be real? Another interesting question! If the game is a real game, say FF7, then we can assume that the reader knows things, and there can be dramatic irony. If we invent a game, then we have a lot more control over what the game is, and can stay in the mother character's head better as we're in mutual ignorance.

Okay, I think those are all the most salient questions, time to stop workshopping this. I have more ideas than I have time to write novels. Thanks @thewadapan for the idea of pitchposting.

[murfpersonalblog]

Thanks for tagging me @little-desi-historian! ❤️

YES, all of this takes me back to something I wanted to touch a lot more on in my original post when it comes to the historical male image, Percy, Lestat, and Matadors; because it truly does link back to how AMC is playing with dandyism and society's expectations about effeminate men.

Dandyism is a form of resistance culture. As I've said before, Lestat flouts gender norms because HE CAN do whatever he wants & get away with it. His androgyny's on a different level: effeminate or masculine, he's still a vampire, a SUPERnatural creature elevated beyond the bounds of social mores that determine what men & women could or SHOULD act/dress like. MANY people across social media have pointed to Lestat's limp wrists, long blonde "Barbie" hair and ESPECIALLY him dressing in drag in Ep7 as proof that he's the "wife/mother/woman/femme fatale" in Lousta's relationship, and THEN claim its either gender essentialism or homophobic/racist to say Louis is CANONICALLY female-coded one in BOTH the books and show (as AR said so). But no, Lestat in drag was a power move, because he doesn't care what anyone thinks/says/does--he'll just eat them. Mockingly eating the baby in a dress was a deliberate bastardization of motherhood/womanhood. Louis is called every homophobic name in the book by those expecting the black man to just take being insulted, but MARQUIS de Lioncourt DEMANDS being crowned KING of Mardi Gras, Krewe of Raj, & he'll show you exactly what he thinks about your silly homophobic hypocritical human society: You're just "the MEAT," let them eat KING Cake--you're his FOOD. Eff y'all, I'm dressed to KILL you, & laugh doing it.

Lestat's behavior is not only derived from the time period he was born & raised in (the Rococo era of so-called "effeminate" high class dandies--a la Percy Blakeney, etc). Lestat is the embodiment of PRIVILEGE: a powerful rich white male vampire, who leans into being foreign/French White to excuse anything he does that people find strange/off/unnatural/dangerous--all the red flags. 🚩🚩🚩

And red flags brings me directly back to matadors/toreros.

@toscrollperchancetomeme

😂 TYSM! Sam Reid dropped so many juicy deets; I couldn't resist! There's so much depth to the Matador outfit, beyond the gendered aspect of bullfighting that I discussed before. Let's go back to what Sam said about Lestat, and delve deeper into matadors:

The most iconic apparel worn by toreros ("bullfighters") / matador de toros ("killer of bulls") in Spanish bullfighting is the Traje de Luces, the "Suit of Lights." The colors are usually bright & vivid, as part of the showmanship & pizzazz. Darker palettes are less common, as shiny sequins (the luces/lights) became part of the standard fit.

However, Lestat's all-black Matador outfit from what Sam called the "villain sequence" in Ep5 seems to be loosely following the style of a different but very closely related outfit, the Traje Campero "Rural/Countryside Suit" aka Traje Corto ("Short Suit").

(These costumes are typically worn during ceremonial parades and a very specific festival I'll get back to in a moment, cuz it's important.) Unlike the Suit of Light's sequins & silk, the Rural Suit is made of suede, leather, or velvet, in dark muted colors. The pants can be light or dark, striped & patterned, with or without chaps (also found in gentleman's uniforms of military officers and cowboys).

The trajes originated from "the flamboyant costumes of the 18th-century dandies and showmen involved in bullfighting, which later became exclusive to the bullfighting ritual." (Wikipedia)

The ancestor of both trajes (luces/campero) is traditional 17th-19th century Andalusian clothing (Andalusia being the home of Spanish bullfighting), closely associated with a very particular type of masculine dandyism. (The campero/corto is also the costume worn by Andalusian male flamenco dancers.)

"Before the 17th century the profession of bullfighting did not exist as such, and the fighters did not wear luxurious & shiny trajes de luces, but instead normal clothes of the time according to the social class to which the bullfighter belonged. The first bullfighter trajes de toreros appeared in the 17th century, when professional bullfighters from Navarre & Andalusia wore characteristic garments with their gangs to participate in performances and thus differentiate themselves from other bullfighter bands." (translated/truncated from Spanish website)

In the mid-1700s, Francisco Romero revolutionized professional bullfighting by establishing the first matadors who fought on foot, heroically fighting the bull face to face with swords & the muleta (iconic red flag) in a dance-like performance, dressed in a suede/velvet coleto (jacket), a precursor to the traje campero. Romero (from a carpenter family) wanted to show off & stand out from the nobility, and changed the game entirely, through a form of social resistance-turned-innovation.

"At that time, bullfighting on horseback was more important, which was considered a sport and not a show. Bullfighting on foot was not yet widely recognized." (translated from Spanish website)

Bull-killing on horseback was practiced by Spanish noblemen, attended by lower class assistants on foot. Romero was the first to make on-foot matadors the stars of what was increasingly becoming a dandified show/performance/dance. Matador Joaquin "Costillares" Rodríguez introduced even more showmanship, competing against Francisco Romero's grandson Pedro Romero (famously painted by Goya--bottom right).

For his matches, Costillares (middle) dressed in flashy silks, threaded in shiny silver braiding; the precursor to modern traje de luces. Like Francisco Romero (left), Costillares wanted to show off & stand out; and revolutionized the male image of the bullfighter through clothes.

In 18th-19th century Andalusian Spain there were 2 types of dandy: the French-imported upperclass petimetre (effeminate dandy), and the indigenous working class majo (masculine/macho dandy).

Noyes, Dorothy. “La Maja Vestida: Dress as Resistance to Enlightenment in Late-18th-Century Madrid.” The Journal of American Folklore 111, no. 440 (1998): 197–217. https://www.jstor.org/stable/541941

The majo, like many dandies, became the peak of Andalusian fashion, across all social classes; and torero/matador outfits weren't the only ones to take cues from them:

18th-19th century majos "distinguished themselves by their elaborate outfits and sense of style in dress and manners, as well as by their cheeky behavior. The majos outfits were exaggerations of traditional Spanish dress. The style stood in strong contrast to the French styles affected by many of the Spanish elite under the influence of the Enlightenment. Majos were known to pick fights with those they saw as afrancesados ("Frenchified" – fops)." (Wikipedia)

The majos' flamboyant/cheeky/saucy/exaggerated behavior was aggressively masculine; a lower/working class resistance to social mores imposed on them by (foreign) elites, whom they saw as more feminine, and FOUGHT against, to reaffirm their masculinity. These dandies were violent, brazen non-conformists; as beautiful & stylish as they were dangerous. And matadors/toreros knew that the bullfight was the perfect arena to exemplify the spirit of the majos through the dandified performance art/sport of killing bulls--a universal cultural symbol of masculine prowess & strength. Spanish bullfighting used to belong solely to the aristocratic equestrian sphere. Lowly pages/assistants like Francisco Romero (dressed in the precursor to the Rural/Countryside Suit), were the first to buck the system by killing bulls on foot--he likely didn't own a horse. The Romeros were from a carpenter family. Costillares was the son of a butcher. But through bullfighting they gained social status and became icons of masculinity--and dandies.

Lestat--the nouveau riche son of a poor country marquis--insists on being all the beautiful things he is without apology: masculine & effeminate alike. But like I said, it was no coincidence that Carol likened Lestat's Ep5 villain outfit with matadors--he's fighting Louis for dominance in their household, and reaffirming his place at the top of their very gendered social hierarchy, as a warning to BOTH "the housewife" AND "the prodigal daughter" he feels are threatening his authority as their Maker, so he defeats them BOTH.

Carol Cutshall initially designed Lestat's matador pants as pajamas--loungewear. (Lestat's CASUAL & comfortable in his ability to KILL--matador means "Killer" in Spanish--and remember what I said about Louis & Claudia being put on the same parallel level in Ep5, when Claudia's attacked by "Killer" aka Bruce.) Sam said Carol made several versions of the pants; and yup, they're foreshadowed in Ep5 when Lestat first starts arguing about Louis' depression, then they pop up again in Ep7 during the Murder Plot--two instances @dwreader brilliantly linked Lestat (& Stanley Kowalski) wearing wifebeaters. (Listen, Carol, I just wanna talk.... 😅🔫)

And here's my last points about Lestat's matador outfit. First there's the irony of Lestat (who grew up poor in rural France) wearing the something very similar to the matador/torero's Rural Suit, traje campero (aka Short Suit (traje corto)). But what's more interesting is that that type of Short/Rural Suit is usually only worn during special festivals called the Tienta ("trials"), not the regular corrida ("bullfights").

These Tienta are trials for young and immature bulls to be tested in the ring, to see if they're fit for breeding/fighting. 🤯 FLEDGLINGS. And who's Lestat's young bull? "Built-like-a-bird" Claudia. Who's the immature bull? The "biggest rat eater of them all," the under-developed "botched" vampire Louis. During these trials, veteran matadors can show off their skills; and novice bullfighters are shown the ropes and prove themselves. Like I said: the matador wins again.

God, even the way Lestat dragged Louis' bloody body out of the courtyard by the jaw/neck resembles the way the defeated bull--bled out & stabbed in the neck--is dragged by the neck out of the ring.

And remember what I said about Lestat and FOOD. Cuz what happens to the bulls after the matadors kill them? They're sent to the slaughterhouse to be butchered for FOOD. People EAT the bulls.

So yeah, my whole point in this post and my first one is not to sleep on guys like Lestat, Percy--or even other famous dandies like Valmont from Dangerous Liasions/Cruel Intentions (mentioned by both @little-desi-historian and @dwreader)--just because they're effeminate--especially when they're emulating mannerisms from a time period where the model of what made a fashionable gentlemen/good breeding/elite society did NOT match modern expectations about gender. People are getting distracted by Lestat's yaasified manner, not what the show itself is signalling through the relationships he has with others.

This show is deliberately painting Lestat as a villain through Louis' & Claudia's perspectives, as they were the ones who suffered under his Reign of Terror. The symbolism behind the matador-inspired costume used in Ep5 reflected gendered social hierarchies embedded within bullfighting culture (in Spain, women only started being allowed to fight in the 19th-20th centuries). Dressed in clothes resembling that of a matador, Lestat beating & defeating Louis mirrored the defeat of the emasculated bull, and the reification of the victor's masculine prowess at the top of the foodchain.

[women-of-malevolent]

I genuinely don’t mean this from a place of malice, and do think the podcast both has a history of handling its women characters poorly and would like if it were better in that aspect. But I don’t understand the specific criticism of the work having a running theme of “male characters uncritically sacrificing their daughters.” (Key word uncritically.)

The titular Bella episode directly forces Arthur to confront the idea that him and Larson are similar, that the callousness they showed to their loved ones is intentionally paralleled. I don’t think it’s something the story is unaware of, and I’d hesitate to argue that Arthur (or Daniel, later) is presented as being in the definitive right. (In this regard.)

I don’t think you have to love the prevalence of the concept in the narrative, but I do think some of your critique feels like you’re taking the worst interpretation you could from the story and arguing that because the characters themselves don’t actively stop the plot to condemn it (and honestly, they do sometimes) it means the actions are presented as wholly value neutral. Some of your analysis feels like you’re starting from a conclusion and working your way back.

I want to reiterate: I really enjoy most of your critiques, and it’s refreshing to have someone in the fandom both document female presence in the podcast and speak candidly about its flaws. I’d honestly love to know if/why you disagree, either with regards to intentionality or necessity of inclusion.

Hello! Thanks for writing in!

I'm not sure which post you're referencing where I said the daughter-sacrifice theme was uncritically portrayed? Because I don't think it is. The story portrays daughter-sacrifice as varying shades of terrible, graded according to intent. These less-than-ideal men keep hurting the women they should have protected.

My problem with the daughter-sacrifice theme is the same as my problem the rest of the show: it's exclusively about men. Daughters aren't people, they're glass sculptures for men to carry for 18 years, and what those men do with that piece of glass in that time tells you about the character of that man.

Who are Addison, Faroe, Emily, Samantha, Murdered Daughter Of A Senator, fuck even Sarah, if you take away the men who hurt them? Looking at just the text of Malevolent, none of the liveplay games lore or headcanons etc, there's little to nothing to these girls.

You're not invited to spend time inhabiting any woman's life like you are with Arthur (or John, to a significantly lesser extent). You can, and I do, but it feels like reading against the text because their lives are boring, horrible, difficult to parse, and they usually end in childbirth or femicide. It's fucking miserable!

The men are trapped in the same bleak, violent story, and a lot of them die graphically and onscreen, but most of them also get some combo of moments of triumph, personalities, voices, independence, quirks that narratively make that violence go down smoother. (Also smoother because there are so many fun and fascinating male characters)

Also, honestly, I don't enjoy how the theme is explored. It feels shallow and lame to me. I personally, as a listener, don't feel like this specific story has ~earned~ (in my personal, idiosyncratic, things-I-like-in-fiction, subjective assessment) exploring the horror of femicide when 1) there are zero normal, living female characters (Marie is very close, but no cigar); 2) all it seems to really say is basically… murder is bad (sometimes) (usually?) (sometimes, at least), and it's extra bad when men kill their dependent women?

Standard disclaimer that it ain't over 'til it's over, what we got is not great so far but it ain't over

Thank you again and I'd be so happy to continue this conversation if you want!

[galsinspace]

I have so much completely useless knowledge in my head. And I don't even mean like, fandom stuff that at least interests other people.

I mean that I've been stalking this one hypergamy subreddit for months. It's for fans of one insane youtuber whose videos I've never watched, what I'm interested in and know a lot about now is specifically the subreddit and the community on there.

There are several mods but one of them rules the place with an iron fist. It wasn't quite this way when I started reading it, but now almost every post gets locked, some of them very quickly. This seems to be a strategy to keep the subreddit "on topic" — an ongoing problem for the community. See, the problem is that all the hypergamy advice their idol gives out is just laughably stupid. It obviously doesn't work. So instead of being a place where successful rich pampered women talk about how their partners provide for their every wish, it's mostly a place where women post about how it's not working for them.

According this one mod, and most other people there, this is of course usually your own fault. These problems are very simple to solve, our youtuber says specifically how to deal with this. Upset by something your partner did? Practice emotional detachment. He cheated? Our youtuber says all men do, this is normal. Make him apologise by buying you a gift. Don't be naive, men are incapable of love. Love is for your children, not your partner, haven't you watched her videos? Every woman can find a rich man to provide for her, you just have to have the right standards! Date an older, uglier man who doesn't have as many options! Don't ever pay for anything, how do you expect men to respect you when you do that? You need to make it clear that he needs to pay for all dates and give you gifts and pay your bills and give you an "allowance". This is realistic! This should be the norm! It's such a shame how rare true providers are these days. Such a shame how many women will give it up for free. We disdain those women, they don't like us because they're jealous of how pampered and feminine we are! Oh and of course a true provider doesn't expect sex. This is all NORMAL and ACHIEVABLE, if you only follow her advice you WILL find a rich man who provides for you 100% while you only contribute the pleasure of your beautiful feminine non-sexual company!

I'm not even exaggerating here, that's what the subreddit is like. All of this is basic advice on there. I have seen people assert on several occasions that men can't feel love or compassion.

But at this point most posts don't even get to a stage of community discussion anymore, they just get a detailed explanation from this one mod on what the youtuber's position on the issue is and then the post gets locked. It's less a community space and more like a service to have this specific hypergamy gospel explained to you by this one random reddit user.

This mod doesn't of course appear to be in a successful "provider" relationship herself. Almost no one there is. And the funny thing is that the youtuber herself apparently doesn't have that either! She's married, and her husband is not rich. The community's explanation for this is of course that she chose not to be because rich men have requirements that she didn't want to meet. They rarely ever talk about this as an obstacle to achieving that perfect life of course, that's still perfectly realistic! Our youtuber just chose not to pursue it. She could be rich, this is a choice.

They don't seem to realise that her grift is to get rich off people like them, women looking for advice on how to achieve something she herself doesn't have. Her advice still totally works, prommy! Such an absolutely bog-standard grifter promising to make you rich.

I checked out livestreams of hers twice. The first one I watched for a bit and she gave my favourite piece of advice ever:

If you're living with your partner and want to get rid of him but don't want to lose the apartment, what you do is you simply post a fake eviction notice on the door. Pretend to be distraught, say you both need to move back in with your parents, pretend to pack. When he's packed up and left, change the locks. Foolproof!

It's all like that: childishly stupid ideas of how the world and human interactions work, presented with a smug little pouty smirk at the end.

The second time I tuned in to one of her streams, there was stunningly bad looking man there, a face so smoothed out and reconstructed by plastic surgeries and way too much makeup that he was uncanny to look at. He was some kind of grifter selling something too, I don't remember what. Kinda funny that she'd collab with a man. But I did not watch a lot of that stream, the community is much more interesting to me.

And I feel weirdly attached to all the women on there. Protective even, even though I never interact (I'd get banned immediately for saying anything reasonable). But most of them are pretty young, early 20s, and most of them seem to be struggling in some way. They haven't found the right path in life, don't have a sense of direction and get hung up on a grifter promising them easy solutions and a path to a cushy life. Many of them seem to come from more conservative environments and struggle with that, rejecting traditional gender roles because they've figured out that those will never be kind to them, but still being caught up in the whole idea of masculine vs. feminine and the man "providing". It sounds nice to them and they haven't figured out yet that it comes with strings attached, that you will be financially dependant on your provider husband no matter what side hustle you do from home, that's not the same as a career and true independance. And if you don't want a man who sees women as simple equals, the "traditional" provider man doesn't see women as goddesses to spoil instead... he sees them as subservient.

It's also very evident that there's a lot of racism in that community, a lot of it internalised. The youtuber herself is black and to the credit of the subreddit, one thing they do discuss critically is her insistence that black women need to straighten their hair or wear wigs. She considers it part of looking rich and attracting a rich man. Some of the girls do disagree with that, in a "soft" way where they say it's still good advice because of course you need to follow beauty standards even if they're racist because that's just what the hustle is, but that there are also rich men who love natural black women's hair. You can pick and choose what of her advice to follow. And to be fair this is the youtuber's position as well, that you can pick and choose, it will just be harder for you with natural Black hair, but like I still hate that! I still hate that this is the advice she gives as part of her whole bullshit package, none of it works anyway. She could at least be telling women that there are many ways to be beautiful.

It's also kind of funny whenever the girlies try to figure out whether it would be good to go to Dubai for dating, whether it's a paradise full of rich provider men or maybe the "traditional" Muslim men they hope for also have downsides. The girlies always complain about how hard it is in the USA, sooooooo poisoned by 50/50 culture, and Europe is even worse. Where are these good provider men?! They rarely want to acknowledge that the dynamic they dream of isn't traditional at all and more "traditional" men also come with more sexism. They also discuss things like whether it's better to target white men, are they richer? Are they more 50/50 poisoned? These discussions can all get kind of racist but most of all they're just hopelessly naive.

What's definitely racist though is the constant use of the word "pickmeisha" and I will die on that hill. It stands for like a trashy woman with low standards who will date men without being "provided for". I hate that word so much, the way it so clearly invokes the image of a black woman specifically. They could just say "pick-me" but no they have to add a racist twist. And it's not like the subreddit is only black women, it's all sorts and they all use this word with disdain. It's so uncomfortable.

And then they wonder why they don't have any friends... must be because all the pickmeishas are jealous harpies. Yeah they're all crazy misogynist too tbh. They look down on women, they think men are basically a different species, naturally they all seem pretty lonely in real life.

I worry about these girls. I hope it's a phase for most of them. They're unhappy and they're being played for fools by a weird youtuber. I hope they all move on and unlearn this bullshit.

That one mod definitely won't though. If you look through her post history you won't only see that she's incredibly online and has a terrible grasp on what's realistic in real life, she also used to be a follower of ANOTHER hypergamy grifter. She fell out with her and is now active in calling her out as a scammer, but immediately fell for this new one and spreads her gospel now. Such a specific type of person, exceptionally susceptible to self help grifter bullshit. When she realises that this one didn't really help her either she'll just get a new one. And probably moderate a subreddit dedicated to that one too, that's such a specific type of authority that she seems to really enjoy.

[writingreadinglurkingandsmirking]

The Greatest of Luxuries - Sarah Cameron x Reader

Dear Reader Duology: Part 1, Part 2

Summary: Your relationship with Sarah isn't new. Far from it. You love your girlfriend more than anything, just as you know that she loves you. But this new trend of her being almost...embarrassed to be around you? That is new. For fuck's sake...she dropped your fucking hand.

Word Count: 3.7k+

TWs/CWs: She/her pronouns used, adult/profane language, descriptions of relationship issues/relationship deterioration, mentions of a sick family member (not super specific or drawn out)

Note: I had to just throw this out there and be done working on it so sorry if it's bad lolz. Part 1 of the Sarah Cameron installment of the Dear Reader duology series I have going on here on Tumblr. I was inspired to pick this back up because I saw Ms Swift last weekend and was reminded how much I love Dear Reader. Plus, it's pride. So go lesbians, go. Part 2 of Sarah's should come up very, very shortly. And if I'm lucky I'll get Kie's out before pride month is over.

Your relationship was not new. You’d been dating Sarah Cameron for over two years now. You knew that your girlfriend cared about you immensely. She’d never been hesitant to show it before. In fact, she’d always been touchy and doting, going well out of her way to make you feel special. The first time that Sarah had kissed you in the middle of the conversation, you felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Truly. And the way that she smiled at you afterward and told you that she thought you’d never be interested? She had you. Hook, line, and sinker. So, in truth, the past two years had been nothing short of bliss. Even when there were rocky times, even when you were fighting, you two were strong together. And you loved her. You really did. More than anything.

So no, the relationship was not new. But this? This…this was.

Over the past few weeks—nearly a month now, actually, when you thought about it—Sarah had been acting…strangely. She was far less touchy, a fair bit more distant, less attentive, harder to get a hold of. In essence, she was displaying the whole arsenal of warning signs that something was going horribly wrong in your relationship. Except you couldn’t place what it was. Couldn’t think even slightly of what could’ve caused it. The first week you convinced yourself that you were crazy…just imagining things. The second week she canceled plans on you twice, citing an emergency with Kiara…who then called you half an hour later asking if you wanted to hang out with her because JJ was sick and she was bored. So, at that point, you knew you definitely weren’t crazy and that she was hiding things from you. It made you physically ill to think about so you pushed it away. You hadn’t confronted Sarah for the lies she’d told the week prior. You hadn’t said anything about you hanging out with Kie the week before when she was supposedly doing the same. You hadn’t even made a comment about how weird she’d been acting. You’d been giving her space like you knew she needed. You’d been letting her breathe, not suffocating her like she so obviously hated in her prior relationships.

But, that all brought you to the third week of this incessant hell. To this week. And you felt like you were going crazy and you couldn’t even say anything about it. The churning anxiety in your gut seemed unending. You were a strong, adult woman. By legal and literal standards you should be able to get through this. Or, at least talk to your friends to get help getting through this. But you were keenly aware that this wasn’t something you wanted to broach. It wasn’t something that you wanted to talk about. That’d make it more real. The last thing you needed was to make this worse on yourself. But, it didn’t matter what you wanted. Because this was starting to take a real, substantial toll on you. You were losing sleep at this point which just felt stupid and you felt like there was no one you could turn to. Your appetite was tanking, your focus was shit. And while normally you’d turn to your girlfriend in times of woe, this time, she was the one causing the upset.

There was no way to win.

Despite this, you did your best to remain as normal as possible when you were around anyone else. From Sarah herself, to your friends, to your parents and co-workers, you made painstaking efforts to appear like nothing was wrong. You knew it wasn’t exactly the healthiest of coping mechanisms to completely ignore the problem. But, it was all you could bring yourself to do right now. The only solace you found was in the back room at your workplace. Your parents were the premier florists in the Outer Banks. Their flower shop was a family business that stretched back three generations now on the island as insane as that felt. Standing in the back, tending to the blooms, and making bouquets were the only times that you felt like you could completely shut down the madness of your brain. Even so, a shift could only last so long. Especially without making other people suspicious of why you were working so much.

After the ten-hour shift you’d been on closing your parents’ shop, you could only be grateful that it was summer, so the sun was still shining pretty damn brightly when you headed out at 8 that evening. You made your way to the apartment that you shared with Sarah, a strange sort of dread pooling in your stomach that you did everything to ignore, and felt exhaustion coil around your very being as if trying to choke the life out of you. You trudged up the stairs, trying to paint on the most composed look you could, and unlocked the door, stepping in.

“Hey,” you heard from behind you as you closed the door. You nearly jumped, startled at the presence, and turned your head.

“Hey, Sar,” you greeted with a half-smile as you skirted around her to place your bag and keys down. You took your shoes off and made to go into the kitchen when you noticed her staring at you. You stopped dead and looked at her. “What?”

Sarah’s face contorted in a grimace for a moment. “Did you forget?” she asked, sounding almost hesitant.

The words felt like a punch to the gut. You took a long, measured breath in and looked at her. “Forget what?” I asked cautiously.

She sighed, looking down. “Never mind,” she murmured.

“No, angel, no. What’s up?” I asked. The words felt forced, exhausted. I felt like I could crawl into a hole and sleep for a year or thirty five and would still wake up tired.

“John B’s party is tonight in less than an hour. We’re supposed to be going together,” she said, staring at her hands as she played with her fingers, avoiding eye contact. “Don’t worry about it. You had a long day. I can go alone.”

That stung even more. “No,” you said immediately, an ugly combination of angry jealousy burning in your stomach at the thought. She’d been spending more than enough time with John B lately, as bitter as it was to think so. The last thing you wanted was a night of her hanging out with all your friends—including her ex—at a party while you sulked at home just because you were tired. “I’ll go with you, Sar. Of course I will. Sorry that I forgot it was tonight. Just been busy.” You ran your hand through your hair. “It’s at the beach right?”

Sarah gave you a bright smile that, for a moment, convinced you things were normal. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. She moved forward and pressed a soft kiss to your lips, body pressed flush against yours. Habitually, your arms wrapped around her kissing her back and hugging her. The pair of you remained in the embrace for a few moments even after you broke the kiss. You could hear the smile on her voice as she spoke again. “Thanks for coming. Feel like we haven’t been able to do anything in forever.”

“Yeah,” you said, struggling to keep your voice from cracking. “I know.” You inhaled shortly. “Of course. I’ll go wherever you want me to. Okay?”

“I love you,” she said, reaching a hand up to trace your cheekbone delicately. She looked into your eyes and you, again, remembered why it was so easy to love Sarah so goddamn much. You gave her a half smile and broke away, knowing that the longer she looked at you the more likely it’d be that she’d see just how upset you were. “Hey…you okay, peach? Something wrong?” The nickname made you nauseous. And if you had less control over yourself, you were sure you’d have already devolved into tears.

“No, I’m okay,” you denied, shaking your head. “Just gotta get changed.”

Sarah frowned. “You sure? You’ve been quiet this week,” she said.

You nodded again, resisting the urge to laugh at the hypocrisy of that statement. She’d have to have been around more to know if you’d been quiet that week. “I’m sure, Sarah,” you assured her, tone falling just a touch flat. “Just been busy, that’s all. And I don’t wanna make us late. So just give me like twenty minutes to clean myself up.”

To her credit, at this moment, Sarah was being her normal self. Her attentive, doting self. The self that had been gone all month. “As long as you’re sure,” she said, sounding unsure herself.

Instead of replying, you nodded and fled to the bathroom. And in the bathroom, you spent a few minutes pulling yourself together emotionally before getting your shit together physically so you could leave. And 20 minutes later, after changing into more casual-party-on-the-beach appropriate attire and throwing some stuff in your bag, you were ready to leave.

“Wait, did you eat anything for dinner yet? Do we need to stop?” Sarah asked, pausing as you were gathering your bags.

“I’m set. Why? Are you hungry?” you asked, not glancing back at her as you finished fiddling with your bag.

Sarah paused. “No. I’m okay,” she said eventually.

You looked up again. “You sure, baby?” you asked, reaching out your hand to rub up and down her arm.

At that, Sarah smiled. She melted into your touch a little and nodded. “I’m sure, yeah. John B will probably have something there if we need it. If not we can head out early and grab something,” she said. She gave you a cheesy grin and an exaggerated wink and you couldn’t help but laugh a little. Your heart lightened a bit as you laughed and Sarah practically beamed at the sound that she hadn’t been hearing much of the past few weeks.

You offered her your hand. “Ready to go, love?” you asked her.

She took it. “With you? Absolutely,” she said, squeezing your joint hands.

“Who is actually going, again?” you asked as you got into your car ready to drive over to John B’s where you would park before going to the beach.

“Uhh, the usual. Kie and JJ. Pope and Cleo. John B. I think maybe some other people. Didn’t really ask this time,” Sarah replied, shrugging as she pulled down the visor in the car to adjust her lip gloss. She looked over at you and smiled. “Why? Do you want something bigger? Smaller?”

“Nah, nah, I’m good,” you replied, laughing slightly as you backed out of your spot, starting towards John B’s on the road. “Just curious. Haven’t been able to hang with everyone in a while. Hoping it was gonna be the whole group, is all.”

Absent-mindedly, Sarah reached out and grabbed your hand, nodding at your words. Then, as you began your drive, she began to talk about her day, catching you up on some of the stuff she’d done and dealt with. You listened attentively, feeling some of the stress melt away as you finally got to spend a tiny sliver of alone time with the woman that you loved. It was, for the time being, peaceful. Relaxing. You felt like a calmer, fixed sort of future might be truly possible. The way that she rubbed her thumb along your hand as you held lovingly onto each other. The way that she looked over at you with a soft, adoring expression. The way that she leaned over and casually fixed a piece of hair that had gone rogue from how you’d styled it earlier. All of it was the Sarah that you knew and loved.

Even as you parked the car, you felt like you could’ve been floating on Cloud 9. When you parked and got out of the car, Sarah came quickly around the car, all but pressing you against the door to kiss you breathless. She then dutifully smiled, fixing the lip gloss that she’d transferred over to your lips, then hers again. After that, with a cheeky grin on her face, she linked hands with you again and started pulling you towards the beach. You walked in amiable silence from John B’s property line all the way to the edge of the beach. As you breached the tree line you could see your friends all sat around a bonfire that would, doubtlessly, steadily grow throughout the night.

Kie was the first to spot the pair of you, crying out a loud cheer. That prompted all attention over towards you two as you approached. As everyone’s attention turned, Sarah dropped your hand. Not casually. Not unnoticeably. But, she practically threw your hand away from hers and stepped a few inches away. You audibly heard your breath catch in your throat and felt your face fall. The only reason that Sarah didn’t was that she called back an equally boisterous, loud hello. Sarah practically started running towards your friends and you were left to pick up the shattered pieces of your heart and pride that had been scattered together along the sand of the beach from a tiny, stupid fucking action. Largely, the group didn’t seem to notice the way that you faltered. Not at all. But, you could tell that Kie and JJ were looking at you real funny for a moment there.

When you walked over to them, Sarah was already talking to everyone as if she’d been there all night. And she practically threw herself into hugging everyone. JJ and Kie. Then Pope and Cleo. Then John B. It wasn’t hard to guess which one would last the longest. And you hated the way that your brain lingered on the hug between Sarah and her ex. You knew she didn’t have feelings for John B. At least…not anymore. At least you thought she didn’t. Refusing to linger, you pasted a smile on again and greeted your friends too in turn giving short hugs that you excused away by being tired.

As JJ brought you into a hug, one of the last two you were giving one to, he held you for a moment longer. “You good?” he murmured seriously, low so no one else could hear.

“Yeah, J. I’m good,” you replied, tired. You shrugged when you pulled back, not meeting his eye. You knew full well that he’d call you out for lying, regardless of who it was in front of. You pretended to stretch your back for a moment to cover the obvious avoidance and then gave him a lazy grin. “You good, man?”

“Yeah. I’m fine,” JJ said, voice flat and unimpressed. Even without seeing your face, he knew damn well something was really off.

“Hey,” Kie greeted, interrupting before JJ could say something else. She brought you into a tight, warm, lingering hug, refusing to let you pull away. “Haven’t seen you in forever. Where the hell have you been?”

“Flower shop has been busy,” you said, shrugging. “Not gonna leave my parents hanging. You get it.”

“You and those damn flowers,” Kie laughed, hugging you tightly still. You found yourself relaxing into her arms and hugging her tightly back, some of your tension decreasing again.

“I just care about the dahlias,” you joked.

Kie groaned, bumping your hip with hers, loosening her grip just a little while she grinned. “Trust me we know you love your dahlias,” she said.

“Hey,” Sarah said, practically materializing by your side.

You jumped slightly and turned, Kie’s arms falling. Sarah looked unhappy, brow puckered as if she just tasted something particularly gross. You reached out to take her hand and she pulled it back, making it look natural even though everything about the movement was anything but. And you knew it from the way her shoulder jerked, even if her arm didn’t betray it.

“What’s wrong, babe?” you asked her, struggling to keep the hurt from your voice, but miraculously managing.

“Can you and JJ go get some wood for the fire while we start to get it growing,” Sarah requested, a sweet but strained smile on her face.

You raised a brow looking over at the fire. It was blazing strong and high, burning brightly. And there was a small pile of wood next to it too, ready to be thrown in when needed. You felt your heart stutter. You pursed your lips even as you nodded, patting JJ’s shoulder so he didn’t make a snarky comment.

“Yeah, sure,” you said shortly. You craned your head towards JJ. “Let’s go man.”

“I’ll come with you,” Kie said, suddenly, looping arms with both JJ and you before pulling you in the direction of the woods you’d practically just emerged from. You frowned but let yourself get pulled along, a fake smile slipping off your face with each step, leaving nothing behind. When you were a few paces behind Kie looked over at you, and you refused to look back. “What the hell was that about?”

“Nah, what the hell was any of that?” JJ added. “Why is Sarah acting so weird right now? Fuck’s that about?”

“Not a clue,” you replied, shrugging, pulling away from the pair of them to move a few paces ahead. You ran a hand frustrated on the back of your neck then shook your head. “This is so…whatever.” Again, you shook your head and cleared your throat. “Don’t even worry about it. Just some weird shit, guys.”

You saw them exchange a glance out of the corner of your eye, but you steadfastly ignored it, refusing to let yourself even acknowledge it. Deny, deny, deny. That was the ongoing chorus in the back of your head as you kept walking. Kiara said your name in a tone that you were all too familiar with. In a tone that dictated she would get an answer out of you whether you liked it or not. You slowed your steps, hands balled into fists at your side. You turned your head over your shoulder.

“Kiara,” you said, voice cool.

“Talk to us,” she said.

The beeping of your phone from your pocket saved you from having to answer immediately. You shook your head, frustrated, and tore your phone from your pocket, starting to unlock it. “Nothing to say,” you mumbled. Your mother had texted you. Repeatedly. Within minutes. Your eyes narrowed and you then widened as you read the words. “Oh my…” You blinked rapidly at the news.

“What’s up?” JJ asked, sounding deeply concerned at the sudden change in my affect. You didn’t answer, just re-reading the texts over and over and over again, trying to force them to sink into your brain. JJ said your name twice and still you didn’t answer. You felt Kie and JJ both at your shoulder, reading the texts over them.

“Shit,” Kie muttered. “I’m sorry.”

“I gotta go,” you replied, shoving the phone in your pocket and shaking your head.

“Hey, hey, wait,” JJ said, catching your arm. “You good to even drive? Do you want me to run and get Sarah?”

“No,” you said, extracting your arm immediately from his grip. “Don’t ruin her night. I don’t fucking care. I’m good. I gotta go.”

“Do you want us to tell her?” Kiara called as you started to rush towards your car.

“Don’t care,” you called back immediately, body feeling cool.

You got into your car, calling your mom as you peeled off of John B’s property as you started racing towards not your apartment but the ferry. When your mom answered, you heard not a greeting first but her chattering rapidly on the other end of the line sounding exhausted.

“Mom?” you called.

“Honey, you got ten minutes to get on the last ferry of the night,” she replied.

“What happened?” you asked.

“Your aunt collapsed. It’s not looking good,” she said quietly.

You cursed. “I’ll be at the dock in five,” you said. “Are you guys with her? At the hospital?”

“Yeah,” your mom replied. “We’ll see you soon, honey. Is Sarah with you?”

“No, Sar’s not. She’s in the middle of something. I haven’t told her. I gotta go. I love you, Mom,” you said shakily.

“Love you too. Drive safe,” she said firmly. You could tell there would be more questions in the realm of Sarah later, but you knew that your aunt would take precedence. You shook your head and started driving, hands shaking even as you held the wheel in a death grip. Your phone started to ring again. And on your car’s dash, you saw Sarah’s name and contact picture show up. You shook your head and declined the call, immediately putting your phone on airplane mode for the moment.

By some sort of miracle, you got to the dock in time and got yourself a ticket before the boat left for the mainland. On the boat, you turned off airplane mode, switching it to Do Not Disturb, making it so that none of your friends could contact you. So that Sarah couldn’t contact you. As you did so, you got rid of the notifications that remained. The last was a double text from Sarah.

My love, you’re scaring me. I hate to think that you’re out there overwhelmed like this and that you’re alone.

Please talk to me, peach.

You loved her. You did. You loved her more than anything. But the past month had been too much. And if you weren’t enough for her anymore like her actions had been suggesting? Well, then this was a good excuse to get the fuck out of the Outer Banks and get your head back on straight. To figure out what you want if things aren’t going to work out with her.

All you could do was take out your phone and fire off a single text of your own. To Kie, not to Sarah.

Tell her not to come.

You put your phone away.

You’d waited all month for Sarah to talk to you. It was her turn to wait now. Your family would come first. And if that meant that your relationship would end? If that meant that you’d be the one in the wrong? Then whatever.

Deny, deny fucking, deny.

[respectthepetty]

I'm gracing you inbox again, Pet, because I saw colours and of course thought of you...

Ploy's Yearbook finished this week and whilst I don't think it was necessarily colour-coded (there are a lot of characters and I didn't put much effort into tracking visual patterns) I wanted to share this moment of deliciousness at the end:

Do you see it? I'm sure you see it... (the blinding light of yellow love and the deep purple and the piiiiiiink 😍).

Anyway, the series was a generally okay het offering which mostly showed that the women at GMMTV need more opportunities to shine. But what it did do very well was the period representation (like, actual talk of bleeding), Joong looking like a whole-ass meal in the last scene (seriously, I think you'll want to go see that, it's a bit too blurry to screenshot), and the woman popping the question for once! (oops 🤭 spoilers, I guess).

#I wish there was a way of adding tags to an ask #so that I could leave a sort of post script ramble #maybe this will have to do #there isn't really any point to this ask #just that I wanted to say hi and that I thought of you #💛💙

*warning* This is going to turn into a

Cupid's Last Wish Appreciation Post

"Do you see it? I'm sure you see it…"

I thought twice about using the above image because it comes across a bit hostile, but any chance I get to insert a Big Dragon moment into the conversation, I'm taking it! Also . . .

Hopefully, we ALLLLLL see that pink = 💕love💕even when it's for the het couple (when the only het couple I've ever cheered for was this one, which oddly enough, also included Namtan).

So maybe I'm just really rooting for Namtan and the other ladies because I'm already seated for her and Film to hit me with that Blinding Light of Love in Pluto.

You already know that I agree with you that GMMTV underutilizes its women, but since I gave Namtan some love, let me turn to Earth while I give some love to Cupid's Last Wish for having good period-rep as Korn clutched every kind of tampon and pad

For his body-swapping not-yet-boyfriend!

And not only did the man buy all the pads and tampons, he bought pain relievers and chocolate based on the staff's recommendations. THEN, he gave his guy a warm water bottle to help with his cramps and held him all night!

And that as AFTER he hugged his man when he was having a breakdown about his body betraying him.

Not only did Korn exhibit the highest level of emotional intelligence every second of that show, in this specific moment, he stopped the vehicle, asked Win what was wrong, and actually took in what Win was saying without dismissing it. Then, he got out of the car, went around to hug Win properly, apologized, and waited until Win hugged him back.

I have my grudges against this show (THAT DAMN MOTHER!!!!!), but Korn was the greenest of all green flags and the way he handled his future boyfriend's period should be held up as the standard.

But one of the writers of the show was Pong who also wrote the screenplay for Cooking Crush and Only Boo! which are two shows I think epitomize care and comfort between partners.

So now that I've gone on a tangent about partners actively taking care of each other, I hope you are enjoying seeing your flowers growing and not stressing too much over things beyond your control. I also want to let you know that I thought of you when I realized Domundi played me and instead of giving me a Pink Person in Your Sky, gave me a Yellow Yal, so I'm getting another Blue x Yellow pair.

But for some *reason*, I'm less petty about it.

I hope you find comfort in that. 💙💛

[ayliffe]

hey sorry to ask, ignore if it makes you uncomfortable, but what's life like in the UK as a trans guy? I'm also a transman from the US and I've been thinking of moving to the UK (ik that nowhere is necessarily better than the US I just figured if everything is bad everywhere I might as well move abroad anyways). I was also thinking of Scotland or Ireland and enrolling in a Celtic languages degree.

hey, not a bother at all! thanks for reaching out.

unfortunately, i can't really give you a cut and dried answer. i live in london and almost my entire social network is liberals/lefties, and i'm early enough on (nhs-prescribed) hrt that i can and do pretend to be a cis woman when i don't like someone's vibes. so for me, everything's pretty much fine--but ask me again in a year and we'll see how that changes lmfao.

the point is, i know that's not necessarily the standard lived experience and i don't know how yours compares, so i spoke to a friend in a different situation (diy, trying to go stealth, currently in a peripheral area of the uk) and this is what he said:

"I think [you] should be aware that the most violent and most vocal british transphobes are a minority - but also that a lot of ordinary are so very ignorant about trans people. this can be malicious ignorance or well meaning - there's a lot of people who'll say things like 'oh trans people are so brave! [deadname] decided he was a woman recently' and you do have to meet people where they're at - unfortunately a lot of them are at really annoyingly stupid positions. [you do] have less to worry about as a trans man, like transphobia towards us is awful but I have two trans female friends here who are functionally closeted for their safety. also like if [you're] planning to come here as a student - since students skew more lefty or queer - [you] won't have to constantly explain [your] identity. unfortunately I can't say what it'll be like interacting with non-students, because when I started to get more involved with local things, that was around when I decided to try stealth"

so make of that what you will. ultimately, anywhere you go is going to have its challenges, but with regards to being a trans man specifically, i think there are worse places to go. though of course there are also better ones, i'm sure.

(having said that, i wouldn't recommend anyone move to the uk right now because of cost of living, housing, lack of university funding etc. but those are all separate concerns, maybe?)

[chronically-ghosted]

✨ happy new year! ✨

it's not yet 2024 where i am but it is where my love @ravensmadreads is, so happy new year already enjoying january 1st!

i usually overthink around my birthday as i march towards death but you lovely people have really made me think about 2023 as it comes to a close. i feel weird talking about myself (unless im drunk and we haven't started drinking yet so hold onto your butts for that possibility), so i'm just going to say this:

You all changed my life.

there, that's it. if you read this and you think it doesn't mean you, yes it does. not a day goes by where this place, this community does not bring me joy and warmth. i hope you get that job you wanted, or you get that fur baby adoption you've been hoping for, or you get accepted to that school you wanted to, or you graduate with all the honors, or you create the thing you've always wanted to, or you get the baby you've been hoping for, or the person who makes you heart flip says i love you. i'm nervous about next year because it truly feels like a year where anything can happen 🤍

now to the fandom stuff:

i've never done a fic rec list because inevitably, i'm a fucking moron and i leave someone out. i know it hurts when i'm left out of a fic rec list so i never want to do that to anyone here. what follows is a list of fics that spoke specifically to me. the old saying goes is that you don't write fanfic for yourself, you write it for the five freaks on discord that can't write coherent sentences after you publish -- and it's true. fanfic isn't about numbers -- i would much rather write for my five freaks on my discord (where my work has deep, emotional impact for them) than try to write for a large crowd that i will never ever manage to please all at once.

my wish for you in 2024 you all find your freaks. and i hope i'm one of them.

side note: there are a couple fics not on the list because i wanted to highlight fics that i didn't see much on other end of the year rec lists. but @iamskyereads 's Compulsion should be read in graduate programs and @whatsnewalycat already knows i'm going to name my first born child after her for her Psychomanteum. yall rock my goddamn world.

so without further adieu . . . these are the fics i read this year that tickled me pink.

God is a Woman by @wheresarizona the way arizona writes max is entirely unique. i love her descriptions of how cold he is and how he doesn't breathe. i read this and had to rethink everything i ever wrote for max

the impaler by @kiwisbell the dracula x johnathan x mina vibes in this are spectacular. this is a pairing i never thought i'd see much less enjoy so thoroughly. why is older tim being seduced by a younger max so hot??

night one by @haylzcyon this is one of the first fics i read by hayley and she pretty much set the standard for all marcus pike fics moving forward. his endless patience, his flirty attitude, how he see things the reader won't admit, and then the sleeping bag -- god i'd read a thousand more fics about this dymanic

blood & tinsel by @morallyinept so if i tried to list all of my favorite jett fics, we'd be here all night. but this one stands out to me because it's so well built. the description of the vampire "trance" or "glamor" or "compulsion" without using any of those words is INCREDIBLE. plus max is face-meltingly hot in this.

the world turned on its side by @idolatrybarbie this was a surprise that came outta nowhere, but it hit me like a fucking train. bea weaves a story that sticks with you and creates a frankie that makes my entire soul sing.

heat by @wordywarriorwrites okay, listen. the beauty of fanfic is that you can have insane, animalistic smut AND literary level writing. this fic is both. i have yet to come across another frankie abo fic that makes the dynamic more than a reason for the blorbos to fuck like animals. it's so well done, there's so much love here.

in fiction @sin-djarin yall know dieter is my boy so i am VERY particular about how he is written in fic. everyone's interpretation is valid, but for dieter fics to resonate with me, there has to be this special blend of humor, kindness, dorkiness, and a sexiness you didn't expect. this fic is all of that and more.

reminiscence by @projectionistwrites this was one of the first joel fics i read and there's something about it that just . . . feels right, feels natural to Joel. there's a raw honesty to both joel and the reader that just sunk into my chest. the back and forth over the drink, the SMUT, everything is just this beautiful snapshot of two lonely people in the apocalypse.

oct' 19 x ghosts by @trulybetty another author that if i tried to choose a favorite, i simply couldn't. betty created a lovely, lovely world with this one (and the rest of the prompts for this one and her december prompts). i love fics that add a new layer to dieter and this one opened him up in a way that made him glow!

renegade by @eupheme my personal favorite brand of joel is one that comes alive between reader's thighs. more boulder than human until you bring something to the surface. and this totally captures that. im a sucker for a good qz fuck-that-verges-on-love and i adore everything about it.

Dominica by @ohforficsake if you ever need proof that notes do not reflect the quality of a fic, look no further. the language, the mastery of tension, and beauty of these descriptions are one two punches that knock me on the ass. genuinely one of my favorite frankie fics of all time.

wanna bet? by @write-and-buried i debated putting this or her celestial navigation fic on this list, but this one just tickles me. i love it when authors throw in a confident, sex-obsessed dieter now and again and this makes me howl. and the DEBAUCHERY of the statue oh my god!

give it to me @sp00kymulderr okay now to be fair, this review is entirely biased. i genuinely love gideon and all that they bring to this fandom. plus, they let me scream about dieter and then sends me dieter pictures that make me scream even louder. this fic is SO important to me. dieter here is everything i need and want: hesitant, anxious, but so madly in love. if i could wake up in one single fic every day, it'd be this one.

stepwise by @the-scandalorian i joined this fandom through din and this has been, and always will be, one of my top favorites. the evolution of din from being touch averse to LUSTING after it, it kills me. it's a oneshot but so much is accomplished in such a short time. the writing here is simply superb.

salvatore by @devilmademewriteit i came for the premise, stayed for the smut, and continued for the banter. i go back to this one all the time for inspiration with my own writing and then i get sucked in and read the whole thing through -- twice. javi drives me absolutely wild in this.

a whole new can of worms by @hier--soir i accidentally read this out of order initially, but this was just reason for me to reread it from start to finish. fwb!joel can be really hit or miss for me, and primarily because this fic sets the standard. this feels like a real joel, a joel that has lost and found loved ones all through out his life and now in jackson, he can finally relearn what it means to be a lover. so good, so fun with the banter -- and the friggin' greenhouse scene -- woof!

telltale heart @astroboots i am a SUCKER for 'frankie fixes his life' fics and this is one of the best. there are consequences for his choices in colombia, one that almost has him lose his family, and the woman he loves. this a real, genuine struggle for two people to overcome a seemingly impossible challenge in their marriage. you know the phrase, love conquers all? yeah this is that fic.

brand you in the way it counts by @charnelhouse charnel was one of the first authors i read for the pedroverse -- and i mean i READ her. i read every single one of her fics at least twice and this one always sends me over the edge. it's such an inspiration to my own writing and i keep going back to her whole body of work to be reminded i can always improve my own writing

west by @radiowallet when people want to know why fanfic matters, i want to show them this fic. it is achingly beautiful and written with a loving and gentle hand. joel is a messy, broken man but still capable, still good, still wanting to find love in this and i adore everything about this. Oneshots can be more devastating than multichapters because they end and this is one of them that drags me back to it constantly.

And to that weird little dude out of Chile who has no idea how much light he brings to the world…

Much love, Taylor 🤍

[maxknightley]

So if gender is a social construct and female beauty standards are oppressive, what does presenting female even mean? Sorry if this sounds in bad faith but I’m genuinely confused.

nah I getcha. this is going to sound a bit circular but my take on the subject basically consists of the following:

a social construct is defined primarily by the society that constructed it

that said, how one engages with a social construct as an individual is going to vary based on one's own philosophy and preferences, how they want others to see them, etc.

even if you think a social construct is dumb, that doesn't mean it holds no sway over your brain

so from that we can gather that there's sort of... different ways one can think of "presenting as female."

this is a bit reductive, but to provide an example, lets use "the wearing of skirts and pants" as a lens.

depending on the time and place, society might say "men wear pants and women wear skirts"; it might say "men wear pants exclusively (unless they're gay or something), women can wear skirts or pants (but if they only ever wear pants they're probably gay or something)"; it might say "only laborers wear pants, everyone else wears skirts"; or people in that society might not wear pants at all.

let's say you were assigned male at birth in a society where skirts are designated Exclusively For Women. there's several different ways you can engage with that.

wear skirts specifically so that people will understand you are presenting as a woman. (whether they're cool about this or decide to abuse you for it depends on the person, of course.)

avoid wearing skirts, at least in public, so that strangers won't think you're presenting as a woman.

reject the "skirts are for women" attitude altogether and wear skirts while still thinking of yourself as a man.

reject the "skirts are for women" attitude altogether; don't wear skirts, but still think of yourself as a woman.

reject the "skirts are for women" attitude, but present as a woman through other means. e.g., if your society associates long hair or makeup with womanhood, you might grow your hair out and wear makeup, but still avoid wearing skirts just because you don't like them.

deliberately cultivate an appearance deemed "androgynous" via opposed signifiers of gender - for example, wearing skirts but cutting your hair very short.

deliberately cultivate an appearance deemed "androgynous" by minimizing signifiers of gender - for example, if your culture is fine with anyone wearing pants, and it's fine with anyone having their hair in a ponytail, then that's what you'll go with.

cultivate an aesthetic that will be recognized as feminine (or even specifically as transgender!) within certain subcultures, but not others - basically a visual shibboleth.

ignore the whole thing and wear skirts Because They Feel Nice, or wear pants Because You Like How Your Ass Looks In Them, or whatever.

now, in reality, this is all a lot more complicated because there's even more social constructs to keep in mind - race and nationality, religion, flagging as gay, subcultural signifiers, professional signifiers, and so on. all of these inform each other in a way that will also be mediated by your personal feelings on all of it! (for example: I consider myself a lesbian, and more specifically, I want people to read me as butch. how do I navigate that without making people go "oh that's just A Dude"?)

the upshot is - and I realize this might sound a bit glib - "presenting as female is whatever people decide counts as 'presenting as female.'" society as a whole sets the base terms, and then individual people interpret them.

in a hypothetical world where gendered beauty standards didn't exist at all, it would probably be more difficult to "obviously" present as male or female. on the other hand, people are less likely to be shitty about people who present "wrong," because that concept loses some of its meaning.

none of that should be taken to mean that being transgender is "fake" or "meaningless," obviously. a lot of the time, society is basically arbitrary... but we still have to live in it. or, you know, actively reject it, but as mentioned above, that too is a specific choice which is related to our relationship with society.

[communistkenobi]

(genuine question, sorry if any of my language is incorrect/outdated) I was reading that post you reblogged about the distinction between gender and sex and how both concepts are linked and oppressive & the ask you answered where you said that we should abolish sex distinctions on medical records. and I don’t disagree with your point, but I’m wondering how feasible it is? Or I guess, how we would then navigate the medically differences between different groups of people. Because the unfortunate truth is that some biological factors do affect your predisposition to certain diseases or how you’ll react to medication.

For example, Black people in the US are more likely to have diabetes. and obviously a lot of this is due to poverty and other socioeconomic problems, but if we were to abolish the concept of race (before solving the underlying issues), it could lead to people not being diagnosed with the correct illness as quickly, since there’s no longer that demographic information available (I’m realizing that diabetes was a bad example for this specific problem, but I’m drawing a blank on a better example).

I remember for years growing up that there was a push to recognize that the stereotypical “pain in left arm” depiction of a heart attack was more common among cis men, and cis women usually presented differently. And I’m a cis woman with ADHD, but when trials were being conducted to prove that medications were effective, they focused only on cis men, so now I just have to deal with my meds being way less effective whenever I’m on my period.

The example you gave of a trans man’s insurance denying him coverage for a pap smear seems more like an issue of the insurance company linking gender and sex, rather than respecting that someone saying that they are a man on government forms doesn’t inherently describe what organs they do or do not have. Which seems like it would be a point in the favor of people who draw a distinction between gender and sex. Yes, he is a man, but he has organs that need to regularly be screened for cancer, the same way a trans woman might need to be checked for prostate cancer.

The medical field is definitely sexist and transphobic (and just about every other -ist and -phobic), but couldn’t abolishing both gender and sex exacerbate these issues? The only thing I can think of is, like, checkboxes for what organs you have, but that seems like it’d still be the concept of “sex”, just in slightly different language.

so, a couple points before we get into this conversation:

Current gendered distinctions in the medical field to address health issues are not nearly as helpful as you are suggesting

You cannot abolish the concept of race (or gender or class or etc) without addressing the underlying systemic violence and inequality that gives those social categories power in society

Like, baseline - how helpful is it to sort all of humanity into 2 bins, male or female, medically speaking? To use a hypothetical, if you were to sort all human beings into 2 categories, either “young” or “old,” what medical information about those people could you glean from that alone? The answer is probably more than zero, but it’s still not a lot, and if we were to construct an entire insurance and medical apparatus on the basis of whether you’re young or old alone would be very silly.

Now what you’re talking about is using a collection of demographic information - gender, race, age, weight, etc - to construct standard benchmarks by which to measure medical outcomes in people. However, the origins of things like gender and race are not medical, they’re social, and are used to enforce social positions in society that may produce specific medical outcomes as a result of either oppression (eg, certain racial minorities are more predisposed to certain health conditions) or inference (eg, “only women can get pregnant”).

You, as a cis woman, telling your doctor you’re a cis woman, does not actually describe your ability to get pregnant, only a rough probability. If we want to describe the group of people in society who can get pregnant, we should call them “people who can get pregnant.” then we’re including everyone who can, and not including anyone who cannot (infertile cis women, some intersex people, trans women, some nonbinary people, people who have had their uterus removed, post-menopausal cis women, etc). That results in a de-gendering of pregnancy, and allows for a more precise description of what medical resources those people may need access to.

Additionally, race is not a biological determination of health (it is not biological at all). It is a social position that we all occupy different positions in, which, by virtue of being in those positions, gives us access to different social and physical environments that produce varying health outcomes. If you are black and live in a food desert, and suffer health problems as a consequence, that is not a biological difference on the basis of your race, that is purely a social one. The solution there would not be to codify race as a biological determinant of health, it would be to alter the built environment so that no one lives in a food desert. White supremacy is what produces these outcomes.

To use your ADHD trial example - the problem there is that it is assumed that the gender of cis men is medically trivial while treating all other genders as significant; they are presented as the human default, and anyone who does not fit that standard (ie, roughly 50% of all human beings) is a deviation from normalcy. We see this most especially with race, where white people are assumed to be non-racial, existing outside the construct of race, and therefore we act as a handy baseline by which all other races can be measured (which is bad). The solution to this problem is not to draw more precise gender or race boundaries around symptoms, conditions, or medical trials, but to decouple gender and race from it entirely and describe in exact terms what affects whom. Race does not affect health outcomes; white supremacy does. Gender does not affect health outcomes; patriarchy does.

This is where systemic solutions come in! These are tricky because they’re comprehensive and require mass upheaval of existing institutions and norms. To use a historical example - the USSR* instituted a policy whereby women would be fully compensated for all reproductive labour (child-rearing, domestic labour, etc), effectively making housekeeping a full time job. Does this abolish patriarchy? No, but it certainly helps reduce misogyny in society by offering economic equality and enshrining domestic labour as being on par with productive labour. This also does a lot to help women medically, socially, legally, etc. by reducing economic dependency on their husbands and therefore reduces abuse, unhappy marriages, all of those things. this is the kind of policy that acts as a handy starting point for thinking about systemic solutions to systemic problems.

When talking about the abolition of a given social category (gender, race, etc), addressing the violence that social category does to the people who end up on the bottom of it is how abolition works. It’s not merely changing language or expanding existing norms (which are not useless of course, but they’re insufficient). Doctors offering HRT to trans people after we receive a mental illness diagnosis is like, better than not having access to care at all, but it still sucks! Trans people, in some countries, are in the process of being folded into the medical institution and are being constructed as a special medical class of people. That doesn’t get rid of transphobia and it doesn’t help all trans people, just those lucky enough to access it, and then the even smaller group of us who are lucky enough to convince doctors and psychiatrists to write the prescriptions and diagnoses and referrals required for us to be respected as our own gender. I could not legally change my name and gender marker until I had the sign-off from a doctor who was treating me medically for gender dysphoria, a professional person who knew me for at least five years, and a lawyer - and I’m in the incredibly privileged position to be able to get all of their signatures. That’s not freedom, that’s just paperwork!

The institution of medicine does not exist external to societal pressures; phrenology and eugenics are medical concepts that are deeply destructive and violent. Accounting for human variation does not require us to rely on social constructions of gender and race; we have precise terminology that we can use that will more accurately describe those things. I’m not a medical doctor, so I don’t know what those terms will all be, nor can I pretend to know what a fully equal medical institution looks like. but for example, I’ve seen people describe human bodies in terms of “estrogen dominant endocrine systems” and “testosterone dominant endocrine systems.” Is that better? Maybe! It’s probably a lot more useful of a description of a human body than man or woman is.

*me invoking the USSR as an example is not an endorsement of the entire state across its 70 year lifespan, nor is it an invitation for people to tell me how bad it actually was

[saint-starflicker]

Queer Boys' Sexual Trauma in American Literature: A Little Life and Try in Comparison/Contrast

When I say that Try is the antithesis of A Little Life, I say that with the conviction that both works have their own, very different, literary merits...inasmuch as a random reader can say what has literary merit versus what doesn't.

☣️ WARNING: The following essay mentions Child Sexual Abuse and suicide, themes central to the stories of both books being compared.

This post also went live prematurely. Apparently when you add a read-more cut to a Tumblr post in drafts, it automatically publishes the next save-click not in drafts. As a result, some citations are improperly-formatted or their relevance underwritten and I'm so irritated that I don't want to sift through those, or develop the conclusion into something actually conclusive like I meant to anymore.

Word Count: 3700ish

Outline

A Little Life, a Lot of Controversy (overview of A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara)

Dennis Fucking Cooper (introducing or re-introducing author Dennis Cooper, a late 20th century and early 21st century punk-subculture author most known for depicting extreme sexual violence in the content of his fiction novels)

About the Book Series: The George Miles Cycle (overview of Dennis Cooper's magnum opus, a 5-book series known as The George Miles Cycle)

Why Try ? (Why this specific book, titled Try, from The George Miles Cycle to compare and contrast with A Little Life ? Also the actual comparison/contrast bit promised by the big title above, resides in this section of this essay.)

In Conclusion

Footnotes and Sources

A Little Life, a Lot of Controversy

A Little Life is a 2015 publication¹ described by editor Gerry Howard as a miserabilist epic². It was the second full-length novel release of author Hanya Yanagihara, whose inspiration and intent was to explore the tyranny of happiness in American culture. In the wake of the very worst traumas and violations that can be imagined heaped on a human being, what if there were a character whose growing clarity made early-life memories more traumatic and less manageable, whose ability to be truly happy were torn out of him, and every spark of assertiveness happened too late? ³

Readers' reactions were polarized. Garth Greenwell⁴ and Mique Watson⁵ loved it. Daniel Mendelsohn didn't⁶. Brandon Taylor was lukewarm about the book but served a scathing condemnation of the bad-faith criticisms surrounding A Little Life.⁷

In late 2022 it was reported that A Little Life sold more than 2.5 million copies.⁸ Such phenomenal popularity ignited discussions about who should get to write fiction about queer men's trauma.

Annelies Beck: There's not only the appropriation discussion but also who gets to write in what voice. There was some discussion apparently on social media whether a woman can write about gay men having relationships. Does this concern you? Hanya Yanagihara: No. I think an artist can and should write about anything. [...] If you are an American, many other places as well, you are going to be writing other types of people, because you are going to encounter others—America is fundamentally others. Even if you live in a very homosocial or homoracial environment, you know someone of a different gender. You know someone of a different body. You know someone with different abilities. It is impossible, if you're an American novelist, not to populate your books with others, because America is all Others'. ⁹

A three-point turn of nuance that I want to reintroduce to such framing—that would otherwise be left to the impossible standard of "do it perfectly or face social censure, but also don't do it at all if you can't do it perfectly and then also face social censure"—comes from Nisi Shawl's essays in Writing the Other.¹⁰ When depicting fictional characters who would have experiences and a position in the worlds (both fictional and factual) that are too different than the author's own, then the author's approach can be one of three possibilities: tourist, guest, or invader (that I'll term colonizer and summarize all three terms with my own understanding of these categories.)

Tourists are "generally a nuisance, but at least they pay their way". To continue this metaphor, tourist-type of authors might be there to see the landmarks and thus play on the more widely-known stereotypes of locals, but there remains some respect in not inviting themselves into the personal homes where nobody wants them to be anyway. The tourist is here for the guided tour, and show some measure of respect and reciprocity in what they return to the people who guide them. A tourist might be "ignorant, but [...] educable."¹¹ The next feature is that a tourist-type author is a dilettante who doesn't outstay their welcome.

Guests get invited into the locals' homes, and probably grew up with the people they're writing about. The Guest-type authorial attitude I think is it would be weird not to include "diverse characters" because the real-life proximity influenced the landscape of a Guest-type author's imagination.

Colonizers barge in anywhere, grab what's shiny, and lie to broader society about what the shiny thing means about the people they (the author) took it from.

I personally believe, and will state this in my essay on my blog,¹² that critics were too hasty to categorize Hanya Yanagihara as, in not so many words, a literary Colonizer. Yanagihara cited and quoted Tony Kushner,¹³ professed to have been a fan of Garth Greenwell before his review upheld A Little Life as "the great gay novel"¹⁴, and mentioned Sarah Waters' lesbian historical fiction as an influence on the historical fiction parts of Yanagihara's own To Paradise.¹⁵ I'll decline to speculate on her personal life and her friends and family, but given all that other information...using a Peter Hujar photo as her book cover¹⁶ sounds to me like the act of a Guest than one of a Colonizer. I think she's in the Family, or at least a friend of a friend of Dorothy's.

In the backpocket of this same discourse I find¹⁷ repetitions of the same performative, bog-standard argument against Yanagihara as an author: There are so many other authors that are actually gay men, who can depict the gay experience and gay life more faithfully. I say this is a performative and bog-standard argument because those "so many other" authors are never actually named by people pushing that argument.

This is probably because no real-life human author that can be named is ever going to remain as unproblematic as the vague reference to the theoretical idea of a certain specific type of superior author. What if he's verifiably gay but wrote something gross and weird in a fiction story? What if he said the f-slur in an interview decades ago? We mustn't name such an author in that case—What would the neighbors think? Well, I'm not a coward,¹⁸ so:

Dennis Fucking Cooper!

(That's not really his middle name.)¹⁹

The story behind The George Miles Cycle, or at least how I understood it from reading the surrealist-experimental fiction books and capstone retrospective²⁰, goes like this: real-life earthling human Dennis Cooper as a boy met another real-life earthling human boy named George Miles who was high on LSD. That this meeting occurred in the year 1968 would fulfill a stereotype of life during that decade in the U.S.A. for those of us who weren't alive yet then—but for the detail that George Miles was 12 years old²¹. The, at the time, 15-year-old Dennis Cooper would later learn of the severe abuse²² that this other boy suffered, the not-inconceivably related emotional instability that would later get a teenaged Miles institutionalized²³ and/or on psychiatric medication²⁴, and the two would develop an intense friendship and become romantically involved in their adulthood²⁵. When Cooper moved to Holland, it being the late 20th century a long-distance relationship became unfeasible.

²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸

Cooper allegedly got both permission and encouragement from George Miles to write about their relationship.

Every young character in every piece of fiction I've ever written is somehow George, whether by name or not. In the early 80s, he and I fell out of touch for two years when I lived in relative isolation in Amsterdam and began to write my novel cycle (...) I wrote the novel cycle for him, hoping he was aware of my project. Before I'd moved to Holland, I had told him I was going to write the cycle as way to honor and pay tribute to his love, his friendship, and his life, and he had been very moved and pleased by this. I believed he was somewhere in the world reading my books, and would eventually try to contact me to tell me what he thought, but ²⁹

George Miles committed suicide before the publication of Closer, the first book in his namesake book series that Cooper published in 1989. Cooper would not be informed of Miles's suicide until 1997³⁰ or 1998³¹, by which time most of Closer's sequels had been written: Frisk published in 1991, Try in 1994, and Guide earlier in 1997. The final book in The George Miles Cycle would be published in the year 2000 and titled Period. Cooper published a retrospective of The George Miles Cycle, titled I Wished, as recently as 2021.

I started writing books about and for my friend George Miles because whenever I would speak about him honestly like I am doing now I felt a complicated agony beneath my words that talking openly can’t handle. How could someone like him die without a single friend or member of his family ever putting up a tribute page or even mentioning his name in tweets or Facebook posts, even on his birthday or on his death day’s anniversary or even randomly in reference to something in their lives or art that brought his memory to mind. Why hasn’t anyone who knew him ever tried to contact me to say, “I knew him too,” or “Thank you for devoting so much writing to him,” or “How could you have written such disturbing things about my friend or brother or former boyfriend or son or cousin?” I saw a therapist for three years, and I talked about him there, but she said he was a symbol in my lifelong playing out of shit my parents did to me, and she just wanted me to talk about my past, not him. I would ask her please, please forget about me and think of me as just some person who is telling you about him. I know how difficult he was to be around, and how emotionally hot and cold, and I understand he did and said some awful things to people near the end when I wasn’t with him unforgivably, but could his death really have been such a big relief to everyone? ³²

About the book series The George Miles Cycle

The George Miles Cycle is not a memoir.³³ Each book can be a standalone independent of others, and each story is fiction³⁴ influenced by methamphetamines, cocaine, and—in a roundabout way—psychedelics. ³⁵

I still dreamed of reinventing George but only in the safety of my writing, poems and terrible short stories at that point, and later novels, five of them, where I tried to recapitulate him, make him sexier, or semi-sane, or so cute his insides didn’t matter, sometimes by name, sometimes renamed and given similar but hotter bodies, other talents, different issues, and you can find out how terribly he fared in every variation if you want: George, David, Kevin, Ziggy, Robin, Chris, Drew, Sniffles, Egore, Dagger, George. ³⁶

George and David are characters in Closer and the former attends the funeral of the latter³⁷. Kevin is a character in Frisk³⁸. Ziggy and Robin in Try even have scenes of conversation with one another³⁹. Chris and Drew are characters in Guide⁴⁰ along with David and Sniffles from a nonfiction article also authored by Dennis Cooper and published in SPIN magazine⁴¹ and then re-published with the addition of several paragraphs and scenes in the fictional magazine named Spin that exists in the world of the fiction novel Guide and was written by a fictional character named Dennis⁴². Egore and Dagger appear in Period. ⁴³

As abovequoted, these are different characters. Dagger is Deaf whereas all other author-verified George-Miles-in-artistic-license-disguise types are hearing. George in Closer evidently has a terse (not necessarily abusive) relationship with his father whilst his mother is hospitalized and dying of cancer, whereas Ziggy is the adopted son of two gay dads who sexually abuse him.

Why Try ?

When I say that Try is the antithesis of A Little Life, I say that with the conviction that both works have their own, very different, literary merits...inasmuch as a random reader can say what has literary merit versus what doesn't.

It's chronologically impossible that Try is a deliberate satire of A Little Life, because Try was published in 1994 while A Little Life was published in 2015—but that's how it reads to me, so I'll make an attempt to name the qualities that give me that idea.

Aside from the difference in each author's stated intentions—Yanagihara exploring how conforming to masculinity inhibits recovery from trauma at the same time as that very trauma being too atrocious to recover from⁴⁴, Cooper setting out to "find its heart"⁴⁵—and the stylistic choices (Yanagihara aimed for fairytale vagueness⁴⁶ and unironic melodrama⁴⁷ that avoided industry-standard excessive cleverness⁴⁸, whereas Cooper remained incorrigibly clever in his literary precision-strikes and purposely transgressive comedy⁴⁹), I find the contrasts most evident in their most prominent characters. For that reason I considered both these books together as having the most material by which to interrogate reader attitudes towards queer men's trauma as represented in American literature, rather than Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx⁵⁰, or Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim⁵¹, or any other book in The George Miles Cycle. (Those other works sure would have material, but the framing and interpretation to provide such insights would have to be written by somebody else. ⁵²)

Both Jude St. Francis and Ziggy McCauley are survivors of rapes that occurred when they were children and continued into their teenaged years, and their rapists were or are multiple men. This horrific abuse that both endure in the course of the story become so extreme that it breaks the suspension of disbelief—and becomes a grim comedy to some detractors of A Little Life,⁵³ and on-purpose gallows humor in the text of Try. ⁵⁴

Another notable theme both books have in common is the resistance to labelling. The respective love interests—Jude's partner Willem, and Ziggy's closest friend Calhoun on which he has an unreciprocated crush—reject labels such as "gay" or even "love". Jude even rejects the label "sexual abuse victim" despite definitely qualifying for that category several times over. Ziggy stands out as he embraces his identity as a sexual abuse survivor so determinedly that he creates and circulates zines about it...and then doesn't seem to fully comprehend that it's a bad thing (he happily interviews other victims during sexual abuse, for the content with which to fill his zines.)

While Jude remains secretive and guarded about his past and refuses to consider therapy, Ziggy has his zine to make, and his counselor to tell him how acting out from his trauma sabotages his interactions with others, and a diagnosis as bipolar. Ziggy heard or read about bisexuality from somewhere in-world, and describes extensively in both dialogue and narration his experience being bisexual.

Jude has a complicated relationship with Willem, who makes some significant egregious mistakes in their relationship⁵⁵ (readers describe as uncomfortable⁵⁶ and harrowing⁵⁷) but he has a measure of genuine affection and care for Jude that sets him (Willem) apart⁵⁸ from Pederasty Luke, Domestic Violence Caleb, and some off-brand John Jigsaw Kramer from Wish Dot Com. Ziggy has a complicated relationship with his best friend Calhoun, who spends pretty much all of the story zoned out on heroin but eventually divulges some more enduring sentiment and care for Ziggy than Calhoun's heterosexuality can repress or counteract.

Jude has no community of other sexual abuse survivors, as even other deeply troubled teens in a group home shunned him for the nature of the abuse he was subjected to. Ziggy's kinship and community with Robin (another sexual abuse survivor) is forged and burnt out in the firestorm of Ziggy's frighteningly inappropriate optimism about absolutely everything.

Jude St. Francis gets to grow up, even if he doesn't get better as per the tyranny-of-memory point of his story. Jude St. Francis and his Catholicized "Moon Moon"-ass name make it to at least the age of 53, and his character reads to me like he's 53. In Cooper's works, "Every young character in every piece of fiction I've ever written is somehow George" because while they don't all die in their stories these characters do remain eternally boys.⁵⁹

Finally, I give both books the same benefit of recognizing the through-line of genuine sentimentality that holds the stories together.

[ maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him. ]⁶⁰

[ Calhoun takes a drag. "Should I say it or not?" Ziggy squints at the punk picture frame, which looks just realistic enough that it's worth, like, refining a little. "It's up to you." "But would it help you to know how I feel?" Doddle, doodle, doodle. "I know how you feel." "And...well, does it bother you, or...?" "Nope." Calhoun clears his throat. "Shit, uh...Okay then, can I ask you the worst question I'll ever ask you, and just get it over with now, if I promise to never ever mention it again?" Ziggy's started decorating the frame with miniscule, screaming human faces. Calhoun takes a drag. "Uh, do you love me? I don't mean are you in love with me, 'cos I know you're not, and I'm not in love with you either, don't worry. I mean 'love,' you know?" "Yeah." "Are you just saying that so I'll shut up?" Calhoun chuckles. "Of course." "So," Ziggy tries to say, but the word's all, like, shredded. He has to shake his head to keep from bawling this second. "That's..." "No. I'm lying." Calhoun breathes out. "Look, I don't know what love means. I really like you a lot. Maybe I love you. I don't know." "You're the greatest person in the world." "Jesus, Ziggy." Calhoun starts scratch-scratching his lighter, it sounds like. "I believe that," Ziggy says. "And I just feel incredibly lucky to know you. Every second of knowing you has been...Wait..." Tears are rolling. "Sorry..." He sobs. "Shit, you just..." He jags the mouthpiece about a foot from his mouth. "Thanks," says Calhoun's voice. It's far off. Ziggy slaps one hand over his wet, shaky face to keep the noise down so Roger won't hear him, rush in, and ruin everything. ]⁶¹

In Conclusion

Dennis started fighting to unearth the gist of that amazing little kid he’d met, George wanted to believe that kid was trapped somewhere inside him, and he fought too, and he called the struggle love because Dennis did. But if George didn’t love Dennis, and there’s no evidence he did, then I guess I never loved him. I loved something else that this is torn from. ⁶²

These are the words of somebody that grew up with George Miles and was inspired by him for so many decades. If even he remains unsure about their relationship or Miles' perspective, then how can any of us know?

Maybe it is not a matter of gender or orientation that can hinder a faithful depiction, then. Maybe every story is a unit of personal and individual artistic expression, and maybe that's not so bad to consider.

The George Miles Cycle and Try in particular does directly contend with a point that I find A Little Life doesn't make room for. I think that is fine, that the story Yanagihara set out to tell was never going to be everything to every reader, and what the content implies but doesn't wrangle is left to the readers to interpret. Fiction can do that, I think that's even what it's for and how it works. That's the way it is, and it should be more our job as readers to interpret the text responsibly. Conversations around a work impact the world more than an ink-and-paper fiction novel sitting on a shelf unread and forgotten. Even reading it and thinking critically about the content or not, remains such limited impact compared to discussions about it. The main point I would find (of both works) is this: Our ideas about a sexual abuse survivor gets in the way of the real person.

Our codified ideas of anything get in the way of everything, really. If that can't be avoided by the form of fiction novels, then I'm not convinced that transgressive fiction shouldn't exist, in multiple forms even. It sure would be worth questioning the common attitudes that made these works popular enough in their time, but in that blanket condemnation that too often results I find a missed opportunity to find what parts were good about where the story emerged from and where that goes.

Footnotes and Sources

¹ Yanagihara, Hanya. A Little Life: A Novel. Anchor Books Penguin Random House LLC, New York: 2016.

 Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault.

² Yanagihara, Hanya, and Gerry Howard. “Hanya Yanagihara in Conversation with Her Editor.” Slate Magazine, The Slate Group LLC, 5 Mar. 2015 ( https://slate.com/culture/2015/03/hanya-yanagihara-author-of-a-little-life-and-her-editor-gerry-howard.html )

³ Hulst, Auke, and Hanya Yanagihara. “Hanya Yanagihara on A Little Life - John Adams Institute.” October 5, 2016. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3UOevIbwtQ&t=12m25s )

Steger, Jason, and Hanya Yanagihara. “Hanya Yanagihara (author) in conversation with Jason Steger at Melbourne Athenaeum Theatre on 23 May 2016 as part of The Wheeler Centre”. May 23, 2016. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Y5BFkSCGo&t=11m07s )

Kavanagh, Adalena and Hanya Yanagihara. "An Interview with Hanya Yanagihara: the author of A Little Life on a stubborn lack of redemption." May 21, 2015. (https://electricliterature.com/a-stubborn-lack-of-redemption-an-interview-with-hanya-yanagihara-author-of-a-little-life/)

Yanagihara: One of the things that makes me most suspicious about the field is its insistence that life is always the answer. Every other medical specialty devoted to the care of the seriously ill recognizes that at some point, the doctor’s job is to help the patient die; that there are points at which death is preferable to life (that doesn’t mean every doctor will help you get there, of course. But almost every doctor of the critically sick understands the patient’s right to refuse treatment, to choose death over life). But psychology, and psychiatry, insists that life is the meaning of life, so to speak; that if one can’t be repaired, one can at least find a way to stay alive, to keep growing older.

⁴ Greenwell, Garth. “‘A Little Life’: The Great Gay Novel Might Be Here.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 3 Sept. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/05/a-little-life-definitive-gay-novel/394436/.

⁵ "A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara READING VLOG (spoilers)". Watson, Mique. 26 March 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_IUTT3Aks

⁶ Mendelsohn, Daniel. “A Striptease among Pals.” The New York Review of Books, 21 July 2020, www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/03/striptease-among-pals/.

⁷ Taylor, Brandon. “A Little Life Is Not Your Father.” A Little Life Is Not Your Father, Substack, 25 May 2022, https://blgtylr.substack.com/p/a-little-life-is-not-your-father.

⁸ McIntosh, Steven. “A Little Life: James Norton to Star in ‘devastating’ Stage Adaptation.” BBC News, BBC, 23 Nov. 2022, www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-63663348.

⁹ Beck, Annelies, and Hanya Yanagihara. “Meet the Author: Hanya Yanagihara”. March 9, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X36eIM71LRM&t=55m50s

¹⁰ Shawl, Nisi, and Cynthia Ward. Writing the Other: A Practical Approach. Aqueduct, Seattle: 2005.

¹¹ Ibid.

Diantha Day Sprouse categorized those who borrow others’ cultural tropes as “Invaders,” “Tourists,” and “Guests.” Invaders arrive without warning, take whatever they want for use in whatever way they see fit. They destroy without thinking anything that appears to them to be valueless. They stay as long as they like, leave at their own convenience. Theirs is a position of entitlement without allegiance. Tourists are expected. They’re generally a nuisance, but at least they pay their way. They can be accommodated. Tourists may be ignorant, but they can be intelligent as well, and are therefore educable. Guests are invited. Their relationships with their hosts can become long-term commitments and are often reciprocal. (Sprouse, personal communication.) A good deal of transcultural writing’s bad reputation is owing to authors and audiences who act like Invaders.

¹² I really will.

¹³ Beck, Annelies, and Hanya Yanagihara. “Meet the Author: Hanya Yanagihara”. March 9, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X36eIM71LRM&t=56m14s

¹⁴ Kahan, Andy and Hanya Yanagihara. "Hanya Yanagihara | A Little Life". March 31, 2016. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ap4cieVyLP8&t=54m55s

Steger, Jason, and Hanya Yanagihara. “Hanya Yanagihara (author) in conversation with Jason Steger at Melbourne Athenaeum Theatre on 23 May 2016 as part of The Wheeler Centre”. May 23, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Y5BFkSCGo&t=35m47s

¹⁵ Beck, Annelies, and Hanya Yanagihara. “Meet the Author: Hanya Yanagihara”. March 9, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X36eIM71LRM&t=27m00s

¹⁶ Peterson, Vanessa. “Ecstasy or Agony: The Story behind the ‘visceral’ Photo on the Cover of a Little Life.” The Booker Prizes, 23 Mar. 2023, thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/the-story-behind-the-peter-hujar-cover-photo-a-little-life.

¹⁷ trust me bro

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Cooper, Dennis. Closer. Grove Press, New York: 1989.

Cooper, Dennis. Frisk. Grove Press, New York: 1991.

Cooper, Dennis. Try. Grove Press, New York: 1994.

Cooper, Dennis. Guide. Grove Press, New York: 1997.

Cooper, Dennis. Period. Grove Press, New York: 2000.

Cooper, Dennis. I Wished. Soho Press, Inc. New York: 2021.

²¹ Cooper, Dennis. I Wished. Soho Press, Inc. New York: 2021.

²² This detail is keystone to this entire essay, and I cannot definitively prove it.

²³ Cooper, Dennis. Guide. Grove Press, New York: 1997. "I held back. George was just too insane. [...] Four months later, his dad committed him to a mental institution." https://web.archive.org/web/20170803200842/http://www.dennis-cooper.net/georgemiles/gmiles.htm

²⁴ Cooper, Dennis. I Wished. Soho Press, Inc. New York: 2021. "when George turned 14, the passion and excitement Dennis roused from him was diagnosed and named by doctors not as love but a form of mania. George was, they said, severely bipolar, [...] He found an almost genius medication at 18, but [...] then the pill stopped working, tearing George in half again."

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ -Art, Gertritude. ghost ass post. 21 July 2020. Digital art on Tumblr post (https://gertritude-art.tumblr.com/post/624293444196646912/). https://ko-fi.com/gertritude

²⁷ Cooper, Dennis. “102 Magic Shops.” p.s. to Joseph. 10 July 2024, https://denniscooperblog.com/102-magic-shops-2/.

²⁸ meme image description: [ "When I was living in Amsterdam in the mid-80s, I got really bad German measles, and, given the time period, I was convinced until I was finally diagnosed that I had AIDS, which was a death sentence at the time, and that kicked my ass into finally starting to write the Cycle books on what initially seemed to be my death bed." Speech bubble said by a man in sunglasses talking out the driver's seat window of a car in a McDonald's drive-thru, first panel. Second and final panel shows the McDonald's employee's bewildered expression. ]

²⁹ Cooper, Dennis. I Wished. Soho Press, Inc. New York: 2021.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Chaney, David Van and Dennis Cooper. "More Than A Mouthful (Queer Culture TV)" Archival Footage from Film Research Unit that puts the date of this interview "around 1998".

Cooper: Closer is like, presents everything that's ever going to be in all the books. That's very compacted. Frisk is kind of an explosion. It just explodes open and becomes like it's almost like this dismembered body to me, Frisk. And then Try like consolidates and tries to find its heart. And then in Guide it explodes open and then it reveals me, right. And then the last one is going to close up again as tight as it can considering all the damage that's been done. So it's going to be a tighter book. It's going to be a weird book because actually I've written…a lot of my work has been about this one guy named George Miles who actually is a character in one of the books. And he was like the most important person to me when I was growing up and I've always written these books for him and I actually just found out 5 days ago that he'd shot himself 9 years ago... Van Chaney: No! Cooper: And umm yeah which is it's been really heavy for me. But. And so I think the last book is going to be about his death.

³² Cooper, Dennis. I Wished. Soho Press, Inc. New York: 2021.

³³ Restaino, Max and Dennis Cooper. "Mad Worlds: Dennis Cooper interviewed". Amphetamine Sulphate, Substack. 04 July 2024. https://amphetaminesulphate.substack.com/p/mad-worlds-dennis-cooper-interviewed

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Clemens, Daniel et. al "Cult author Dennis Cooper on meth, the death of NYC and Miley Cyrus". The Face. 04 November 2020. ( https://theface.com/culture/dennis-cooper-diarmuid-hester-wrong-meth-miley-cyrus-interview )

³⁶ Cooper, Dennis. I Wished. Soho Press, Inc. New York: 2021.

³⁷ Cooper, Dennis. Closer. Grove Press, New York: 1989.

³⁸ Cooper, Dennis. Frisk. Grove Press, New York: 1991.

³⁹ Cooper, Dennis. Try. Grove Press, New York: 1994.

⁴⁰ Cooper, Dennis. Guide. Grove Press, New York: 1997.

⁴¹ Cooper, Dennis. All Ears: Cultural Criticism, Essays and Obituaries. "AIDS: Words from the Front". Soft Skull Press, New York: 1999.

⁴² image generated of Diffchecker by Checker Software, Inc. comparison of "Words from the Front" in All Ears in coral red (left) and "The Spin Article" chapter in Guide and gumby green (right).

⁴³ Cooper, Dennis. Period. Grove Press, New York: 2000.

⁴⁴ Sikka, Madhulika and Hanya Yanagihara. "Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life". The PEN/Faulkner Foundation Contemporary Fiction Reading Series at Busboys and Poets, Politics & Prose Bookstore. March 1, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZQqdGrazAs&t=13m57s

⁴⁵ (see footnote 31 above) Chaney, David Van and Dennis Cooper. "More Than A Mouthful (Queer Culture TV)" Archival Footage from Film Research Unit.

⁴⁶ Steger, Jason, and Hanya Yanagihara. “Hanya Yanagihara (author) in conversation with Jason Steger at Melbourne Athenaeum Theatre on 23 May 2016 as part of The Wheeler Centre”. May 23, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Y5BFkSCGo&t=53m57s

Hulst, Auke, and Hanya Yanagihara. “Hanya Yanagihara on A Little Life - John Adams Institute.” October 5, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3UOevIbwtQ&t=16m10s

⁴⁷ Joos, Ruth and Hanya Yanagihara. “Hanya Yanagihara at Flagey with Passa Porta.” October 6, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO_IKojdAPc&t=17m01s

⁴⁸ Hulst, Auke, and Hanya Yanagihara. “Hanya Yanagihara on A Little Life - John Adams Institute.” October 5, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3UOevIbwtQ&t=50m00s

⁴⁹ Cooper, Dennis. Try. Grove Press, New York: 1994.

⁵⁰ Proulx, Annie et. al. Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay. Scribner, 2005.

⁵¹ Heim, Scott. Mysterious Skin. Harper Perennial, 2005. (Originally published in 1995.)

⁵² Yeah.

⁵³ Ziporyn, Terra. "Walking Away from A Little Life." Late Last Night Books, 4 December 2017. ( https://latelastnightbooks.com/2017/12/04/walking-away-little-life/ ) "Virtually every character can claim achievements so sickeningly and consistently extraordinary, and tragedies so unthinkable, that you almost have to laugh."

⁵³ Cooper, Dennis. Try. Grove Press, New York: 1994.

⁵⁵ Yanagihara, Hanya. A Little Life: A Novel. Anchor Books Penguin Random House LLC, New York: 2016.

⁵⁶ C., Olivia. "Why I Hate A Little Life: rant review". July 13, 2021. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxPVhTIhWIk&t=16m07s)

⁵⁷ Stannus, Marshall. "The Ultimate 'Little Life' Deep Dive". October 11, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n5lSnliGWk&t=19m57s

⁵⁸ Koen Tachelet and Hanya Yanagihara. A Little Life. Ivo van Hove, Wessex Grove, Gavin Kalin Productions, Playful Productions, September 28, 2023. London. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf8z7CuFp9U&t=01m27s) Edgar Wilmot in the alias of a monk named Luke, Caleb Porter, and Dr. Traylor are all played by the same actor in the stageplay version of A Little Life. I think this decision categorizes the men who abused Jude as separate from Willem, despite Jude still imagining Brother Luke as a protective presence and the negligence on Willem's part making Willem less stalwart about consent than the reader and Jude needs Willem to be in the book. I can't comment on the U.K. cast because I haven't seen them, but Maarten Heijmans as Willem plays this character superbly in that his Willem can be genuinely scary without even being lascivious or manipulative—and that is what got me feeling conflicted about Willem as a character. Good job, Maarten Heijmans.

⁵⁹ This statement is not entirely true. A character named George in a short story from the collection Wrong is depicted as living independently in a big city, which suggests maturity-milestones beyond that depicted in The Cycle. The capstone retrospective of The George Miles Cycle, if we frame I Wished as such, depicts a 30-year-old George Miles at the moment of his suicide.

Cooper, Dennis. Wrong: Short Stories. Grove Press, New York: 1994

Cooper, Dennis. I Wished. Soho Press, Inc. New York: 2021.

⁶⁰ Yanagihara, Hanya. A Little Life: A Novel. Anchor Books Penguin Random House LLC, New York: 2016.

⁶¹ Cooper, Dennis. Try. Grove Press, New York: 1994.

⁶² Cooper, Dennis. I Wished. Soho Press, Inc. New York: 2021.

[bookishfeylin]

I’m curious on what your opinion is on tams red flag behavior in book one and just “fantasy male character behavior” in general. Like I see people talk about how gross and terrible he was in book one and yeah I’d run away fast if I met him but it also wasn’t anywhere near being worse that a lot other popular book men. Like where’s the line for you? Whats going to far? Should these characters be in ya?

Hi anon! I’ve talked about this topic quite a bit all over my blog but it’s complicated for me. IMO I DO think YA romantic relationships (fantasy romance in particular) as a whole are more toxic than not and really ought to be examined, critiqued, and called out more often, but ACOTAR is a unique case as it started as NA (or book 1 specifically was first published in NA I should say). If it’d stayed in NA it wouldn’t be an issue but alas. ACOTAR was moved to YA to sell more (this all occurred prior to ACOMAF being published iirc), and then after YEARS of the series being sold as YA they were moved back to NA with the release of ACOSF. I feel like they simply never should’ve been in YA to begin with, especially if she ultimately moved them back to NA, so… Additionally, the books, unlike your average YA fantasy, are trying specifically to teach the audience about healthy and unhealthy relationships. That complicates the convo more so than if these books DIDN'T discuss and attempt to teach about abuse like most other YA fantasy books. I do think, if you’re going to attempt to teach about a topic as important as abuse, you should hold your relationships to a higher standard, and ESPECIALLY if you’re writing for a younger and more impressionable audience. BUTTTTTTTT ACOTAR 1 is for all intents and purposes a BATB retelling. The BATB fairytale is nearly inherently unhealthy by real world standards, but we all… know that? Including teens (or I’d like to believe that, at least)? And Tamlin's character is the beast, so how much do we truly gain from calling out his red flags when we all knew he was going to act beastly going in? Like sure, I don’t like to see these types of behaviors promoted in YA as a general rule and I’m certainly glad to see them critiqued by the author, but I and I’m sure most others do expect them and arguably make exceptions for them in a BATB retelling *specifically* because. That’s the fairytale??? And I don’t think BATB retellings should be banned from YA or anything in spite of the fact that they’re again nearly inherently unhealthy? So yeah. It’s complicated. And because I want some nuance here I’ll just copy and paste some of my more concise opinions from other posts I’ve made:

As I've said in all of my posts where I discuss Tamlin's red flags, he certainly HAS them, but I've yet to see anyone name a red flag he has that Rhysand doesn't also exhibit. While I don't necessarily agree that other characters are more of a bad guy than he is, ACOTAR!Tamlin does not stand out much from any other male in the rest of this series. Is he a significantly older male with power and influence courting a younger less powerful woman? Yes. Is he violent, possessive, and jealous to a degree (though it's not nearly on ACOMAF! Tamlin's level)? Yes.

But so is everyone else. It doesn't work as a red flag because everyone acts that way. If we indict ACOTAR!Tamlin, then either EVERYONE has red flags, or it's "just how faeries are" and we leave it at that. Is Rhysand a significantly older male with power and influence courting a younger less powerful woman? Yes. Is Rhysand violent, possessive, and jealous to a degree? Yes.

ACOTAR!Tamlin is no worse than the bat boys. ACOTAR!Tamlin truly doesn't stand out in this series. It makes calling ACOTAR!Tamlin a walking red flag very very HARD when he's objectively not worse than the main heroes of the story--unless they too are walking red flags.

~~~

I love BATB retellings and Feylin, in book 1 where I ship it, is just that. It is no better or worse than a BATB retelling in a world with fae can be, and this works because Sarah isn’t trying to sell book 1 Feylin's relationship as healthy or frankly as anything other than a retelling of a popular fairytale a fairytale that has been scrutinized for Stockholm syndrome and the like. The rest of the books, aside from being very different in characterization, worldbuilding, tone, theme, and overall being very disjointed, retconned-filled continuations of the first book, also are hypocritical in the discussion of domestic violence, attacking said fairytale retelling for failing to meet real world standards of what a healthy relationship is (something it could never do as it was, again, a retelling of a fairytale that’s KNOWN to not be 100% healthy) while simultaneously propping up ANOTHER retelling-based-relationship as the ~healthier option~ despite it likewise being incapable of truly meeting our standards of healthiness and morality. The fandom often insists on critiquing Tamlin’s “red flags”, proclaiming Feylin was unhealthy and doomed from the beginning, but if the same treatment is done back to Rhysand and Feysand then the fandom’s tune becomes “how dare you use real world morality to critique their relationship???” Feysand literally begins with Rhysand mind-raping Feyre and then molesting her for months UTM??? Which is much worse than ANYTHING Tamlin ever did in the first book? If this series, and this fandom, truly cared about abuse as a theme then both Feylin and Feysand would be correctly critiqued as abusive, as neither of the fairytales they’re based on and are retelling are healthy. So that’s where I come in, and I correctly call them both toxic. But the fandom at large and the books don't do this, and the real world standards injected in the second book are deemed only applicable to Feylin, the BATB retelling, and not Feysand, the Hades and Persephone retelling. So I won’t judge my ship in the ***first book*** based on standards that were included ***later*** in the series and that are applied hypocritically to them alone and no other relationship. As I’ve said before, it’s very clear from the way no other major relationship in this series is critiqued by the same standards that abuse, domestic violence, and red flags were only discussed as themes solely to discredit their relationship, not least of all because it’s incredibly hard to apply real world standards to every character in a fantasy series without everyone being labeled unhealthy or problematic to some degree, to say nothing about that difficulty increasing in a fairytale retelling specifically. Feylin in book 1 is a fantasy fairytale retelling and nothing more; it’s not trying to comment on abuse. The rest of the books do, but hypocritically by only holding one retelling-based-relationship accountable for failing to meet real world standards of healthiness and morality instead of critiquing them both. The hypocrisy ruins the rest of the series for me (and has me side-eye a lot of the fandom for not caring about one relationship being analyzed by real world standards and the other one getting a pass and being labelled healthy anyway), so I simply prefer to enjoy book 1 and the relationship therein as an (imperfect) standalone fantasy.

[ride-thedragon]

My most controversial opinion is that I hope Nettles is feminine. Like dresses and jewelry even before she is claiming dragons.

Why would this be controversial?

Two reasons.

Cultural Femininity and Demonization of Femininity.

1. Cultural Femininity:

If they take the time to give Nettles a distinctly cultural tie on the show, they also have the ability to make her present her femininity differently. In my preferred head canon with the Rhoynar, it's very different from what is allowed in Westeros. The placement of Driftmark as a trading center also allows her to pick up culturally distinctive feminity, think septum piercings, or showing your stomach. Those things are seen in Essos and Dorne not really in Westeros as a culture.

2. Demonizing.

Nettles is described as ugly in the books , so to then just make her dress and act differently from the royal woman does explain a lot of the hate and dislike her appearance and personhood. The whole Witch thing becomes layered if she isn't praying to the faith of the seven or dressing to fit the standard. She's never had to do it before. The idea impacts her relationships and how she would perceive things.

This unfortunately will muddy waters when it comes to people who don't like her character because we experience the show from a Westeros focused mindset, if people are ordering hits on the one distinct woman of colour and accusing her of witchcraft it reads clearer than it does in the book.

Lord knows this fandom does not need a reason to demonize a woman, far less for a woman of colour, I just think that it would be cool to see that because she's never had to conform to a societal expectation of piety or virtue she's picked what she liked and grew up to take and choose distinctive cultural things and made it her own.

Also, cultural femininity eats every time. Sarees, piercings, tribal tattoos, braids, materials, and jewelry outsell everything, every time.

I just wouldn't don't trust any writers after experiencing "you want a good girl, but you need a bad pussy" first hand from Tyene Sand of all people. So I don't think that even if they went this direction with this character, they would do it as good as they should do it.

I will say that GOT and HOTD so far have done a good job at not demonizing cultures before. I was personally rooting for Melisandre a bit too hard before Shireen.

But in exotizing certain cultures like Dorne, they tend to play into fetishization and Orientalism, similarly to the Dothraki, but that links back to the source material and again who we experience the world through.

I do think if they try, it would be a cool way to characterize her specifically because she's such an outsider to the world already, and it easily establishes that she isn't meant to conform to it. It also adds a layer to her descriptions if a lot of it would be things like a tattoo, or piercing or strange jewelry, and perfumes she's collected overtime.

I know a big thing with her character is that she's homeless without parents allegedly, but things like jewelry passed down to her, and odd jobs could explain the small disbelief people would have if they go that route.

I just deserve it as well. I've been a good person when it came to the Rhaena, Laena, and Baela erasure I've suffered through. I hope we can move on and make distinct choices.

I also will say that this happens in the context that we get biblically accurate Baela Targaryen. I refuse to suffer Masc and Hyper Feminine erasure again.

[horizon-verizon]

yeah i'm talking about the discourse around rhaenyra's costumes and not what you said. there's definitely criticisms to be had about how they dress rhaenyra specifically but acting like how they dressed is offensive and disrespectful when this is in a show where basically none of the characters look good (at least in season 1) is very silly in my opinion. the conversation about her being less feminine presenting on the show and the implications about that is another one all together, i'm just talking about the quality of the costumes.

Anon is talkin about this post.

The very fact that none of the characters "look good" bc their costumes are atrocious is one of the problems that people find "offensive"...bc these are royals or nobles who work and live closely around royals. They have access to the best quality garments anyone could get in Westeros.

It's a concern with taking your job/this story/this world seriously; it's about the effort, similar (NOT THE SAME!) to how they messed up the Black hairstyles. It's "disrespectful" to:

the integrity of storytelling and the "point" behind the character(s)' canonical presentations

the effort out into the lore/society created

presentations/self expressions of gender in relation to power

You can't really separate the quality, cut, etc. of the garments from characterization & lore-building, one acts as a way to communicate what's happening/the character's motives/mindset of the moment and/or entire being.

In said linked post above, I said:

I agree she doesn't look "worse" than other characters....and that's a bgi part of the issue--that she doesn't really stand out as much as she should AND se sould stand out in a specifically "feminine"ly ostentatious presentation.

The standards for Rhaenyra's presentation is higher and different for the others bc that's who she was. Therefore, what I meant is that bc Rhaenyra is supposed to be at a "higher" level of dress and luxury than other characters, even the fact that she is dressed with garments or in styles in the show that one can say is "equally" as bad as others makes her presentation on the show "worse". In a part of society where everyone is trying to stand out, she more than anyone is supposed to consistently, really stand out AND show out or look like she puts the effort into doing so; on the show, as you just stated ("none of the characters look good"), she does not. They rely more on unless the camera and angles to give the impression she dresses "better" or more luxuriously than others. (Again, show!her has A FEW good pieces but it's simply not enough and not at a certain level of "pretty" or intricate.)

They do not portray Rhaenyra as she is, her clothing is a CRITICAL element that defines her esp when it comes to the subtle "commentary" about a woman's autonomy. So yes, it is "disrespectful" for her to be dressed that way.

Yes, it is sometimes weird for people to make as if bad dressing is inherently "disrespectful" or "offensive"; that would be superficial but it depends. However, I don't know if a lot of people just don't have the right words or want to bother/use up energy to explain all this the ability to express how the costumes's quality & how the characters are dressed show a lack of dedication (or not enough) to this media project/the story. I could be wrong, but I don't think the number is 0.