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millenari · 1 year ago

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What are your mixed feelings about the macavtiy interlude?

im so glad u asked :)

I think it could've been cool with the right execution. With Cats Macavity is kind of haunting the narrative up until the point that he shows up; Demeter mistakes every loud noise that occurs through the whole show as him, and the Macavity Scares serve the function of deliberately building up to his appearance as well as establishing that the whole tribe -and especially Demeter- are terrified of him. I'm not opposed to an interlude that tries to drive this point home even more so than the musical already does.

(Note that I've only seen this bit in the bway revival; the wiki says it's been in other different productions so who knows if it comes off differently in those)

But as is it's kind of... sloppy. The music doesn't really sound like anything else in Cats, the lyrics come straight from Macavity's song but it doesn't sound or feel like his song. The speak-singing thing the girls do sounds weird on top of that; the cast shouldn't be speaking in Cats. It sounds weird.

(In the May 2002 boot (and looking at the wiki, in London productions around that time?) there are spoken lines. Munkustrap has a couple, so does Deuteronomy and Macavity. They happen between the songs and imo it sounds janky as fuck. Cats is supposed to be p‌sychedelic and abstract; having the characters just speak normally kind of, uh... kills the vibe. It's like if a mime went through a whole complicated silent routine, wiped off his brow, and then went 'well shit that was hard! Want to go grab a beer?' It's jarring and kind of ruins the suspension of belief (as much as we believe mimes can't talk and people in leotards and wigs are actual cats) but tldr them speaking is janky as hell and I don't like it.)

I don't mind the sort-of dance-thing they do-- a lot of modern changes to Gillian's Lynne's choreography, imo, kind of fails to capture that elegant-cat-vibe the way she did, but that short bit did kind of feel a little s‌ensual and catlike? Maybe that's just me.

Maybe it would've been cooler with music that sounded more like Macavity's number and maybe it would be better if the lyrics were sung more than spoke. But. Uh. Regardless the Implications that bit has are kind of. Something.

1.) Maybe this is just my interpretation and I'm crazy but I feel pretty certain that up until the point Macavity actually shows his face Demeter is in a 'boy who cried wolf' situation. It feels like the Macavity scares are taken less seriously as the play goes on, and Demeter keeps looking like a crazy person when she keeps calling him out-- that's why everyone looks at her like she's insane when she starts freaking out during the Deuteronomy return. Nobody pays much attention to her because she's been losing her mind about seeing Macavity in shadows this whole time and the one time he actually showed up she didn't see him coming. So when she attacks Deuteronomy and Macavity reveals himself it's kind of a gratifying moment for her. 'I was right, you all were wrong, he was here, we were in danger'. If Macavity --as early as Old Deut's song-- is making his presence plainly known, that element is lost which is a shame to me.

2.) On that thought, Macavity making his presence plainly known and then everyone gathering together for the Jellicle Ball right after looks fucking stupid. Your local EVIL DOER just MIND CONTROLLED half of your tribe without even showing his face and thirty seconds later it's 'come on out everyone lets do a silly dance together :)' like what. There's no suspense about whether he's there or not. HE'S THERE, and YALL ARE SHAKING A‌SS AND SHIT INSTEAD OF DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT. WHY.

3.) It's mind control. Only the female characters are affected. There's a whole load of yikes there to unpack.

3a.) I assume the mind control thing is, at least to some degree, a s‌exual thing. One, this is Cats. Two, this is every female character in the whole cast and none of the males. There's a bit in the Macavity fight where you can see both Jerrie and Cori watch their respective twins get pulled in by Macavity: if individual strength of personality/mental hardiness is an aspect, its not a big one. (And if it is a big one: that's sexist. boo.)

Honestly even if it's not supposed to be a s‌exual thing it kind of very clearly is. The lines they sing: 'He's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity / he hypnotizes with his eyes, his head sways like a snake'. It's not even an exact quote from the song. The bit about 'hypnotizing' isn't even in the song!

And even the part that is -when Bomba and Demeter sing it- is clearly supposed to be s‌exual. Which brings me to,

3b.) When Bomba and Demeter, two characters who claim to know Macavity personally (and who almost seem to compete over who knew him more) sing his song, they deliver the lines 'he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity' in a way that's clearly meant to be s‌exual.

And like... also a good thing on top of that. 'He's a monster of depravity' clearly means 'he's a freak in bed', you can tell by how they say it. Gillian Lynne talked about Demeter and Macavity's relationship by saying '[Demeter thought] he was wonderful when he made love to [her], but [she] hated him'. And this translates to the audience by how they deliver the lines, as most things in Cats go. Bomba smiles when she delivers that line in 98!

But when the girls in the interlude deliver that same exact line, they sound terrified and the music is haunting. That changes the implication. A lot. Especially when it's followed directly by 'he hypnotizes with his eyes', a line that's not even in the damn song. They wrote that line to put it there.

Everything about that, to me, says that all those girls have personal experience with him. (Not to mention how when Demeter calls Macavity out after Bustopher's number, several of the female characters cry out afterwards, like they're all panicking. Again, as if they have personal experience with him... that left them terrified.)

Which.

3c.) if Demeter and Bomba aren't the only ones who knew Macavity carnally why are they singing his song? Why do they stand out? Why is Demeter's story special in any way?

4.) If all the female characters have known Macavity carnally then WHAT THE FUCK.

4a.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Macavity here or anything, there were clearly SA elements in Demeter's story regardless of the interlude's existence. But all of those girls talking about how 'depraved' he is at the same time talking about his ability to 'hypnotize' at the same time they're all terrified and some horror movie music shit is playing in the background... there's a pretty serious implication at hand there! Were they all assaulted by this man? Are they all afraid they'll be assaulted by this man?

4b.) Either way, it's an extremely dark implication about this little universe that comes out of nowhere and then is never picked up again. Especially with how the Jellicle Ball picks up right afterwards! 'yes, yes, your mind and body were terribly violated, but how about you all just come back out and dance a silly dance with the rest of us!' WHAT.

4c.) Even if that wasn't the intent (and to be honest I don't think it was) that's definitely the implication to my eyes, and I feel like most women would be coming to a similar conclusion? It just feels like one of those things that a Man™ slapped in there without thinking of the implication And Then Just never Asking Any Woman Ever about it.

So... yeah I have a lot of feelings about it. I... think it could be cool, with better execution? I love Macavity's mind control powers; I think it's such an on-point ability for him to have, since he was assumedly cast out as one of the tribe. Mirroring and copying each other is how they demonstrate tgetherness/community/affection/admiration/etc. And Macavity the Outcast uses his powers to force them to mirror him? Delicious 10/10 no notes. Tons of notes on the other stuff tho.

#tw sa mention #cats fan on main #cats the musical

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pendraegon · 2 years ago

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I’m open to lip gloss + oil recs if ur feeling it!! Especially anything u think would help a chronic dry lip haver 😭

WHOO perpetual dried lips club, fist bump me dude<3 I think that’s probably a big reason as to why I prefer lip gloss to lipstick lol just as a heads up if ur someone who hates lip gloss texture this isn’t really for you (I personally don’t mind it at all) but there are some that are less sticky/tacky than others on this list!

Glossier Lip Glosses -> Okay. I know it’s bold to start with Glossier considering they’re..well. everything about them. but the ONE thing that’s good from them is their lip gloss. My personal favorite is the red one but I also really really like their sparkly one. Perfect tint of color, super super long lasting, moisturizing, and also surprisingly not tacky at all? Also if you get their sparkly one it is NOT gritty at all? I have no fucking idea how. The white sparkly one has a pink glitter reflex and it looks sooooo good with just some lip liner or by itself. I heard that Glossier’s reformulating a bunch of their products but so far I know they haven’t touched their lip glosses but I’m like a little nervous dog about it because this is THE best formula hands down.

Fenty Lip Glosses -> At first I really did not like these?? And then it grew on me and now I love them lol?? The scent is vanilla-y and very strong so if you’re not into that, don’t get it because the scent really does not dissipate lol. Much thicker and tackier than Glossier but it’s really really really gorgeous. Also long lasting and moisturizing. I have Cheeky (the reddish color — if there’s one thing about me is that I love red lip gloss) and I got Fenty Glow from my friend bc she hates lip gloss lol. The latter is their best selling color I’m pretty sure and it’s normally not something I gravitate towards but it’s almost elegant?? There’s just something about it lol.

Dior Lip Glosses -> I have one of their sparkly ones. Definitely not super long lasting and they also smell like vanilla. Surprisingly not gritty at all but I think the color I have is Princess which is.......i think maybe i just like the idea of having a lip gloss called princess more than anything lmao.

Dior Lip Maximizer -> These are their plumping lip glosses. I hate plumping lip glosses by virtue bc I HATE the feeling. I got this as a gift and it’s pretty but don’t bother unless you want to really treat yourself and you like the sting. (I remember the Buxom lip glosses to also be plumping but I last had them in like. high school so idk anymore)

Dior Lip Oils -> OK..these are all over social media and like…they’re so so so pricey but they’re SO pretty. The color is not very strong but it leaves the most beautiful glossy clouds reflected on lake water sheen. I wear mine a lot in winter and it’s long lasting, SUPER moisturizing even when I go out in Chicago winters, and super comfortable. I have the reddish one and I can put it on without a mirror. The doe foot is really big but it’s just really easy to swipe on. Personally my fav lip oil.

Kosas Lip Oil -> Got one of these for my birthday this year and it’s def pretty? VERY VERY oily, feels almost like grease on your lips. I have the red one and it’s very pigmented but the oil feeling dries down fast and I find the color also fades faster than a traditional gloss or lipstick. Not really worth it imo.

NARS lip gloss -> Got one of these from my mom and it’s in a pinky nude color (orgasm) which is…not really my thing usually but it’s SO incredibly beautiful on. Very comfortable, not tacky, nice and reflective, and if I remember there’s not that strong of a scent? I like it for my days when I’m wearing a really colorful dress and want something a bit more pared down.

Not really a lip gloss or anything but I got the Laneige Lip Glow Balm in Berry as a congrats-on-surviving-your-first-year-of-grad-school-gift and it’s REALLY moisturizing. New favorite lip balm, nice smell without being sickening, and when you put it on it, it gives your lips a nice sheen. Like the sweatpants of lip gloss.

Those are all I can think of off the top of my head but there’s more…………. <- lip gloss aficionado

#as you can see. i love lip gloss [jazz hands]#anon

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lilith-devi-nyx-elsword-theorist · 1 year ago

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I would like to point out that, as many time's as I say about the class, I don't "hate" Devi, because I've played Yama Raja as my first Ara, as I was still in the testing phase of first time playing.

But I do like her a little more despite some few things I do disagree with let me go with my Cons.

Avici Naraka. Okay firstly, this skill mentions Hell 3 times, but I will say 2 times, since the first word in its name is part of Naraka so it gets a pass. but here's the description and I quote, " Summon the Naraka of eternal suffering, dragging all enemies down to the netherworld." First of all. Netherworld is hell, yes, BUT it does NOT have Eternal Suffering, Naraka does, but not Netherworld. also Naraka and Netherworld are both hell's of some kind

The Naming convention, so before Devi was Devi, she was Brahma as the God name, but because it sounds and is close to a similar particular person, it was switched to Devi, which before the game was even updated all classes had a abbreviation to their icon in the community, and guild page. with "B". in my case, I would've had the offer of Saṃsāra Devi, Samsara is mostly about the cycle of Death and Rebirth, it actually fits in with her class functionality, while retaining the name of Devi.

A lot of Orbs, and not enough butterflies. I got nothing to add here just that she doesn't have enough butterflies. And I will not let that go.

No Devi is not a shorten word for Devil, that is a stupid thing to say. Okay now the Pros 1. She's very flashy with her attacks. from the spear's to the Orbs with small amount of wolves, she's the most flashiest Ara, despite almost all of those are Orbs. 2. The fact she can rebirth with enough Orbs (At least 5 or more.) has enough meaning to the class who mostly has Chi energy especially as Devi, where Unleashed Chi and Chi Release just makes the whole thing circle nicely. 3. I like the design, I don't really dislike it, maybe if the dress was larger slightly and made her look fierce and intimidating she'd really show off that title, but other than that she's the nicest Ara design, 1st before Surya. (Yes my Magical Path class bias is always a factor for me.) 4. Dance of the Butterfly, I'm only glad that the butterfly theme does come back, but only for this Master Class. Which also, I like the Master class skill. Plus all of the little artworks in the skills animation as they play this goes for the other Ara paths they're visually appealing. Like from Devi I just see the orbs as like the Sun is starting to Rise or Lower, while the bamboo? are well in the shadow, making it look really decent, if there was more of those, it'd look nice. 5. I like dressing her up the most with the "elegant" outfits. Sometimes to mirror my Code: Antithese, or straight up make them slightly look like they're siblings. 6. Her story, Ara literally abandons rescuing her brother and just fighting everyone with her powers who she herself deems is evil. I think its suppose to be making her "morally grey" but I like this side of her, despite the well..... sadist part is shown more, like if you gave her a palace, her own throne, and people would love her divine stature. But the second someone makes a slip up or threatens her or her palace, they're in for a rude awakening she might torture the person for her own enjoyment, she might just straight up kill them. So no, I don't hate Devi, Hate is a strong word imo and sometimes don't use it as much unless I'm given a reason to say the word hate.

#elsword #elsword ara #elsword ara haan #Ara Haan #Devi #elsword devi

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sugar-petals · 4 years ago

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Caro would you rank figure skater's butts like you know... in a 'Caro way'?

it’s gonna be another thread. but be careful what you ask for: this is a sport that trains the glutes and thighs like mad. even the skinniest guys walk around like a coke bottle. do you survive a preview?

(^ the reigning king mr. yuzuru hanyu, i’ll talk to you about this infamous booty man in a minute)

PLUS it’s like in formula 1: by virtue of physical laws, the best are all between 5′2 - 5′8. which means visual proportions are in their favor. so brace yourselves.

PS - i rate from 1-10. i also include a frontal picture so you see the skaters properly, this thread has some pretty intense contortions and behind views as you’d expect 😂 and we also gotta enjoy how good-looking they are.☝️

let’s start with a guy who does the heavy duty jumps so you can see how figure skating shapes someone.

^nathan chen - very underrated yale student booty, come on this is literally america’s ass! nate is pretty amazingly built in general, i wanna hear more people talking about it. when gravity is mean to his handsome face because he’s spiralling into outer space again, the chebooty steps right in for him. yes wow, it’s so big and photogenic. the waist when it twists, spectacular. 10/10

^shoma uno - the cute pup seems to be popular on my blog. you guys like him? legit. very smol guy, very curvy, very dynamic skater who comes to life on the ice. and no, this sparkly fella is not a pre-schooler. his coach and the whole figure skating world will disagree with that but shooms is 23! his thickness is legendary and has everyone around the world shook. the s-line is pretty incredible. what can i say. 10/10

^javier fernandez - retired matador, but left a legacy for sure. still a big deal after being a commentator on the world championships and everyone loves the guy so i include him. superjavi is taller and slimmer and you’re probably looking at his costumes instead (this guy did everythig in the book, halloween skills 10/10). regardless, he has a nice side profile and it looks great in motion! the angle in the picture above, chef’s kiss. 7.5/10

deniss vasilijevs - ah, everyone’s tall smart blonde latvian crush. has grown his hair into a ponytail recently so extra points. everyone who trains with stephane lambiel (pictured above) seems to be really thick hence shoma looks like that as well. deniss, not much to say, it catches your eye what’s not to like! solid. he skated a tango recently so man, he got it all. 9/10

boyang jin - he’s hilarious, i love him. like nathan: underrated big posterior! he likes eating all kinds of cakes at figure skating gala dinners and said fact grew a cake on him therefore, jin magic! he also channelled major peter parker booty vibes in his spiderman costume as well. give my favorite geek some more credit everyone, jin looks great! 10/10

jason brown - US figure skating’s number one cutest sunshine. jason lights up the world with his positivity and great body, fantastic jabooty! i mean, look at that picture man. 8/10

keiji tanaka - OOF! a skating veteran with an amazing shape. the pictures speak for themselves again. the waist, the thighs! handsome keiji is a beast. friends, i don’t have to say more. 10/10

keegan messing - a favorite canadian with SUPER emotional skating that always has a personal theme. and you can tell from a mile away that keegs is thick as hell. he wears tight clothing and is mega flexible, jesus. he recently married and i wanna congratulate his wife lane — seen above, i haven’t seen a brighter smile on a bride — on her wonderful short king. 10/10

mikhail kolyada - another underdiscussed skater who’s pretty damn good and puts on a sizzling show! mike is a perfect blend of adorable and handsome. you won’t believe it, he’s 26. well-endowed with a backside, mother russia got something to offer. the kolbooty — it’s just right. look how proportionate and that curve. 8/10

junhwan cha - the utter pride of south korea and an ever-improving amazing talent, junhwan is tall, slim, and gorgeous. to reiterate how his coach (brian orser) has summarized it at worlds yesterday: “beautiful!!” you can’t expect an elf-like 180cm giant who models for VOGUE to have a huge ass. it just wouldn’t fit into the whole elegant impression. i’ll give a low score but know that junhwan is perfect. 3/10

daisuke takahashi - a living legend that HAS to be included, the oldest on the list! dai is 35 and has to be mentioned here since he returned to figure skating! he got back so. (10/10)

yuzuru hanyu - the preview guy! yeah: whew, he vibes different. collect your jaws, everybody. the best figure skater out there obviously has a breathtaking silhouette and the juiciest royal buns. which do pretty crazy things in his routines and when they’re clad in his many fancy pants causing twitter to collapse. mind he often wears padding because his jumps are dangerous af so yuzu will gently fall. but still, everyone in the fandom knows that the yubooty is shapely and way too smacktastic to ignore.

yuzu knows, too, his ass is seemingly in every camera and he bends himself over like nobody’s business. imo, and all his colleagues are saying that, the waist kind of steals the show even more. his torso is entirely flat so his hips stand out even more. ugh, nice thighs, too. full package (literally, no wonder he’s so confident), as always he goes the extra mile. 113/10! (112 is his short program high score and he always breaks the record so i award 113)

...hard to believe yuzu is such a smol cutie pie. 😌🌻

#figure skating #worlds 2021 #stockholm 2021 #world figure skating championships #yuzuru hanyu #shoma uno #nathan chen #daisuke takahashi #keiji tanaka #deniss vasiljevs #mikhail kolyada #junhwan cha #keegan messing #jason brown #javier fernandez #boyang jin #thread #long post #figure skating thread

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struggle-but-its-all-ocean-floor · 3 years ago

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I shouldn’t waste my time on this, but to those complaining about Butter winning best dance performance, do you actually know the choreography? A dance doesn’t need to be full of jumps and floor thrusts or whatever. Butter is one of the most unique choreographies BTS have, and despite not being on the same level as ON, Idol, Black Swan, etc., it’s probably one of their best choreos. Butter is a bit minimalist, but so elegant and fresh. It fits the song and the concept of their comeback perfectly, as a dance should, and also highlights the members’ individual charms. It’s playful and creative, and does everything a dance is supposed to do and more. Butter, unlike a lot of bg songs, it’s a bit too slow to have a very powerful choreo, but delivers plenty of energy. Butter is far from undeserving of an award for best performance - I’m obviously not talking about sales here, but the actual dance.

Of the songs nominated for best male group dance performance, Ready to Love is pretty cool, but kinda standard; Thunderous has some cool bits - Han’s part with the hand (you know what I mean), and the part where Changbin and Hyunjin jump on their members’ backs - but the more I watch it, the more repetitive and underwhelming it starts to feel, plus the execution is lacking a bit because Stray Kids are strong dancers in general but no one stands out much; Don’t Call Me is the only dance that could beat Butter, but not really... I love Don’t Call Me more than anyone - more than Butter - it’s probably a better song apart from the stupid fucking lyrics SM always gives their groups. The piano part in Don’t Call Me, that part where they dance in a circle, Taemin’s bridge, the ending pose... amazing 10/10. But I literally just watched the Studio Choom performance video and it is not better than Butter, in any way. Apart from Taemin and Key (who probably “overdances” a bit imo), and the parts I just mentioned, Minho’s solo part is awkward as hell, and the performance isn’t, overall, as charming, polished or appealing as Butter. If you watch Don’t Call Me and Butter back to back, you’ll see that while Don’t Call Me is more energetic, as well as “fuller”, the choreography is very heavy handed at times, and executed a bit clumsily without much grace or charisma (especially the pre-chorus and chorus). In Shinee’s defense, it was their first comeback in years. It’s also a very standard bg choreography with a few flashy moves and normal formations. Butter on the other hand...

Butter is done in a way that the members’ shortcomings are hidden and the choreography keeps you on your toes.. The dance flows naturally and never feels either too empty or too much. No one looks awkward or out of place, each moves fits the lyrics and the beat perfectly, BTS look polished and relaxed. In particular, the dance break is beautifully simple but appealing and original - sexy in an obvious yet cheeky way; Jimin’s part when V sings is a bit unnecessary, but so cool, and transitions so well into JK’s “bad”; also, the part after JK’s “bad” is awesome, as is the smooth like butter move after Suga’s rap and the way they ride the beat; the interpretations of looking in the mirror, being a criminal undercover, sidestepping to the beat, and “talk is cheap” are so creative and fun, the spelling of ARMY is so unique too. I don’t know why people insist on this narrative, but Butter is a fucking good choreography. Just because Butter is an English song and the dance is a bit low profile, doesn’t mean it’s not good. Butter isn’t Dynamite or PTD (and PTD’s choreo is also good anyway). You know how fans defend gg choreos by saying it’s not all about powerful moves, synchronization and making things look easy is hard, yada yada yada... well, where’s that same energy when it comes to bg choreos which don’t fit the mold?

PS: I know the 3J choreo is not part of the official Butter choreo, but did you see how good it was? And BTS performed Butter while singing live. I’m pretty sure Don’t Call Me wasn’t performed live with choreo even once.

PPS: ITZY are absolutely better performers than Aespa, but Next Level has a really cool choreography that fits the song perfectly and is well executed. I prefer MITM and Loco but I also love the songs more, plus ITZY often sing live so their performances are more dynamic and they’re better dancers. Next Level is not really unworthy of “best dance” imo. I think ITZY’s performances can look quite messy due to the different skill levels the members have and how tricky some of their moves are, but Aespa always look very polished when performing. A good execution is as important as the dance itself...

#bts #mama 2021 #stray kids #shinee #not hating on shinee or stray kids obviously #but watch the dance practices or studio choom performance videos of the nominated songs back to back and then come talk to me #aespa #itzy #text

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growingstronglikeahighgardenrose · 4 years ago

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Anti-blackness in 19th century England, why Queen Charlotte wasn’t black, and why it doesn’t matter in Bridgerton

I’d like to start by saying Bridgerton is a very amusing piece of absolute fiction. From the dresses to the music to the fanfic tropes it uses and the books it’s based on. It doesn’t even start to pretend it’s realistic. And being a piece of modern historical fantasy made by a woman born in this age, it is alright for the showrunners to give it a modern vibe. If you want, you can trace the lineage of every duke of Hastings there has ever been and know exactly who they were and what they looked like. Everyone knows there was never a black duke of Hastings, meaning there is no harm nor a deliberate attempt at “changing history” by the showrunners. They’re not pretending they’re portraying real events and real people of 1813. Therefore I accept that in this “alternative reality regency” it is fine for people of all ranks, including Queen Charlotte, to be black. I loved Golda Rosheuvel’s portrayal, I loved her looks, her acting and I tolerate her half-ishly accurate outdated wardrobe (for those interested in fashion history: look up “regency era court gowns”, old styles were worn but Charlotte would wear normal dresses day-to-day). I’m thrilled to watch her in the second season as well.

However, I will screech if I see people claiming Charlotte was black in real life. There were black people in Europe during all periods of history. They could be very influential and wealthy, and yes, they could even be nobility in some rare cases. There is a growing field of research tracing the steps of black people in Europe throughout time, revealing the often overlooked presence of black people. However, Queen Charlotte isn’t one of them. And I say this because claiming her to be black, would mean the British Monarchy, way ahead of its time, was accepting of black people. it would also mean the British people, who were more than a bit racist, generally accepted a (partially) black woman. Rather than Charlotte being black leading to her being described as black, I believe the confusion about her being black stems from people back in the day using racially ambiguous terms to make clear Charlotte looked ugly (because in a racist colonial world the best way to insult someone is by saying they look like a slave).

Being a historian, I do believe I have to give evidence for my claim. I’ll be using her ancestry, written descriptions and paintings. However, buckle up because you’ll be getting a lot of side information on other POC in art and literature. So if you’re interested in learning a bit about the relationship between the concepts of race and beauty in the 18th and 19th century, here we go. (note: if I use any offensive terms without direct citing someone, do let me know I will change them as soon as possible)

1. When did these rumours start

During the Regency Era, when the world was still a very colonial one, Queen Charlotte was described by some as having a big nose, full lips and an ambiguous complexion. However, her race was never debated, until academic discussions picked up around the 1940s.

2. Queen Charlotte’s family tree.

The Portuguese royal family definitely has Moorish blood in it. No one can contest that. Muslims and Europeans lived together on the Iberian Peninsula for 800 years. The question is whether that means that royals with a Portuguese ancestor can be called “people of colour”, and how far down the line people can still claim to be people of colour. Almost all royal households of Europe married into the Portuguese royal family at some point, yet of few royals it is said that because of that heritage, they are people of colour. That argument is only made for Queen Charlotte (imo that probably has a lot to do with the fact that the world is dominated by the Anglosaxon countries and that because of their worldwide tentacles and their language being the most universally spoken, the British Royal Family receives the most interest from everyone all over the world. Other royal families don’t get as much attention).

Note that I used the word people of colour, that is because the root of Charlotte’s supposed African heritage is not necessarily black. Let’s take a look at her family tree.

According to historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom — who dug into the queen’s lineage for a 1996 Frontline documentary on PBS — Queen Charlotte could trace her lineage back to black members of the Portuguese royal family. Charlotte was related to Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a 15th-century Portuguese noblewoman nine (!) generations removed.

Margarita de Castro e Souza herself descended from King Alfonso III of Portugal and his concubine, Madragana, a Moor that Alfonso III took as his lover after conquering the town of Faro in southern Portugal.

This would make Queen Charlotte a whopping 15 generations removed from her closest black ancestor — if Madragana was even black, which historians don’t know. That’s a lot of generations back. de Valdes y Cocom argues that, due to centuries-long inbreeding, he could trace six lines between Queen Charlotte and Sousa, which would mean Madragana’s genes were a bit more influential, but still 15 generations ago. That’s her grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grandmother.

So, let’s pretend it is true and her ancestor was black, let me be very rude. An ancestor that appears once in a person's genealogy, fifteen generations removed, represents a 215-th fraction of its descendant's ancestry. Queen Charlotte’s black ancestry would be less than 1%. In fact it'd be 0.007% (rounded up) of Charlotte's ancestry, and that's IF Madragana could be proved to be Moorish. And if Moorish was only used to describe a black person. However, the use of “blackamoor” “moorish” and “mozaraab” are not an alternative word for black. Indeed, there is no definitive skin colour attached to these descriptors.

It is generally accepted that Spanish Moors were the Muslim Amazigh (formerly known as Berber) inhabitants of the Maghreb, a stretch of land in north-Africa including parts of the Sahara, but not Egypt. During the Middle Ages, they occupied the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of southern Europe, before being finally driven out in the 15th century. The greatest period of unity was probably during the period of the kingdom of Numidia. Over the centuries, the word came to acquire a plethora of other meanings, some of them derogatory. Importantly, it cannot be ascribed a single ethnicity. Moors are not always black, this is false. They remaining people in Africa can be anywhere from Arab, to black people. But I’m not delving into north-african migration patterns and population changes. In Europe, the moors could thus be Arab, black and often mixed ethnicity, the natural result of coexisting and intermarrying with white Europeans for centuries.

http://acaciatreebooks.com/blog/royalty-race-and-the-curious-case-of-queen-charlotte/

3. Gender, Race and beauty standards

The world of the 19th century was riddled with Anti-blackness. Part of this continued from the medieval belief that white was good, and dark was bad (see white knight, fair lady, black knight, dark magic notions that still persist today). It also does not help that during the Regency Era, Greek and Roman antiquity were very trendy. Although the old roman empire was a culturally and ethnically diverse society, regency people focussed on fashion, hairstyles and looks from the classical art period of Greece. People aspired to look like the statues: elegant, slim and dainty and wanted “noble” features (straight slim nose, even face, cheekbones, etc). That’s why in the regency era people were complimented for having “alabaster skin” or a “Grecian profile” and so on. These medieval notions of fairness and the grecian beauty ideal, were juxtaposed against the medieval notions of darkness combined with deeply colonial conceptions of womanhood and race. In a world in which white people controlled other ethnicities, race soon became a weapon, a tool to be used against someone. Just like… gender. And yes, you’ll soon see how these two go hand in hand.

Throughout the nineteenth century the domestic world and the public sphere became more and more separate, with women being given less space to move and work. All women had to be dainty housewives: refined, sensitive and docile, clever but not too well read. Of course, this was an unattainable standard for most women. Only women in the top layer of society were able to lounge around and do nothing all day. Many had to work. Many things of what women were supposed to be: pale, soft hands, were direct signs that they didn’t have to do manual labour (out in the sun, using their hands). Women who could not fit in that small domestic sphere were increasingly (especially later on in the Victorian era) seen as unfeminine and unworthy of husbands. Coarse, manly, unfeminine, unrefined they were often called. Welcome to 19th century “masculinity so fragile”. Just imagining a woman working or reading made men felt threatened. They hated the idea women weren’t just lounging around waiting to please them and provide for them. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gender-roles-in-the-19th-century# https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pit-brow-lasses-women-miners-victorian-britain-pants

Now look at this sketch of a female mine worker, one of many. Although the argument can be made she’s dark from the dirt, I want to point out that she’s also portrayed as scantily clad, wearing more manly clothes, being broader, wide of face and her hair appearing… quite curly.She’s the opposite of the beauty ideals, the opposite of what society wants a woman to be... and she’s suspiciously black-coded.

Pervasive and passive stereotypes of black people have come into existence since colonialism. Cruel caricatures of black people were omnipresent. Going as far as to ascribe them animal-like features with big mouths, big ears, sloping foreheads and so on. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2712263?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents

I could write a million essays on how race and sex have been weaponized in the past. When the “exploration travels” first started, and even much later in art, faraway lands were portrayed as sultry lazy or untamed women, waiting to be conquered and domesticated. Transforming countries into women was done to make them “controllable”. Portraying them as lazy and wild was a way Europeans to give themselves license to colonize them. Just like women at home, these foreign lands needed the guiding hand of cultured civilized men showing them how to do things and ruling them. So either men could control women which was perceived as good, or they couldn’t in which case the woman was looked down upon and hated. I don’t have an exact reference for this one, but it was a very interesting topic in my class on “Global History” at University. But for now this one carries a good part of the load.

https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/jezebel/

It is then no surprise the female black body became a site of seduction there for the white male’s taking. They literally became their property as slaves, just like a man’s wife was considered his property. White men sexualized black people, particularly black women, a stereotype that perpetuates to this day and age. See the link above for that as well. Black women became temptresses.

White women, of course, didn’t like that. They wanted their men to be theirs. So these 19th century Karens started hating them as well. These wild temptresses were out to catch their men with their “foreign looks”. Meanwhile white men hated the idea of white women being seduced by black men. And this, combined with the resentment for working class women, gave way to a kind of language people used to describe each other. All stereotypes (medieval+ working class women looks+ black looks) were stacked atop each other: dark, tempting, coarse, black, plump, uncivilized, wild, broad-faced, thick of lip… Hair didn’t much come into play in the 18th century since most people of high society wore wigs (which in paintings can look like type 4 hair but cannot be used as an indicator of race) but afterwards “tight coils” was also added to the list of features that weren’t deemed desirable. This physical robustness not only lies in the idea that people who work are “hardened” but by describing them with strong robust adjectives, upper class white people once again fuel the idea that these people were physiologically designed for hard work, like slave labour or mine work instead of life as a wife. See also present day notions common even in doctors how black people and black women don’t feel pain as much. A devastating prejudice that leads to black death, black mothers dying, black people’s health complaints not being taken seriously and so on.

4. Black, racially ambiguous and “foreign” coding in physical descriptions

So we all know the memes of “Historians say they were friends” and so on. It’s a fun meme, but this carefulness in naming things stems from the fact that A) sources are made by people and people are subjective as fuck B) it is deemed a big faux pas for a historian to look at history through a 21st century lens. The rabbit hole that is historical epistemology boils down to the claim that a thing cannot exist before there is a word for it. You need to be careful that you don’t apply a term to an event, person or society wherein that term didn’t exist, or the meaning of the term was different. We shouldn’t draw conclusions about the past with present day notions. When a person anno 2020 is described as dark, we know they’re probably south-east Asian or black. However, we may not believe that a person being described as dark in the 17th century means this person is black. I shall explain.

Back in a time when black equalled inferior, people found no better way than to ascribe black attributes to people they disliked. It is hard to find out whether these people were actually darkskinned, since portraits were commissioned and painted to the desires of the clients (they could ask to be painted with white skin). We have no photographs of the time period to verify whether people did really look the way people described. With few people able to move around the country by carriage, as this was expensive, most people relied on letters, books and papers to give them accounts of events and people, so if one person claimed a person looked like X, others oftentimes had no choice but to believe the account, as they lived too far away to verify. Thus I shall focus on the world of literature, where there were no real people we can compare descriptions to, to prove that the good guys were portrayed as fair, and bad guys were portrayed as… racially ambiguous without them having to be black, or any other ethnicity.

Fairytales: Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. There’s literally no argument to be made at all. But just take a look at fairytales from the Brothers Grimm. Nine times out of ten, the evil stepsisters and stepmothers are described as dark and ungainly while the heroine is fair. If there are transformations, the evil people get transformed into gross animals like toads, while the heroine is transformed into a fawn, a bird or a swan. I’m being unnuanced here, there are definitely heroines with dark hair (see snow white, but she’s still snow white of skin) and the reasons for ugly-animal-transformations has to do with the character traits that have been ascribed to those animals. These stories circuled orally since the middle ages, and most trace their roots back to even before that time. Though the world was not yet a colonnial one, it is a sign that darker looks were already linked to bad people. These notions of darkness have been absorbed into the notions about black people during colonialism. People already lived with concepts of fairness for good people and darkness for bad people in their heads, it became easy to continue these concepts when faced with black people.

Jane Eyre: Jane is described as green eyed (a very rare colour, most prevalent in white people), fairy-like, skinny and pale. Although Brönte tells us she is ugly (she indeed doesn’t confirm to beauty ideals at the time) she appeals to Mr. Rochester and fits more into the stereotype of beauty than her romantic rival: Berta Mason Rochester. Bertha’s laugh is “hysterical” and “demonic”, she is dangerous and injures her own brother. “What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.”

Dear reader, Mr. Rochester is described as being tempted into a marriage, to a wild foreign animal-like madwoman with dark grizzled hair and red eyes. Although there is no description of her skin colour (Bertha could very well be any ethnicity) there are clear parallels in the way she is described and the way POC were described. In the context of the 1840s readers would instantly attach this picture to their preconceptions about others with a similar look. Jane doesn’t even need to describe Bertha’s personality, the readers have already decided what she’s like because they understand that the author means dark looks= bad personality. Dark looks= foreign looks. Additionally: Blanche Ingram, Jane’s other rival was described as a fine beauty with a stereotypically beautiful body but had an olive complexion, dark hair and dark eyes. These were desirable traits in England at the time, but the darker beauty of Blanche comes with a bad personality and in the end, she too is rejected in favour of our pale heroine Jane.

Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff has long confused readers. It is most probable, in my opinion, given the context of the time, that Heathcliff was of roma origin as roma were strongly disliked in England at the time, and he fits best in the stereotypes associated with them. It’s also much more probable that an English gentleman would take in an orphaned European child than a black child, especially given he raised him as a son (british people weren’t that kind, they wouldn’t raise a black child as their son). However, the author, still clearly relies on a certain set of dark characteristics to describe him. “I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk: indeed, its face looked older than Catherine's; yet when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand.” “He seemed a sullen, patient child; hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley's blows without winking or shedding a tear, and my pinches moved him only to draw in a breath and open his eyes.” “You are younger [than Edgar], and yet, I'll be bound, you are taller and twice as broad across the shoulders; you could knock him down in a twinkling; don't you feel that you could?” “Do you mark those two lines between your eyes; and those thick brows, that, instead of rising arched, sink in the middle; and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies?” “he had by that time lost the benefit of his early education: continual hard work, begun soon and concluded late, had extinguished any curiosity he once possessed in pursuit of knowledge, and any love for books or learning. His childhood's sense of superiority, instilled into him by the favours of old Mr. Earnshaw, was faded away … Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration: he acquired a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness;” “His countenance was much older in expression and decision of feature than Mr. Linton's; it looked intelligent, and retained no marks of former degradation. A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of roughness, though stern for grace.” “He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman”

Once again: black eyes, heavy brows, black hair. He is rough, can stand a lot of heavy burdens, seemingly indifferent to pain. He has something devilish and uncivilized about him, and is oftentimes believed dumb. Admittedly, this portrayal is more nuanced, he has a knack for studying and he does look like a gentleman. But the author is clear that it is only superficial and he is still mad within. It thus becomes very clear, already only from literature, that if you want someone to look bad, you make them look manly, workmanlike and ascribe to them black features.

For more examples of racial ambiguity, casual racism and explicit racism in English 19th century books: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/casual-racism-in-victorian-literature/1B4B3B0538F8B7C6B58E6D839DCFEC92.

This technique was adapted by EVERYONE. Wanted to make your enemy look bad? Then write a very uncharming picture of them attributing them with stereotypical black features. The most common remarks were: broad noses, big lips, frizzy hair, swarthy and/or dark complexians, coarse looking and unrefined. If you wanted to be really rude you could start comparing people to animals and call them wild and unhinged because “madness” was and is a very common insult. Had an issue with your wife in the 19th century? Lock her up for “hysteria” and “madness”. Got a political opponent in the 2016 presidential elections? Call her mad and hysterical. Got an opponent in the 2020 presidential elections? Challenge his mental capacities. Psychological issues and disorders have often been used to make people look bad and invalidate them. Basically everyone who isn’t reacting in a neurotypical and stereotypical male way (i.e. show no emotions and so on) was classified as “unreasonable”, thus taking away their voice. So many interesting articles and books on this.So we have an intersection between race, womanhood and mental health that are used to control and reject women.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/outreach/trade_in_lunacy/research/womenandmadness/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4286909?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

https://www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/feminism/sets/women-madness-and-spiritualism

https://www.amazon.com/Madness-Women-Myth-Experience-Psychology/dp/0415339286

TLDR: In literature bad characters were often described with physical attributes that were seen as ungainly. They were codified with animal-like, manly and mad. They also had black and dark attributes to signal to the reader that they were not the heroes of the story. Bonus: they often met a deathly or bad end. Writers did it, but so did real people when they wanted to accuse a rival (Karl Marx being one such asshole for example, http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.html ). This is why we can not always trust written accounts of contemporaries before the age of photography when a person is described with racially ambiguous looks.

5. Descriptions of Queen Charlotte:

Just like Beethoven, Queen Charlotte’s main claim to blackness boils down to one ancestor at least two centuries before her birth, combined with contemporary descriptions of a certain hair type, wide nose and bad complexion. Descriptions of Charlotte during her lifetime describe a plain and small woman, with a wide and long nose, and lips that were not the rosebud ideal. As the court became accustomed to her, however, more people started complimenting her brown hair, pretty eyes and good teeth. Much of the imagery that has fuelled claims of Charlotte’s possible African ancestry is from the first few years of her time in England. Royal brides have been ripped to pieces by tabloids, and the public also performs a horrible hazing-like ritual(see: Kate Middleton was mocked for being a party girl, lazy and from working class background. Meghan Markle was described as an opportunist husband-snatcher. Diana was a “chubby child”. The ladies also got plenty of critiques on their looks). Once the bride gets through years of being bullied, critiqued for every little part of her being, she then suddenly comes out on the other end after a few years, becoming a darling and an attribute to the royal family. Could it be that royal brides are always, especially in a gossip heavy environment like a court, under deep scrutiny? This foreign princess hobbled off a boat, seasick, unknown by the English… And she didn’t speak a word of the language! Why would the English love her? I am not saying the accounts lie but I am saying beware of the person making the comments. Are they close to the monarch and his wife? Do they like Queen Charlotte? When where these comments made and why? And why did they choose precisely these words that had by now become commonplace to use as descriptors for unpleasant people? If we know people used racially ambiguous terms to describe people they disliked, it isn’t such a stretch to imagine they might insult a new queen with such terms.

Let’s look at what was actually said about her.

Horace Walpole: “The date of my promise is now arrived, and I fulfill it — fulfill it with great satisfaction, for the Queen is come. In half an hour, one heard of nothing but proclamations of her beauty: everybody was content, everybody pleased.”

Baron Christian Friedrich Stockmar, the royal physician to her grandaughter: “small and crooked, with a true Mulatto face.”

Sir Walter Scott: “ill-colored.”

Colonel Disbrowe (her chamberlain): “I do think that the bloom of her ugliness is going off.”

Queen Charlotte herself in a diary: “The English people did not like me much, because I was not pretty; but the King was fond of driving a phaeton in those days, and once he overturned me in a turnip-field, and that fall broke my nose. I think I was not quite so ugly after dat [sic].”

What we can conclude from these remarks that Charlotte was not very pretty, she even admits to that herself. But what are her actual physical attributes? She has light brown hair (I didn’t include a description of this, but it was generally reported), she had pale eyes (as can be seen in all paintings), was small, and had good teeth.

Above I gave two accounts that reported on her skin tone. Ill-colored could be anything like bad skin, rosacea or perhaps tanned (which also wasn’t deemed becoming for ladies). There was only one person, Baron Christian himself, calling her face what he did. As mentioned above, there can be multiple reasons why anyone would ascribe her those features, she did not have to be a “mulatto” to be described as one.

Most importantly, in a society with slavery, in which black people were looked down upon, I’d say the absence of more people calling her things like: dark, swarthy, black, mixed, brown and any and all things associated with black looks, is more telling than a few accounts mildly referring to her colour.

If Charlotte were truly the first black queen, the first black person in such a powerful position, and one of the few black people in England (less than 30 000 at the time), would there not be more talk? More descriptions of her look? She was seen every day by many people. People would be shocked, enraged, surprised, fascinated and so on. In an era when many people kept diaries in which they wrote down all they witnessed, many people would have given descriptions of her black/brown skin colour. In an era with cartoons and press… Her being noticeably black would have been a very big thing and we would have seen journalists and cartoonists draw her as dark. Cartoonists and diary writers mostly write or draw their honest thoughts. They weren’t censured.

6. Paintings of Queen Charlotte:

Queen Charlotte’s most striking likenesses, or so it is believed, were painted by Allan Ramsay, a prominent artist and staunch abolitionist. In 1761, Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) was appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King (1761-84). As well as being Principal Painter, his portraits have been singled out by many as depicting Queen Charlotte with distinctly African features. It’s believed this was his way of displaying his abolitionist tendencies. He was an abolitionist, that much is true, and he was also friends with the legal guardian of the very famous black Dido. However why would the royal couple approve blatant African features, knowing those would not be well liked in an English queen? They would not have allowed these images. Clearly, they saw in these images only a likeness to Charlotte, and yes, that could mean she had fuller lips and a wider nose. Anyone can have those features. Personally, I find that a slightly larger nose and larger lips in some paintings are not sufficient proof to call her black. But let’s run over some of the paintings.

Most paintings portray her as a typical light-skinned royal with nothing bad about her complexion.

In these pictures she does not look black in the slightest, indeed I’d say her eyes and eyebrows look very light even, nor do her nose and lips, so often critiqued, look big, as was claimed.

Here we can see her nose looks a bit wider, and her lips a bit bigger. But is that really a convincing argument? Although certain features are more common to a certain race, they are not monopolized by one. Black people can have light hair and light eyes. It is unlikely, but it is possible. It’s just as possible for white women to have bigger lips, a wider nose, a rounder face and even… though rarely, there are white people who have no black relative they know of, white 4a hair. I’ve met a few of them. What I also want to note is that Queen Charlotte’s natural hair could have been crimped and combed until it stood upright and was stiff with powder, as was the fashion back then. It would give her hair a more frizzy look. In the picture underneath it, you can see her hair in fashionable artificially made curls that wouldn’t work on natural type 3 or 4 hair.

However as I said before, I’m not fond of using paintings as proof since they were made-by-demand. Painters would starve if they painted their patrons unflatteringly. There are black people, indeed, even black nobles, ex-slaves, diplomatic ambassadors who had themselves painted with a dark skin colour since the Middle Ages. You can even see the distinction between people of darker-skinned sub-Saharans and North African descent in these pictures. And painters certainly knew how to paint black people for centuries (see: "The Image of the Black in Western Art" by Harvard University Press and “Revealing the African presence in Renaissance Europe”). One such example a noble who did have black heritage was Alessandro de Medici who was nicknamed “the Moor”. Moors referred to black Islamic people. His mother was Simonetta da Collevecchio, a servant of African descent. In this case the argument that many Italians are dark of complexion and have dark hair cannot be used to explain his appearance. If other Italians thought he looked like them, they wouldn’t have paid such attention to his looks because they would have deemed it normal. I’m using 3 paintings of him by 3 different artists. The first picture really is ambiguous, it is only by combining all three that we can say that yes, his looks do fit the bill. If we only had the first picture, would we really be confident to claim him? This goes to show that you can’t say someone has a certain ethnicity based on one painting.

This person was comfortable in his own skin but there were probably just as much, if not many more nobles and wealthy families with mixed blood that had themselves painted white when they were not. Who would disagree? Who would even know? Nine chances out of ten barely anyone who wasn’t from the direct neighbourhood didn’t know what they looked like, and never would. Once the POC died, all that would remain would be a very white looking painting, and no one would know the bloodline had become mixed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/29/tudor-english-black-not-slave-in-sight-miranda-kaufmann-history

What is, then, a reliable source? An answer, for famous people, is cartoons. Just like we now attach more credibility to a paparazzi picture of Khloe Kardashian than to one of her heavily photoshopped pictures on Instagram, you can trust cartoonists to not try and make people look good. Note: cartoons are always over-exaggerations. Any physical attribute will be enlarged beyond belief for comedic purposes. King George and his wife were often pictured in cartoons. If there was anything very noticeably foreign about Charlotte’s looks, they would portray it. However, what we find is that these cartoons never portray Charlotte as darker than the other people. She wasn’t shown as being black.

Conclusion:

Queen Charlotte cannot be called black on the basis of her portraits, cartoons or bloodline. If ever there was a trace of black blood in her veins, it was so light it had become undetectable and could not have influenced her appearance. Just ask yourself this question: would you call yourself a certain ethnicity, or claim certain roots, based on one ancestor 200 years in your past? If no, then you also shouldn’t say that Charlotte had black roots or was mixed.

The case of Queen Charlotte does, however, reveal the deeply racist British society of the Georgian Era, which deemed all black physical features ugly, and deliberately used all physical traits associated to the black race as an insult. Keep this in mind, as well as rampant anti-Semitism and hatred for Roma people, every time you read a novel from the time period, or read a tasteless description of a real person from the era. People were cruelly treated based on their heritage, and even if their heritage was purely white, they could be ascribed certain racial features, just because people were racist pricks.

While that’s the unfortunate reality of the time period, I do believe we are allowed to enjoy an alternate reality as an escape, where just for once, race isn’t an issue. So continue on, Bridgerton!

Meanwhile, I’ll be here keeping my fingers crossed for the stories of real black people living in Europe, or black kings and queens in Africa, to be told in a movie or series. The entire world has always existed, it makes no sense for all period movies to keep being focussed on white people in England, Rome and the US.

#bridgerton #Queen Charlotte #Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz #british monarchy #racism in history

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pilferingapples · 4 years ago

Note

Bodycanons ask: Lesgle or Joly and/or Lesgle and Joly!

sdlfsdklgh had this 90 percent done and then we lost power /internet TWICE

Extremely Legle Post

anyway BOGO headcanons XD

Legle/Lesgle/Laigle/Bossuet

Headcanon: he has almost passed any number of law classes, but Something always comes up before exams-- a death in the family, a financial disaster, an arrest, a severe injury or illness , someone else being arrested or injured or ill and needing help, etc, etc (he was really very relieved the time it turned out the Semester's Disaster was just Marius Pontmercy) . He may be nowhere near graduation, but he is very well-informed about a lot of classes and has a semi-lucrative gig going where he either tutors nervous young students or, more often, does a lot of their work outright-- a thing that might trouble his conscience if he or anyone whose opinion he values thought law school was anything but a joke.

Heartcanon: he's actually got sort of a fondness for some of the nights he's spent/ still sometimes spends just wandering around outside, no particular home to go to, nowhere to be. He's not about to romanticize it; he'd be the first to say that it really depends on the weather and he knows there is a huge difference between being out on the street when he knows, really, he could go stay with any of a dozen friends, and being out on the street and having zero idea where his next solid bed is, he's experienced a Wide Range of situations on that scale and he knows , and he's also quite sure already that what's sort of meditative and relaxing at 25 will probably be much less so at 45, but all the same, such is the Human Experience that , yes, actually, some of those nights have been very dear to him, and really helped him recover from some major emotional hits rather than otherwise. (It's all one of the things he never really talks about--unlike Grantaire, he's really good at deciding what he'll talk about ,however long he rambles on-- and he's only ever really connected with Prouvaire on it, and even then, it never feels satisfying to talk about it, so they mostly don't . But it's nice to know someone else understands.)

Gutcanon: he and Grantaire had many FWB makeouts in their early college-ish years, of Mixed but Generally Not Great quality, since it tended to happen only when they were both Kinda Messed Up in one way or the other. They razz each other about Sexual Prowess from (outdated, mostly drunk/Young Fools Doing an All-Nighter) experience :P

Spleencanon: somewhere between Actual Canon and General Spleen, I guess? -- he's actually really graceful (that's canon! all the descriptions of his movements involve him being graceful and elegant, even when he's absolutely plastered!) and one of the more effective fighters in the group. IMO there's a sharp edge to Legle that is largely unseen , but he wouldn't be where he is, hanging out with who he does, after everything in his life, if he didn't have a solid core of Fight in him..

Joly

Headcanon: not only prone to catching Everything Going Around now, but spent most of his childhood catching every illness going around-a terrifying experience for his parents and a plain unfun one for himself. This is why his parents are fairly undemanding about the pace of his studies--they know he gets sick a lot and will be happy if he's able to graduate at all. It is also why he started life in Paris with a bizarrely high capacity for just about every drug available-- a childhood spent having Helpful 19C Medicines on a daily basis got him accustomed to concoctions that would worry Dionysus.

Heartcanon: he has a great love and appreciation for puns (obviously) but no flair for them on his own. It's all about at the habit/ami level. He still laughs every time, and everyone else usually laughs too, because he's just so pleased about it that it's delightful anyway.

Gutcanon: ..honestly feel like he's not on the Surgeon track? he's. The other thing. I've looked it up like three times and then the computer crashes, but like..the equivalent of being a General Doctor But Not A Surgeon. I'd even think he was going on the Pharmacist track if the way Hugo introduced him didn't make that seem Off. It just seems more suited to him somehow?

Spleencanon: haha it's very funny that despite his chronic health issues he's going to live to a very happy old age! Wacky!!!1!!!

Bini!

Headcanon: oh they absolutely met for the first time in a Very Awkward Mixup over who was supposed to be dating Musichetta that night. For Legle this was already very normal; for Joly it was the first time anything of the sort had happened. But it worked out Very Well for everyone involved, eventually!

Heartcanon: both of them individually had the sense and practical wisdom to not start feeding the neighborhood stray cats. Their Forces Combined were utterly susceptible to the plaints of little mewing voices under the window, and now there's a small army of Technically Strays that visit regularly. There has been a distinct improvement in the apartment's rodent issues, so the landlady isn't complaining...

Gutcanon: Legle is still prone to worrying about Overstaying His Welcome, a holdover reflex from several years of couchsurfing, and occasionally just absents himself for several days no matter how often Joly assures him that really it's fine, why do you think I gave you a spare key (and then another spare key and another one when those vanished) . They're gonna iron it out eventually, it's just a question of time and habit.

Spleencanon: THEY ARE GOING TO IRON IT OUT IN TIME. WHICH THEY WILL HAVE.

#thank you!#firing the headcanons #Bini!#Joly headcanons #Bossuet headcanons #belated tags #death mention #injury mention #illness mention #drug use mention #not Grim but There

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iloveyoutotype-moonandback · 3 years ago

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CW: gore, abuse and rape mentions.

So I recently played the original Tsukihime visual novel (it’s being remade so I might as well check out the original right?) and I wanted to talk about some of my general impressions and thoughts on it.

TL;DR for people who don’t wanna read any spoilers (or if you just don’t wanna read through my long-ass post): I thought it was good and there were lot of aspects and themes that I found interesting. I did have problems with certain aspects of it however, and I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone since it’s really violent and...well just see the CW for yourself. But if none of that deters you, then I think it’s worth checking out!

So, like I said above the cut, I enjoyed it overall. The story was interesting, with the focus being on vampires and some more information on the church for example (fate tends to focus more on the grail war, so other aspects of the Nasuverse are inevitably glossed over or not mentioned at all). This also had a psychological horror aspect, with Shiki having dreams where he kills people just to give one example. But then there are certain indications that what he’s seeing is real, leading him to believe that he could be unconsciously killing people. And he doesn’t WANT to see these dreams, he actually hates them to the point that there are a few scenes where he straight up avoids going to sleep altogether. The problem is that he has no idea how to stop seeing them, or even what’s happening to him. Also other characters often hide stuff from him or lie for his “protection”, so that really only adds to the uncertainty (this dude kinda gets gaslit a lot, come to think of it).

I remember seeing some people say that the artwork for this vn isn’t as good as what you get in fsn, which makes sense given that it’s older and thus earlier in Takeuchi’s art career. And I can see what they mean, but there’s legit some good CG’s in this one. Also it does this interesting thing where instead of drawn backgrounds, it has real life pictures that have been edited/stylized. I can’t quite articulate it, but it gives the vn a different vibe that really works for it imo. I like it.

In terms of characters, I gotta say that Hisui was one of my favorites. I guess I just kinda relate to her in a weird way. She’s quiet, isn’t super expressive (or at least it seems that way initially), and doesn’t like being touched. I used to be like that (I’m still like that sometimes but I’ve gotten a lot better), though obviously she has....very different reasons for being that way. But at that point my brain had already gone “that one” with her.

Speaking of Hisui, I really like Kohaku too. If we’re comparing Nasu’s works here, I feel like she’s kind of comparable to Sakura. Mostly in a thematic sense, seeing as how she’s someone who appears normal enough but there’s a lot brewing beneath the surface that we don’t fully see until her route (and by that I mean she suffered sexual abuse from Shiki and Akiha’s father when she was a child). I don’t want to compare them too much tho, since they are different characters at the end of the day. It’s just something of a common thread I noticed. Though with Kohaku, you do actually get a glimpse into what her deal is in Hisui’s route (mainly in the epilogue), which then leads right into Kohaku’s route.

Outside of the two maids, Arcueid was another favorite of mine (if Hisui is my favorite, I’d say Arc is a close second) because she looks elegant at first but then you realize she’s a fuckin dork the moment she opens her mouth (and I love her for it). Ciel was cool too, and it was interesting to have a member of the church who’s more sympathetic than Kirei Ketamine over there (though as her route reveals, the church is still kinda fucked). I liked Akiha as well. It was really interesting seeing her develop across the 3 “far side of the moon” routes. At first you think she’s normal then op, turns out she’s part vampire and is actually pretty fucking powerful! That said, I did have a few problems with her route...

...which leads me into one of my criticisms of this vn. Akiha’s route was my least favorite out of the 5. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, it is not because of Akiha herself. Akiha good and cool. The issue here is Akiha and Shiki...basically fall in love and also fuck at one point. Did I mention that Akiha is Shiki’s little sister? Because she is. “Well Shiki was adopted so it’s not technically incest” don’t make me tap the sign:

Like yeah, I know “romance happens between Shiki and the main heroin of the route” is a common thread here but I’d like it if they made just one exception. Sibling relationships are good too, you don’t need to resort to romance.

And, well, now that it’s been brought up already: this vn has sex scenes! And they were just as bad as I expected! I did read through one or two, but after that I just started either skimming through them or skipping entirely. A lot of them don’t really effect the story much (except for like, one which is actually kinda important) so most of them aren’t really worth it unless you just want to laugh at the weird lines. Not a big deal but I felt like it was worth mentioning at least.

Moving on, Tsukihime did have some problematic elements outside of the whole incest thing. Fate/Stay Night had its own issues and obviously Tsukihime will have them too. Tbf to Nasu, he did say he later regretted some of the stuff he wrote in this early period. It’s good that he’s grown as a person and a writer, because looking back there are definitely a few lines here that are really fucking bad. One that stuck out to me was this line from Arcueid’s route where Shiki is arguing with Ciel and then he just suddenly says something along the lines of, “if you try to stop me from going, I’ll rape you right here”. It’s right the fuck out of nowhere too. And like, the reasoning was that he could barely walk at that point so he just came up with some super threatening thing to say, but it was just really unnecessary.

Actually, I think the same could be said about some of the sexual violence depicted. Like, there’s a whole recurring thing where Shiki will just suddenly get possessed to murder someone (because his vampire step-brother basically lives in his mind rent-free) and he mentions the arousal he gets from doing so. At several points he even acts on these impulses, and winds up getting hard and cumming as he cuts someone up into pieces. It’s...really fucking weird and I’m not sure what it adds by being there. It adds a creep factor for sure, but ig it’s a question of how necessary it actually is. Some of it is integral to the story, as is the case with...certain aspects of the Arcueid and Kohaku routes for example. So don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying remove it entirely, I’m just questioning some of the extra stuff that doesn’t seem totally necessary to me.

So all in all, while I did have some problems with it, Tsukihime isn’t bad by any means. Like I said before, I think it was good overall and I enjoyed it. You can acknowledge the problematic elements of something, but still otherwise like it. But yeah, certainly not for everyone, but still worth playing in 2021 I think.

#tsukihime #nasuverse #type-moon #also i didn't mention it but #this vn came out the same year i was born #so that's neat #this game is only 4 months younger than me #tsukihime is in college #long post

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bestworstcase · 4 years ago

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farran rereads lost lagoon: chapters 16-17

back at it.

re: romance novel: “I saw a patch of red flowers, and I thought they would be striking against Cass’s dark hair. She wasn’t exactly a flower wearer, but maybe she’d let me pin one on her dress? The color would set off her fair skin so perfectly. And she could at least keep some in a vase by her bed. I refused to believe there was a person alive who didn’t feel better with freshly cut flowers in her room.” that’s gay rapunzel

i do admittedly have some ambivalent feelings about this passage. on the one hand it’s - yes, very gay. but also it feels to me like such a clear illustration of the difficulty rapunzel has with empathy and listening to other people when their experiences or expectations or needs diverge from hers; she acknowledges that cass isn’t into flowers, but follows it up with “but maybe i can get her to wear some anyway,” and of course there’s the whole refusing to believe anyone could feel differently about having flowers in their room than she does. and it also has this weird undercurrent of - god, i don’t know how to phrase it in a succinct way.

this specific passage was on my mind when i wrote this bit in moonless air chapter 4:

Still. She plucks at the stitches of her jack-of-plate, self-conscious.

It’s the nicest thing she owns. Soft green velvet sewn over sturdy layers of canvas and steel. Armor. She’d saved up for more than a year to buy it for herself on the anniversary of her adoption two years ago, and at the time it had been nothing but a frivolous luxury. Stupid, really. She’d never had real reason to wear it in Herzingen, not for anything besides teaching herself how to move with its weight and entertaining ridiculous fantasies—but last night, Moira had intimated that their destination in Vardaros is fancy as well as dangerous. So the jack seemed… appropriate.

Sharp. She twitches.

Clothing—fashion isn’t– Cassandra’s always hated dresses. It’s a trait that demands a certain amount of indifference to what other people think of her appearance.

And she can do indifference. Cassandra has indifference in spades. But nobody’s ever paid her a compliment quite like that before: baldly appreciative. Straightforward. Not like all the times Rapunzel coaxed her into tolerating crowns of late-summer flowers because the colors look so nice with your complexion! and not like the Commander’s gruff praise for how grown-up she looked in the hideous pastel gowns that had come with the lady-in-waiting gig.

because – like, cass is butch, and “not a flower wearer,” and here in lost lagoon we have this passage where rapunzel expresses this pretty straightforward attraction to cassandra but in the context of imagining cassandra presenting in a much more feminine way than she is comfortable with - in a dress with flowers in her hair etc - and it just... rubs me the wrong way a little bit. and this is not to say like cass can’t be butch and put a flower in her hair but when it’s paired with rapunzel specifically acknowledging that cass doesn’t WANT to wear flowers then it - yeah i feel weird about this passage.

and that translated into cass having a whole little crisis over being complimented for her appearance without implicit pressure to be more feminine for the first time ever

anyways

i still can’t get over the name monsieur lefleur

rapunzel summarizes hervanian culture as “brash but can be funny; distrustful but not mean-spirited” so, basically, they are americans

she is feeling very Prepared to meet with them, in contrast to every other time she’s met with foreign dignitaries or nobility before this. eugene tries to warn her that cass is PISSED with her and she just brushes him off, as one does, by saying that cass is “not all bubbles and moonbeams” but that she is “a softy” inside.

of course this leads up to cass blowing up and going off while rapunzel tries to calm her down and just - groan this line.

“People don’t change! You told a criminal a detail that puts my entire future at risk!”

how many times have i said “cass doesn’t act this way in tts” i feel like it’s a constant drumbeat. but i have to say, again, that cass doesn’t act this way in tts. i don’t think it’s unrealistic for her to think like this, given that her father is essentially corona’s chief of police and she idolizes him, but i feel the need to reiterate that there is zero sign of cass having this mindset in tts proper. and it does sort of bother me when people read this into cass’s character because it undermines and delegitimizes her dislike of eugene in early s1.

which like. tts itself sort of frames their mutual dislike as a mutual problem, but it’s... really not? and imo the best illustration of this is in this exchange from cassandra vs eugene:

CASSANDRA: Unbelievable. Did you eat all the cookies?

EUGENE: I’m not a pig, Cassandra. I ate all of your cookies; I’m saving mine for later.

CASSANDRA: Ugh– you are nothing but a self-serving, inconsiderate, arrogant freeloader!

EUGENE: [scoffing] You know, I can rattle off insulting adjectives describing your personality, too, but to do so would imply that you actually have a personality, and I just wouldn’t feel right about doing that!

this is the dynamic every time they squabble in early s1.

1 - eugene does something selfish or thoughtless - in this case taking all the cookies and milk for himself.

2 - cassandra calls him out for it, and he doubles down, often taking a potshot at her in the process.

3 - cassandra gets mad and calls his behavior what it is (self-serving, inconsiderate, arrogant)

4 - eugene gets defensive and insults her as a person, typically with variations on calling her icy / unfeeling / humorless / joyless.

which is to say, their fights are initiated by eugene’s poor behavior, and cassandra attacks his behavior but eugene attacks cassandra herself. like, eugene is the dude who insults you and then goes “pfft why can’t you take a joke” when you get upset with him. that’s what this is.

moreover, when eugene’s, for lack of a better term, residual flynn rider-ness starts to taper off, cassandra’s criticism of his behavior also tapers off, AND she gets much gentler about how she phrases this criticism once he starts to actually take it on board. but there’s no accompanying shift in the way eugene speaks to and about her - the jibes about her being humorless or cranky or soulless literally never stop and at no point does he ever seem to consider that cass might not appreciate them as much as he thinks she does.

(to be clear, i don’t think they bother cass very much if at all - but they do create and reinforce a perception on eugene’s end that cass Doesn’t Have Feelings and the background radiation of that contributes to the toxicity that develops in season 2.)

like again, pulling from cassandra vs eugene here, eugene is extremely insulting towards cassandra even when he’s ostensibly coming to her defense:

RANDOM THUG: Look at that, Fancy-Boots has got something to say!

EUGENE: Name-calling? Come on, we’re better than that, aren’t we? Sure, we could sit here and make fun of each other—tease Cassandra for her chronic joylessness, or me for my uncommonly good looks, or you for your poor dental hygiene, tragic fashion sense, robust body odor, and what are clearly woefully misguided decision making skills, but do you really want to go down that road?

ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY - besides demonstrating an obvious willingness to give eugene another chance once he starts doing the bare minimum to not be a dick to her, cassandra doesn’t like eugene because eugene is an asshole to her and takes the enormous privileges he is given completely for granted.

saying “well she doesn’t like him because he was a criminal and she doesn’t believe criminals ever change” erases that completely and reframes the conflict as cassandra treats eugene unfairly because of bigotry that she needs to unlearn. lost lagoon takes this even one step further in that lost lagoon eugene is genuinely trying to be responsible, he is taking his new lot in life seriously. he doesn’t need cass to tell him off for acting like an ass because he doesn’t act like an ass. he shows actual interest in getting to know cass and makes an effort to break through her hostility in order to get along. unlike his tts counterpart, lagoon eugene really doesn’t do anything wrong, and that makes cassandra’s intense hatred of him on the grounds that he was a thief look completely irrational and, like i said, bigoted.

it’s just very frustrating to me.

anyways

rapunzel tries very hard to persuade cass that it’s actually totally fine that she told eugene the secret because she just can’t keep secrets from eugene (except the lagoon which she has arbitrarily decided is totes fine to keep secret and i am pretty sure this contradiction never gets pointed out) - and cass is having none of it, and of course arianna interrupts before anything can get resolved.

they rush out and monsieur lefleur interrupts them, asking questions about the lost lagoon. he reveals that he heard an ~elegant cloaked person~ inquiring about it in the library. he asks for the book. they say no. the red herring smells to high heavens, and the chapter ends with rapunzel subtly telling cass to hide the book ~for the safety of the kingdom~ and oh my god i just can’t handle the low stakes.

seventeen picks up from there with cassandra’s point of view; she’s suspicious of lefleur and angsts a lot about how she has no time to train and she needs to get out of corona yada yada. her plan is literally to just walk until she finds someone to hire her on as a guard which. lol. this kid.

i feel like this is the strongest passage in the whole book:

She said there couldn’t be any secrets between Eugene and her. But why—especially when it meant sacrificing my future and everything I held dear? I’d read about romantic love in poems, and it seemed to me like a spell. Sounded great for the lovebirds, but what about the other people.

Did I just not matter in the face of this love, even though I had been the one to risk everything to show Rapunzel the world? Was I just supposed to fall on my sword because Eugene was uncomfortable that he didn’t have every last piece of information about Rapunzel?

she has a brief argument with owl, who is a pretty obvious stand-in for her own doubts / feeling that she truly belongs in corona and doesn’t actually want to leave. but she has no choice! but it’s stormy, so she can’t leave! oh no!

(i think if tts really strongly felt she had no choice but to free corona, a measly thunderstorm would not be enough to stop her.)

#lost lagoon reread #cassunzel

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yibo-wang · 3 years ago

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🥺 let's rename saturday to yiboday <3 btw have u watched squid game 👀 and if you did, did you like it? 👀👀

we're getting better, my sister started work again today and my mom's meds are really helping her 🥺👉👈

you thinking about me when people talk about genshin >>>>>>>>> OHHH BTW HU TAO RERUN IN 2.2 OMG AKSKKSKSKSK basically hu tao is one of the strongest dps in the game and KAKSJSJSK I HAVE HER GUARANTEED!! also thoma will be on her banner and he's new!! he's a pyro polearm who has a shield 🥺 from what i calculated sayu will have her rerun on hu tao banner soooo 👀

also a new character got leaked to be one of the banners in 2.3 !! we can't trust this leak for sure (but tbh when can we) but it's apparently itto !! he's supposed to be a geo claymore aka i'm falling in love w him. claymore users are my absolute fav, idc if he might be bad i'll get him anyways !! CLAYMORE USERS ARE JUST ASKKSKEKKSKSIDIDIDIJ people say they're too slow or feel too heavy but imo they're just really cool. their playstyles are all very cool and unique?

eula's is very fast and elegant for a claymore user, beidou ABSORBS damage and multiples it when she deals it out, chongyun makes all your attacks cryo which is a good combo if u have a cryo dps or he's ur dps, diluc is pretty good at applying pyro, noelle is a shield/healer (tho i don't like her) and xinyan & razor, actually eula too, are physical dps who excel at dealing damage without relying on elemental reactions. idk they're all just so cool???

anyways i'm a bit tipsy so aksksk not everything might make sense i-

oh also look at my babies 🤧🤧 i took these pics yesterday and sent them to chai on discord sooo 🥺

the white one is navi, the grey-ish one a-zhan and uh well the other one doesn't have real name rn bcs i keep changing it-

but yeah i'm rewatching squid game rn while drinking wine sooo 🤧 ily aamna <33 i hope ur exams go well 🥺❤❤❤

Jfjfjf 100% here to make saturdays yiboday. I did! I kinda got spoiled for the last few ep tho lol so I gave up after that fjfkfk. I watched it for hoyeon jung ngl and I wasn't disappointed apart from like.. *spoilers* what happened to her 😔

I'm glad to hear that! <33

Jdjfkfk you're literally the source of all my genshin knowledge 😂 anything I know I owe it to you haha

The new guys sound cool, glad you got you the one you wanted! Tell me how itto turns out to be when (if) he does get released.

aww horses 🥺 babies also 'the other one doesnt have a real name rn cause I keep changing' djfk me when I couldnt decide on what to name Oreo

Ahh I hope the rewatch goes well (pain aside 🤧) ly2 bb! take care of yourself! 💛

#laura!!!#let's chat!

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songofclarity · 4 years ago

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Since there is no official height for WRH, how tall do you think he is? imo I'm 90% sure that NMJ is taller and being precise he's either a single cm shorter or taller than LXC. Also build-wise, do you think he's more bulky or slim?

So I just found out that NMJ is the tallest character in mdzs (191 cm) and I'm wondering do we know how tall WRH is? What if he's actually shorter than NMJ? Would NMJ tower over him all scowling and glaring and WRH would be like "how dare you look down on me like this? *Also why is this turning me on?* "

Hello to the same Anon because I reply too slow or to two different Anons who are on the same wavelength!

Nie MingJue is the tallest character in the series and there is absolutely no way I'm going to headcanon away his crown! Nie MingJue is 191 cm and everyone can look up to him, as they should~ And that includes Wen RuoHan!

This might be a boring answer, but I don’t think Wen RuoHan cares about height. I don’t think Nie MingJue being taller, whether by 1 cm or 10 cm, would bother him. There is a confidence about Wen RuoHan in what he says and does and doesn’t do that shows, to me, someone who is actually well adjusted to his body, his position, and his power.

Looking back at the saber incident, it’s important to note that Wen RuoHan’s beef wasn’t because Sect Leader Nie’s saber was sharper or bigger or better, his beef was because Sect Leader Nie was (reportedly) being an asshole about it. It was Sect Leader Nie (reportedly) turning it into a competition when it wasn’t one. Wen RuoHan was perfectly at peace with the world on his own, and never asked a question comparing his saber with others. Is his own saber not a fine saber? The answer is yes, it’s quite fine. And Nie MingJue in all his tall glory is also quite fine, and I think Wen RuoHan could appreciate Nie MingJue in multiple ways without having to feel intimidated or challenged by him.

Confidence is key!

Going on a tangent for a second, I like to consider the idea that Nie MingJue doesn't exactly feel the whole extent of his height. His fiery temperament, exacerbated by the saber spirit and a toxic sworn brotherhood arrangement, always gets the focus over his height, which is really only mentioned by Wei WuXian at the start of empathy but is never used to describe Nie MingJue looking down on people, physically or mentally. When Nie MingJue runs into the frightened woman and child in Hejian, he reigns in his aggression, but he's still very much towering over them.

We know that Nie MingJue was a teenager and old enough to go on night hunts when his father was injured, so I imagine him being 16 back then. Boys, on a whole, start puberty later than girls (so closer to 13) and might not hit their peak until as late as 20. So let's say Nie MingJue hadn't reached peak 191 cm yet and his father was still taller than him when bed bound. Then his father died, and in the ensuing years Nie MingJue shot up like a tree, but that doesn’t change how his father will ALWAYS be taller than him. (I headcanon both Nie brothers take more after their respective mothers’ side of the family in appearance and height than they do from their father’s. Nie MingJue is tall even amongst his uncles at 191 cm, Nie HuaiSang is short at 172 cm, and Sect Leader Nie was somewhere in between.)

I also imagine the situation around his father's death, how those six months showed the worst part of the Qinghe Nie saber cultivation and his father at his most monstrous, would have made Nie MingJue feel very small and helpless as a kid. It's no surprise he loathes and regrets that death the most into his adulthood. It's no surprise that once he steps into an adult role, he's always working and trying harder than everyone else to protect the peace and mitigate danger.

Nie MingJue's big dick energy comes from the heart. Combined with his height, he’s the biggest man around!

But I don't think Wen RuoHan is significantly shorter than Nie MingJue. I headcanon him being 185 cm at the shortest. That makes him shorter than Nie MingJue at 191 cm and Lan XiChen at 188 cm, but it’s the same height as Jiang Cheng. For comparison, Wen Ning is 183 cm vs Wen Yuan is 172 cm. Wen Yuan experienced some serious food difficulties during his early child (from about age 2 to 5) that could have negatively effected his growth, so he is likely an outlier. Wen Chao isn't given a height and there's no particular reference to him being short or tall, not even when Wei WuXian holds him hostage in the cave, so I imagine he's not too far off from Wei WuXian, who is 186 cm. So we're reasonably looking somewhere in the 180s cm for Wen RuoHan.

If Wen RuoHan doesn’t have to ask Nie MingJue to lean down to get what he wants and can just take it, even if he has to go up on his toes, height really is no issue~

Because the fun part about Wen RuoHan is that I do not think a taller person is going to phase him. At one point the world stands tall against him and he flexes quite well on his status where he doesn't even think he needs to lift a finger to end the Sunshot Campaign. This is a man who will slightly tilt up his chin, without even thinking about it, so he ends up looking down on the towering Nie MingJue.

I imagine the effect is quite alluring, but it would also be like being faced down by a predator and Nie MingJue isn’t used to being treated as prey~ Wen RuoHan is in for a fight if he wants to try taking him down though lol

As for Wen RuoHan’s build, I tend to go with in between bulky and slim. I think most of his strength comes from his spiritual energy. He's not packing the dreamy abs Nie MingJue has hiding under his robes that got even Wei WuXian drooling. But to get to such high cultivation, Wen RuoHan had to have done a lot of physical training, which I picture makes him muscular, but still not bulky. And he has enough muscle that he's not particularly slim, either, although I imagine him having quite graceful hands and a regal poise that give the impression of slender elegance. His calm and quiet confidence belies his strength, and the energy he gives off gives the impression that he’s the biggest man in the room. Sometimes impression really is everything.

So in one way or another, Wen RuoHan and Nie MingJue might each think the other is bigger or taller than him, and neither one is fazed by it, and I just think that’s neat!

#anon #asked from above #wen ruohan #nie mingjue #ruojue #mdzs thoughts

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sparklegemstone · 4 years ago

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Taking a break from work so time to write up more of my Loki trailer thoughts since all the cool cats around here seem to be doing it :-D.

In chronological order:

1) Personally I was 'meh' about the trailer starting with the Endgame scene just because I think the Russos did a terrible job matching the tone of that scene with the tone of the original Avengers film's conclusion and I want the Loki series to feel like a continuation of Avengers. Alas, the Endgame scene grates on me as feeling inauthentic to the story it's supposed to take place in. But I certainly understand the practicality of needing to put it in to give the audience the context for when/how this new story with Loki is taking place.

2) But five seconds later on the other side of the wormhole…yay, Kate Herron fixed the tone! This feels much closer in tone to when Thor and Lok depart for Asgard at the end of Avengers. Excellent job Kate.

3) Was so pleasantly surprised by Owen Wilson's portrayal! Very different than any of the comedic characters I strongly associate the actor's acting style with. I like his character a lot with what we've been given so far. It's instructive reflecting back on the potential concerns I had and that were being discussed in the fandom when we were working with scraps and rumors that we now know don't have merit: things like 'Hiddleston is only there to narrate the series' and 'How comedic in tone is this going to be if Waldron from Rick and Morty is hiring Owen Wilson?'. Ah the good old days of baseless speculation.

4) I mentioned the frequently low camera position in another post -- it does a poor job of conveying how Loki carries himself, tall and straight and elegant. It makes him seem more ordinary, but maybe that's the point -- equalizing him with Mobius rather than it being an Asgardian in a non-Asgardian's presence.

5) The way Loki goes from locked down and not letting any sense of what's going on his head slip to Mobius (what I feel is in-character for Loki) to suddenly being a lot more open with what he's actually feeling and having less guarded, more friendly/casual attitude toward Mobius is weird to me. I think it's a cut just for the trailer and hopefully it will make more sense in context, but Hiddleston's acting here and the way he has no qualms about being physically guided out of the elevator by Mobius is one of the points where it felt more like Hiddleston playing a different character than playing Loki to me (and lacking Loki's costuming doesn't help that perception certainly). Which I know is nitpicky, but I was just curious to see to what degree this would actually feel like 'fresh off of Avengers' Loki and so I'm paying close attention to what feels in and out of character for me. Does Mobius say something to really throw Loki for a loop that would cause him to drop his guard like that?

6) "Glorious" -> YAASSSS that's the Loki I wanted to recognize. He's back! I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around how blessed I am, but we've got him back for more screen time. Also, with him back in Stark Tower and the later image of post-apocalyptic Manhattan, I am super intrigued by the possibility of Loki (and me too!) experiencing different ways things could have played out on Earth, if he'd succeeded in his conquest for example.

7) Loki's going to learn about what happened in the main timeline and the choices he made in the future?! That's huge! Should be a fascinating character moment. This bit of Loki turning away from the projector gives me a lot of hope that the writing in the show is actually going to explore, honor, and authentically run with where Loki was as a character at the end of Avengers and the context of what he experienced rather than Marvel just plopping the "general" character of Loki into a genre-fied crime thriller show basically disconnected from the events of Thor and Avengers so they can say they made a Loki show.

8) Do I like Loki in the beige detective jacket? Nah, not really. But I do appreciate that even with the earth costume they kept Loki's style of being completely covered up. Also creates contrast with him not being in control when he's in the TVA prisoner jumpsuit that has short sleeves.

9) Thought that was Nat on Voromir at first because of the purple environment. Been reading some thoughts on how that's probably not Nat, and while the theories make sense, if that's true, why would Marvel put in a shot of a character that looks so much like Nat that it would cause confusion and maybe get her fans' hopes up?

10) I agree with @delyth88 on the D.B. Cooper scene. Didn't think I'd want Loki looking like Hiddleston, but I don't mind it / it's not taking me out of the scene as I might have expected.

11) The fight choreo and edit into the twirling -- I already discussed this before, but the physicality of it is giving me human-strength!Loki vibes. If instead the guy he's fighting is also super strong, wouldn't the plastic or metal disc thing between them break upon impact? Also the fact that it seems implied that Loki would get hurt by jumping out of the plane w/o Heimdall’s help to catch him.

12) The twirling -- is Loki legitimately, celebratorily, uninhibitedly happy? I feel like we've never seen him like that since the Thor cut scene before they all made that fateful trip to Jotunheim. I read a theory that the roman numerals on the building in this frame might mean he is in Pompeii the year the volcano erupts, which is interesting.

13) Loki saying "Brother”, “Heimdall", coordinating with at least Heimdall, traveling on the Bifrost -- HOPE! BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL, HOPE! I was honestly expecting the show to make no mention of anything connected to Asgard, except maybe segueing into Thor 4 at the very end, so the fact that Loki is (indirectly) interacting with Heimdall -- calling Thor "Brother" (even if not to Thor) !!!!!!!!!!!! -- interesting!

14) The idea of him being D.B. Cooper is very fun! (though I didn't know who that was in advance). It's very easy to pretend that Loki is real and has been an unidentified part of our history all along.

15) I do not like the last scene with comics!Loki suddenly being brought to life. In fact I had a very kneejerk dislike of it the first couple times I watched the trailer (so many watches ago :-P) because it presses a very personal button of mine, which is how the MCU is moving toward becoming more spectacle-driven and comic-book-y and therefore away from the grounded, character driven storytelling that I enjoy about the MCU. I'm here for the character of Loki that I love as he is already established in the MCU, not the comics versions of the character. Also, IMO the acting is out of character for MCU Loki and more goofy.

That said, I'm hopeful context will help a whole bunch here as @iamanartichoke has said. Given all the timey-wimey multiverse shenanigans, it's probably not even Avengers!Loki anyway, and I'm certainly not going to begrudge the many fans who are excited to see comics references on screen.

Overall impression? Very excited, very hopeful. Would I selfishly want a story that's just a direct continuation of the Avengers and hyper focused on the exact context of the character of Loki as he was in Avengers, fleshing out the off-screen bits and up-until-now only implied emotional impact of what Loki experienced between the end of Thor and the start of Avengers, digging into his relationships with the Black Order, and family, reconciling with his heritage? Uh…duh ;-).

But you have to give an audience what they need as opposed to what they think they want, and from a craft perspective, this has to be its own story. The Thor and Avengers stories are their own stories, they're told, they're done, even if certain emotional threads were left hanging / implied / off-screen that we as very detail-oriented Loki fans would like to see dealt with explicitly.

But given that this was always going to be its own story, I'm very hopeful that the series has an explicit creative goal of telling a story that also does a great job with emotional continuity and exploring the fallout of Thor and Avengers and what that means for Loki's character; of honoring, picking up from, and running with Loki as a character in the context of who he was when he surrendered to the Avengers and where he goes from there.

The Marvel Studios executives could have easily decided to make an isolated story featuring Loki that general MCU fans that don't think overly deeply about the character would have been very happy with and probably it would be very successful, and I would have gladly taken that over nothing. But I'm optimistic that that isn't what we're getting and that they chose to ground their story in the specific context of Loki's character. We'll see!

#loki #loki+

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