transfemhawkeye

[transfemhawkeye]

Whenever I see the convoluted excuse of a timeline Nintendo’s created as the official Zelda timeline, it just makes me wish that the series embraced its name more. I wish that these games were stories passed down through Hylian history, that Link and Zelda were ubiquitous figures in their culture’s myth.

Think about how neat that would be! The original NES game is the classic monster-slaying bedtime story of a parent to their child. Ocarina of Time is one of the most defining epics of the Hylian tradition, but no one is truly certain of its ending— some accept a happy conclusion, some a tragic one, still others a bittersweet end. One writer even continues the story of the Hero of Time with Majora’s Mask. Hylian children even have their own legends and lore; maybe Four Swords Aventures and Tri-Force Heroes evolve from playground squabbling over who gets to play as the legendary hero Link. Perhaps a particularly terrible storm season floods towns on the banks of the Hylia River and inspires a poet to pen down the original version of Wind Waker and its underwater world. And what if Breath of the Wild is built from old, apocryphal, fragmentary accounts of a strange drifter, a wanderer in a blue tunic who fights with the strength of a thousand men yet speaks with none of their voices?

And while these stories are legends, tales passed from parent to child and friend and neighbor, who’s to say there isn’t some truth to them? After all, Zelda’s a traditional name in the Royal Family, isn’t it? Aren’t there tapestries of a woman in royal garments back to back with a blond-haired swordsman in green? Aren’t all stories just where memories go when people forget they’re true?

I think if the criticism directed at TotK specifically for its incongruity with the timeline proves my point here. Zelda has never cared very much about its timeline, really, but I think it’s high time Nintendo stop making pretenses as if it does. Every Zelda plays different, looks different, feels different. Excepting its occasional direct sequels, the Zelda series is basically already an anthology series. Treating it like this, as its name seems to ask us to do, solves a lot of strange things about it which stick out when you look at Zelda as a linear story— different visual styles can be attributed to how different storytellers choose to tell the legends. The changing shape and size of Hyrule is artistic imagination and narrative convenience. The timelines don’t resolve themselves because that’s just not how these stories work.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of the cycle of reincarnation which is in the original canon. I think that’s so interesting thematically. At the same time, I think most of what I like about it is fan stuff. The concept’s introduced too late for it to have thematic bearing on most Zelda stories, and it seems like Nintendo sort of dropped it for BotW/TotK anyway. Besides, I don’t think it has to be abandoned for this idea to work.

[transfemhawkeye]

my impossible dream for the world is that one day people will stop trying to make definitive statements about sappho, and i will finally be at peace

If you dare to even utter the words “Sappho was a bisexual” in my presence, I swear to the gods I will shoot you in the head and sacrifice your body to them.

This is lesbian erasure at its finest. There is no concrete evidence to say that Sappho was attracted to men. Nearly all scholars agree, that all though sexuality as a concept was wildly different in archaic Greece, Sappho was what we would consider a lesbian now.

[transfemhawkeye]

[transfemhawkeye]

completely unironically: the spotify wrapped ai podcast is one of the most existentially terrifying things i’ve encountered in my life. being addressed by name by uncanny, incorporeal not-people is so mundanely horrifying. big no

[transfemhawkeye]

there's a strange comfort in zero notes... screaming into the void if you will

[transfemhawkeye]

kate is mentioned in TWO!! count em TWO!! lines of clint's dialogue in rivals. "kate's been worried sick!" and "kate's not returning my calls" (both lobby interactions w/ jeff and i think bucky? respectively). big day for me

[transfemhawkeye]

they should add kate to marvel rivals as an entirely separate hero to clint but still named hawkeye so there's two with the exact same name

[transfemhawkeye]

my idea for marvel rivals is that you start with every character locked and you have to read one full volume with a character in it to unlock them

[transfemhawkeye]

imagine: you get your memories back after years of amnesia to find out your whole species is dead and earth doesn’t exist anymore. that the only thing left of your culture is your weird ex and his busted honda civic that barely even works that he stole from the government when he was 13. And he’s been taking members of an alien species for trips in his honda civic and they’re all like “woah it’s so cool” and you get upset because it’s NOT COOL it’s a honda civic, the turn signals don’t even work “wow it can go up hills” yeah OF COURSE IT CAN GO UP HILLS EVERY CAR COULD DO THAT. but they’ve never seen a car before so everything it does is the coolest thing ever. And your ex’s only tool is a fucking screwdriver which is somehow also cool to this dumbass alien species even though it’s a fucking screwdriver so you just look like an idiot screaming about how none of this is even cool it’s actually really shitty but your whole planet is gone so you can’t even prove it but also you’ve had a constant drumming sounding in your head since you were 10 slowly driving you insane. I would become evil too.

[transfemhawkeye]

☆ intro post ☆

★—˚₊☆｡ basic stuff: my name is bianca. i use she/her pronouns. i'm 17 and a freshman in college. i am very small and i have no money.

★—˚₊☆｡ the only interest i retain with any amount of consistency is kate bishop (hawkeye)/young avengers, hence the url.

★—˚₊☆｡ right now i'm interested in:

★‒ BNHA/MHA ★‒ Marvel (Comics) ★‒ Cyberpunk 2077 ★‒ Gender Studies in Classical Antiquity ★‒ More That I Can't Think Of

all of that is, of course, subject to change. this is a variety show.

★—˚₊☆｡ i also write sometimes! i'm on AO3 as biancaa.

★—˚₊☆｡ uhhhhh. um. idk be mutuals with me i'm super cool pinky promise

★—˚₊☆｡ not fond of dni lists but as a general word of warning if you're the kind of person who calls themself an anti and evangelizes about the evilness of "problematic" ships or whatever you will probably not like me very much

[transfemhawkeye]

if london was calling me I'd hang up

[transfemhawkeye]

I mean, no. People don't know that Sappho ran a school. one of the most notable aspects of Sappho is that we know virtually nothing about her. She lived in Lesbos in the 7th and early 6th centuries BCE, she wrote lyric poetry-- meaning it was performed in song-- and those two facts nearly exhaust what we know for certain about Sappho.

The idea of Sappho as a teacher is an invention of the 20th century which is all but unsubstantiated, and, considering the pedagogical traditions of the time, pretty anachronistic. ( "Sappho Schoolmistress" by Holt N. Parker is a very good and widely cited article on this). 20th century Sapphic scholarship was very concerned with the question of her sexuality, and the schoolteacher interpretation was designed essentially as a way to portray her as pure and chaste. It's certainly not "the best understanding of the historical context." There's very likely not a single performance context which Sappho fits neatly into; some of her songs were probably performed at wedding ceremonies, and others may have been performed in private, for friends. Given the paucity of information, though, to make a definitive statement any way is intrinsically dishonest.

What we are nearly certain of about Sappho is that she "loved women as deeply as she did music" (a quote from Anne Carson that I'm quite fond of). Although I have my gripes with the way people engage with Sappho today (add that the the list of things I need to write a post about), it would be extremely difficult to, in good faith, argue against the homeroticism of Sappho's work. The single complete poem we have of hers is the Ode to Aphrodite (fragment 1), which clearly expresses romantic desire for a woman, and fragment 31 expresses a similar desire. The question is less whether Sappho had romantic relations with other women, and more so whether we can accurately refer to Sappho as gay, given the social contingency of sexuality. That is a very complicated and nuanced conversation, and I'm far too tired to bring up Foucault right now. Personally, I'm on the constructionist side of this argument, and I'm very hesitant to apply such contemporary terminology to the ancient world. Regardless, the general scholarly consensus is that Sappho loved women, she loved women at a time where it was abnormal for a woman to love women, and in my view, if not lesbian, i think we can fairly call her queer.

Do people know that Sappho ran a school.

Like yeah, people in the centuries afterwards interpreted her poetry very homoerotically to the point of naming lesbianism and the word sapphic after her work, but like. The best understanding of the actual historical context was that she just wrote a poem dedicated to each of her students to celebrate them completing their studies with her.

The queerness is in the interpretation not in the actual historical context. I feel like people don’t know this. Sorry to burst the gay bubble.

[transfemhawkeye]

As a disclaimer, I'd recommend waiting until we have the full chapter to make any definitive statements on it. Something, something, leak culture bad.

With that said, though, I have been thinking for the past half hour or so about Izuku rejecting a partnership offer from Bakugo in Chapter 431, and while I'm adhering to my words above regarding that, I do want to push back on the opinion-- which I've seen a lot of people holding-- that doing so is automatically mischaracterization.

BNHA's story centers around Izuku and Bakugo's dynamic, and we see that dynamic shift in such a profound way over the series. We begin the story with Izuku simultaneously idolizing and fearing a boy who, by all appearances, despises him. Katsuki's a bully and an egotist, but like so many bullies and egotists, the way he's acting is a mask. It's a response to fear, and it's a very conventionally masculine one (that's another post, though). Katsuki's scared of Izuku, because even though Izuku is weak, quirkless, below him, Katsuki always feels like Izuku is above him. He's scared of this feeling, and that becomes anger. So he lashes out, keeps Izuku at arm's length, and it doesn't work, because no matter what he does or says, Izuku worships him. That's a very intentional word choice; there is a sort of religious quality to the two's early dynamic, where Katsuki is this unreachable figure who Izuku simultaneously fears and loves, who represents the apex of strength and power in his eyes. This is, to say the least, an extremely unhealthy relationship dynamic, and one which harms both of them.

It's impossible to talk about Izuku and Bakugo's character arcs independently of each other. I would describe them as two sides of a coin; Izuku's arc fundamentally centers around creation, and Bakugo's around destruction. When Izuku arrives at UA, he defines himself by his worship for All Might and Katsuki. Izuku models his costume and his fighting style after All Might, even using the same names for his moves. Simultaneously, he continues to internalize Bakugo's bullying, doubting himself, continuing to idolize Katsuki even as Katsuki's increasing feeling of inferiority spurs him to ramp up the torment. So Izuku's arc is about gaining independence; it's about creating his own identity, about self reliance. He reclaims the derogatory nickname Katsuki uses for him, develops Shoot Style, changes his costume, and starts standing up to Katsuki. Yes, he still admires Katsuki, still cares for him, but crucially, that admiration no longer comes at the cost of his self-respect. It's because of this change that Bakugo is forced to reckon with the root of his aggression. He spends the majority of the series working towards consciously grasping his feelings of inferiority, and a big part of that is confronting his preconceived notions of strength and weakness, and accepting that he can rely on others without being weak. (Again, so much of Bakugo's arc is tied to overcoming toxic masculinity, and I'll definitely need to write about that sometime, too.) The apology he gives to Izuku at the end of the Dark Hero Arc is one of the series' strongest narrative moments, and its a showcase of so much development-- it's a genuine expression of vulnerability, Bakugo dropping his veneer of superiority, something which would be unconscionable to the Katsuki we meet in chapter 1. That Izuku doesn't immediately accept and try to assuage Katsuki's guilt speaks to the development he's undergone, too. Izuku learns to rely on himself, while Bakugo learns to rely on others.

So, after these arcs, with Izuku finally repowered, Bakugo asks him: "Will you join my agency as my partner?" This is the natural conclusion of Bakugo's arc: it shows that he sees Izuku as an equal and he's prepared to rely on him as a partner. And yet, Izuku turns him down. I understand why people would be upset about that, and if he did accept the offer, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But at the same time, we've just talked about how Izuku's story has centered around gaining independence from his idols. At some level, Bakugo is asking Izuku to go back to defining himself by their relationship, and even though it's in a far more equitable way than the hero worship which used to describe their dynamic, it's completely reasonable and in-character for Izuku not to want that. Yes, it's sad, but I think acting as though this is out of character for Izuku basically requires ignoring his character development, and it implies a very simplified understanding of his and Katsuki's dynamic and how it evolves throughout MHA. Bakugo and Izuku have one of my favorite relationships in any media I've watched/read/played/etc. and it's frustrating to see Izuku's part in it essentially be disregarded.

[transfemhawkeye]

CEASE THIS MADNESS!!!

[transfemhawkeye]

Seeing people get upset at Charli for being “disrespectful” to Captain America is so funny to me because I already know they haven’t read Hawkeye things or they would know this is par for the course of Hawkeye when they first meet Steve. It’s a canon event my friends.

[transfemhawkeye]

Your Honor, I love them! This new hawkeye redesign fuckin rocks dude gimme gimme gimme!

[transfemhawkeye]