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I made myself rewatch “Blood Fever” and, in the spirit of analyzing all the times B'Elanna was under the influence of alien crap as the only times in which she shows overt interest in men, this dialogue really caught my attention

Tom: Sorry. Try to stay calm. I know it's hard. B'Elanna: You don't know anything. I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin. I need to do something. I can't take this. (She pushes Paris to the ground and straddles him. He pushes her off.) B'Elanna: You've never been hard to get, Tom. Tom: Well, I'm making an exception. I can't let you do this. B'Elanna: Oh, I'll bet you wish you could. All those invitations to dinner. And on the holodeck, the way you would stare at me when you thought I wasn't looking, and get jealous when I'm with someone else. You can't tell me you're not interested in me. Tom: You're right. I can't. B'Elanna Then don't push me away. Tom: Oh, believe me, I'd like to, but I know this isn't really you. You've made it clear that you're not interested, and I have to accept that's how you feel, even now. B'Elanna: No. No, it isn't. I was, I was just afraid to admit it. You see, I've wanted this for so long. (She kisses him.) B'Elanna Just let it happen. (More kisses.) Tom: I hope someday you'll say that to me and mean it.

So obviously this is B'Elanna almost at the end of her rope (the way she says that she feel like she's crawling out of her skin...) and the whole talk she gives about how she's seen the way Tom acts towards her is undoubtedly an act of desperation. B'Elanna is trying to wear his ethical concerns thin by pointing out that she knows what he's been doing, she's aware of his interest in her, so he could give in to his desires and have sex with her. Also obviously, that's fucked up!

But what I find most important in this scene is the fact that B'Elanna can explain so vividly how she knows Tom is attracted to her (the part I highlighted in purple), even in her state. She can recall precisely the instances in which she has observed Tom's interest. Now compare it with how she tries to talk about her own feelings towards Tom (in orange). It's much more perfunctory, a convenient explanation rather than a precise description of when and how her attraction developed. Even Tom seems rather unconvinced by the ‘I was afraid to admit it’ explanation, in addition to his obvious worry about her current state.

Now, I am aware that B'Elanna is actually afraid of admitting any kind of feeling because she's so scared of letting go and letting people see her whole self, something Tom points out to her at the end of the episode. So it is certainly a good interpretation to see B'Elanna's previous rejection of Tom as her being simply afraid of getting too close, especially to a human who might not be able to ‘handle her Klingon side’ just like her father wasn't able to deal with her mother and her (ie, afraid she'll be at the receiving end of more racial harassment).

Yet, I keep returning to the fact that B'Elanna was so precise when describing Tom's attraction to her but not vice-versa. I realize that in general women find it difficult to untangle their attraction to men from the attention they get from men. The latter is usually a strong component of the former for many women, and trying to separate the two things more is often a long and difficult process. This is, I believe, part and parcel of the reality of living in a sexist society. So it's not surprising, imho, that B'Elanna finds it much easier to tell Tom about the way she's noticed his attention on her, rather than make a convincing case for her own feelings, even thinking of B'Elanna as completely straight.

But, but. As I've said many times, “Blood Fever” is part of a trend where B'Elanna is shown being attracted to men when under the influence of alien weirdness. It's probably the most obvious example of the whole trend, actually—the ‘sex pollen’ that makes B'Elanna act so irrationally is a strange offshoot of the Vulcan Pon Farr, something she only caught because Vorik (also not in his right mind) attacked her. (I think it's particularly fraught that all this is happening to her because she was essentially assaulted!!) And the dialogue above is so revealing to me, in this context—she knows of Tom's attraction to her, she's known for a long a time, but when it comes to her own desires her thoughts are much more nebulous and vague.

For example, she bites him, but she doesn't seem super sure of why she did that (because again, she is not thinking very clearly):

Tom: [...] If I remember my Klingon customs, biting someone on the face means... B'Elanna: I know what it means. All right, so maybe I do feel something, some kind of instinct. What am I supposed to do about it?

And when pressed, she defaults to old Klingon wisdom:

Tom: B'Elanna, stop it! This isn't about the gun. This is about sex. But that's not gonna happen right now. B'Elanna: I think it is. See, I have picked up your scent, Tom. I've tasted your blood.

Part of it is Trek being always super weird about Klingon sex (this episode is certainly a prime example of that weirdness), and not having anything to say about it except for formulaic references. But also, taken all together, it's clear that B'Elanna is going through the motions of (Klingon) heterosexual practices because she has no other recourse, and Tom is just conveniently there, and conveniently already interested in her.

I think Tom calling her out on her pretense is already an obvious indicator that we shouldn't be taking what B'Elanna says of her own feelings at face value, but I would go even further and say that the way she acts is also hardly revealing of ‘true feelings’, much like her dreams in “Remember” were not her own. I'd say that seeing this episode as another example of B'Elanna being closeted is in fact just as viable an interpretation as the one that the episode puts forward (her being afraid of getting close to Tom); the two things aren't even mutually exclusive, in fact.

I've said this before that the way Voyager puts B'Elanna in these situations where she has little to no control is an attempt to break her open and have her finally admit her feelings, because she's generally so closed off. So I'm aware of the narrative devices at play here. And yet, when these devices are being used so consistently when it comes to her relationship to Tom, I think it's interesting to look into it more deeply. B'Elanna and Tom were already playfully bickering and flirting even before “Blood Fever”, but it's only afterwards that it becomes really overt. I think part of it is because B'Elanna is now sure that he's interested in her (he admitted it to her), and he's shown himself to be a honorable man. It is honest attention; it's safe to reciprocate, and he won't take advantage of her. Yet the only way she's able to confess any feelings to him it's in the moments right before certain death in “Day of Honor”—her ambivalence never ceases to be there. It's even present all the way up to “Scientific Method”, where yet another instance of alien interference finally lets (?) her enjoy being close to Tom.

Again, I don't think it's at all a stretch to interpret all of this from the lens of a closeted B'Elanna—and “Blood Fever” unwittingly brings another argument in its favor, by having B'Elanna so clearly aware of Tom's feelings but not her own towards him.

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www.bigbrowneyes/careers

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finally, the lightsaber color quiz

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It’s sad that the show didn’t explore Louis’ addiction and addiction-fueled pattern of fucking and eating young men with drugs in their system so he could get high on their blood. He uses drugs (and the promise of sex) to bring men back to his apartment, and then they get high and fuck, and then he eats them, and gets high out of his mind. The addiction speaks for itself. He can’t cope, he turns to drugs. But it’s deeply uncharacteristic for Louis to engage in anonymous sex. He was celibate for years after Lestat’s “death,” he even tells Armand that he’s not sure if he “can” move on, fuck, maybe both, because of that. He wanders the park in Paris, but he never goes home with anyone. In New Orleans, before Lestat, he says he’s only engaged with other men while drunk and consistently sees the same prostitute. He’s not really the type of guy to fuck strangers he meets in bars. If he only wanted to get high, it would’ve been easy enough to drain those men without fucking them. It’s the combination of the two that’s extra self-destructive. Bad enough to suffer an addiction, worse to repeatedly violate your own values and beliefs about intimacy with strangers for fleeting comfort. He hates himself. He’s hurting himself, he’s punishing himself, he’s escaping, he’s fucking and snorting and killing his feelings out. He can’t bring Claudia back, can’t see Lestat, he’s stuck in a marriage with someone he’s lost interest in, fucking an endless array of twenty-something addicts is more interesting. It’s self-harm. It’s a massive undertaking in serial killing, but it’s also self-harm. It’s not lost on me that he meets these young men in bars; he met Lestat in a saloon, he was a young man when he met Lestat, he initially bonded with Lestat through their shared “interest” in Lily, or at least she was a conduit for their intimacy that would be immediately discarded once their connection was established (Lestat murders Lily shortly after he and Louis fuck). He’s specifically fucking and killing young men who resemble himself. He, in some small way, is reliving the beginnings of his life with Lestat, and then he relives all of it when he meets Daniel and does the interview. He’s reliving it as an escape from his stale prison of a marriage, he’s reliving it to hurt himself, he’s reliving it because he misses Lestat, he’s reliving it to punish himself. Why self-reflect or grieve or mourn or grow when there’s sensation? He’s also incredibly suicidal. There’s no “high-risk” behavior for a vampire, but he’s approximating it. He spends all his time high, fucking and killing strangers. He’s throwing gasoline on his marriage and looking for a match. He stayed out till dawn with Daniel. He ran out into the sun. He’s having an extended, self-harming breakdown that led to 128 dead boys, 1 half-dead journalist, 1 half-dead vampire, and an addiction. And we only got 1 episode about it?

[wearetheunholyfamily]

I haven’t seen much of Cullen’s lion helm, so I’ve made up a reason for myself as to why.

[wearetheunholyfamily]

do you ever think about how Dragon Age has mage prisons (the Circles) but then also a super mega mage prison (Aeonar) but Aeonar only comes up in one (1) of the origins in DAO and then is never mentioned in game again, even though the next two games are about the collapse of the Circle system so you’d think someone would be like “Maybe we should check on the super mega mage prison” but they don’t

[wearetheunholyfamily]

elaborating on a post from last night.

back when the good omens show first came out, i saw this fandom quickly dismiss concerns transfems had about the transmisogynistic tropes present in the show, the book, and gaiman's other work. i saw this fandom praise a depiction of a man disguising himself as a woman with the sole intention of gaining access to a child and influencing them into evil as a bold, positive representation of gender nonconformity. unfortunately i, being very young at the time and not as familiar with transphobia as it applied to trans women as i was with how it applied to myself (a tme enby), was part of this dismissal. i, like many other good omens fans, participated in brushing aside trans women's valid concerns in favor of supporting neil gaiman's bullshit. but i have since left the fandom, learned, and realized how fucked up it was.

so it's honestly sickening to see this same fandom now use defense of and support for trans women as a shield to excuse neil gaiman's bullshit once again. i believe that tortoise media had motives for wanting to break the story that had more to do with gaiman's milquetoast support for trans rights than they did concern for his victims, but i also believe the victims. i wish scarlett and k had come forward about their abuse with literally any other outlet, and it's entirely possible that one or both of them have bigoted beliefs about trans people themselves, but i'm not going to dismiss what they went through just because they aren't perfect victims or perfect people.

it's without question that gaiman had sexual relationships with both of these women, both being in their early 20s while he was in his 40s and 60s, one being a fan he met when she was a teenager and the other being his employee, respectively. that alone should make you want to distance yourself from him and his work. it also seriously makes me doubt his innocence that his own defense of himself is that k is just still so upset about the way their relationship ended that she's making sa allegations to get back at him almost two decades later and that scarlett is literally delusional and has created false memories of assault due to a medical condition that she does not fucking have.

we have seen time and time again that victims get absolutely no reward for coming forward about abuse, especially so when their abuser is a wealthy public figure. the idea that women are incentivized to create false allegations is a straight up lie and i had thought, after you all were fooled by depp and his pr team not too long ago, that we had all moved past believing it, but i guess fucking not.

[wearetheunholyfamily]

the damage i undergo every time the tranquil mage at ostagar explains that the chantry doesn’t even pay for the circle it’s literally all paid for by the labour of the tranquil

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[wearetheunholyfamily]

b’elanna torres is a character you really can’t fully understand without using a racial lens, and that means confronting the ways in which she’s constantly othered by those around her. if you’re ignoring the racism hoisted on her by tom, janeway, or the doctor you’re not going to get the full picture of how bigotry permeates her daily life and shapes her into the person she is. how bigotry isn’t just something enacted by nebulous, malicious actors, but by ordinary people in our everyday lives. you’re not going to be able to read as deeply into her character and give her the complexity and nuance she deserves

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[wearetheunholyfamily]

What accent coach is working magic behind the scenes of iwtv. A british man plays an american man with a thick new orleans accent that slowly fades to a standard american accent. Another british man plays an indian man with a french accent that morphs into a british accent. An australian man plays a french man with the strongest most unintelligible french accent youve ever heard

[wearetheunholyfamily]

FOALS PRE-SHOW WARM UP

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Lestat + being proud of Claudia and her vampiric abilities

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happy fourth of july to the philippines ONLY

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(I realize the wording is a little weird; if more than one option describes you, then go with whatever feels most true I guess?)

Thanks, Anon!

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