Just saw a post saying "no intelligent woman in a period drama setting would refuse to wear a corset". And idk how to say it to you, but real women in period drama settings refused to wear corsets and advocated for alternative forms of dress (look at Constance Wilde for instance).

I've noticed this trend on Tumblr and elsewhere of criticizing female characters who rebel against the constraints of their time and place. But do you think that women were always complacent and accepted their oppression? Do you think no woman ever rose against sexism and misogyny before the 1900s? If you think so, I have bad news for you (or good news for everyone else, YMMV).

I've also seen some people react as if female characters wearing armor and knowing how to fight were an insult against traditionally feminine women. First: that's sexist because it means that there would only be one "correct" way of being a woman. Second, that's a very narrow and reductive view of women's experiences across history.

Vita Sackville-West, from Complete Works of Vita Sackville-West

"Is it normal to-" Doesn't matter. Do it weird if it isn't hurting anyone

delicious sakura pompompurin macarons!

When a simple line makes me do a little watercolour painting that I really love. It was done during the drawtober, but with a list of mine, created by picking lines from my favorites songs.

This can translate as "And the black night will embrace us"

Taylor Swift, I hate it here

Leon-Francois Comerre (1850-1916), “Luna" 

ZHAO LIYING (赵丽颖) as Shen Li

in The Legend of Shen Li (与凤行), 2024

I made the final cut, my FE3H fanfic will end on chapter 50. That's a pretty neat number!

It may end up being the longest french FE3H fanfic on AO3, which is great as well.

something something ‘feminine’ female characters being deserving of all things good and righteous and holy because of them overcoming their suffering by working within the system that hurts them using their wiley feminine attributes and charm something something ‘masculine’ female characters being villainized for fighting outside the constraints of the system they’re still subjected to in a more hands on approach and being victims of similar if not the same circumstances as their ‘feminine’ female peers but it doesn’t count for some reason because they don’t suffer as prettily as their counterparts something something

Hey weird question but what happens if you put two reasonably likeable anthropologists of wildly different cultures together in the same room? Do they study each other? CAN they? Is it like an infinite conversational feedback loop? I'm imagining two dogs eternally sniffing each others butts at the park

From Maurice Tourneur's The Blue Bird (1918).

I was wondering what you knew about Cesare's only legitimate child, Louise Borgia? I'm so curious about her life and her relationships with the people around her, but there's not really much i could find, which is strange considering she was the heir of both her father and mother, and lived till a decent age? Is there anything more we know of her and her life?

Hm, probably the same as you, anon. Sadly there isn’t much information available about her. I think you may already checked out Miron’s work about Charlotte, which brings some information about Louise, so I checked out Sacerdote’s bio to see if I could find anything “new”, but I think he mainly just used Miron’s work. In any case, I’ll add here what I could gather:

Louise kept up a continuous correspondance with her aunt, Lucrezia ,although as far as I know these letters were never published, which it’s a shame, it would be interesting to read them. After her mother died (1514), she was placed under the guardianship of Louise of Savoie, Francis I’s mother. It seems there was conflict between them, in regards to Louise’s assets and the terms in the guardianship etc, but also maybe a clash of personalities.

That made Louise appeal to her grandfather, Albret d’Albret, and then interestingly enough to Isabella d’Este, you probably already read this letter, but just in case, I’m posting it here:

"Madame, with all respect I commend myself to your good grace. Madame, that which I desire above all else in the world is to hear how my good relations and friends are and prosper, and to be advised of you and of Madame the Duchess, my aunt. I have given charge to and sent the bearer of this letter to see you, and to advise me of your news. I beg of you, Madame, to send me news of you by him in full. And if it pleases you to hear of mine, he will inform you amply. Madame, I have also charged him to tell you something else from me. I beg of you to believe it, and to be good enough to help in the matter of which he will speak to you. And in doing so you will make my gratitude always yours. Praying Our Lord to give you a very good and long life. Written at Auxonne this ninth day of July, 15.                                                                                                                                   "Your very humble niece and good friend,                                                                                                       Louise de Valentinois." It's interesting that Louise felt she could write to Isabella d'Este, even though the marriage alliance between her and their son, Federico, failed to succedded. It's pretty clear, by the tone of the letter, that some political intrigue was going on, whether it was Louise wanting to know more about her father's inheritance in Italy, or gauging the possibility of the above mentioned marriage alliance her father tried to make with the Gonzaga, perhaps with her aunt Lucrezia helping her with it, as well, given her close relations with the Marquis of Mantua, Isabella's husband. It's possible she was searching for other options, and if that is so, then it implies she wasn't very willing to marry Trémoille. Personally, I find his interest in her a little strange, maybe Louise felt it, too, who knows. Sacerdote says the followingabout this letter:

The letter has no date; but it was certainly written after 1514 - the year of Charlotte d’Albret's death - and before 1517, the year of Louise' marriage. As for the "matter", in which she wanted to interest Isabella d 'Este, it is very likely that it was her inheritance, left to her by her father in Italy. It is known, in fact, that Cesare Borgia had a very high sum on deposit with Genoese, Venetian and Florentine bankers; and before fleeing to Naples he had entrusted to his friend, Cardinal Vera, all his gold and silverware and carpets and other things of value, so that, if he came to die, they were to be sent to his wife. [...] As for the other "affair", her engagement with Federico Gonzaga, son of Isabella, had definitely ended. It begun as early as December 1501, the negotiations for this engagement were then conducted with fervor on both sides. Despite the great aversion that Isabella d'Este and her husband Francesco Gonzaga felt for the Borgias, they nevertheless knew that such a relationship would have a high political value for their house and for their state.

In 1516, Federico Gonzaga was sent to Paris, and he and Louise saw each other, and at the time there was talk about finally making the marriage alliance between the two Houses happen, but for reasons unknown, it failed again. There was also talk of a marriage between Louise and the Medici, with Piero de Medici’s son, Lorenzo de’ Medici.

It seems the prejudice against the Borgia family, esp. against Cesare, ended up touching Louise as well. There was some effort to ignore, or to "look past" Louise' bloodline on her father's side. For example, when Louis II de la Trémoille, her first husband, was asked as to why he chosed the daughter of Cesare Borgia (such a wicked man to their eyes) as a wife? To placed her on the same bed as his former wife, Gabrielle de Bourbon Montpensier? He allegedly is recorded as having answered: “La mia scelta cadde su madamigella de Valentinois, perché ella discende da una razza, la virtù delle cui donne non fu mai posta in questione. /My choice has fallen upon Mademoiselle de Valentinois because she springs from a race whose women's virtue has never been called in question."

As Sacerdote (and Miron) point out, he clearly wasn't talking about the Borgia women, so he was implying that as far as he was concerned, Louise was entirely from d'Albret and their lineage's bloodline, and as such he knew Louise had inheritated the virtues known in her mother and the women’s side of that family, which was why he chose her as his bride.

Louis died in battle, at Pavia in 1525, and Louise re-married Philippe de Bourbon in February 3, 1530. I couldn’t find anything about her relationship with her second husband, which it’s a shame, because that’s something I would like to know more about myself. They have six children:

Claude de Bourbon, Count of Busset, of Puyagut, and of Chalus.

Marguerite de Bourbon 

Henri de Bourbon

Catherine de Bourbon

Jean de Bourbon, Seigneur of La Motte-Feuilly and de Montet.

Jerome de Bourbon, Seigneur de Montet.

And iirc by this bloodline, there are still many living descendants today of Cesare and Charlotte.

Louise was a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic.

She always signed herself as Duchesse de Valentinois, comtesse di Diois, and in a document dated June 18, 1535. It seems she was party to a transaction between her and her cousin, Henri de Navarre, touching the “droits de légitime” (portion that a child has by law in his father’s estate) of her mother, Charlotte d’Albret.

And that’s about all I could gathered, anon, the other Borgia bios I have checked either don’t have anything or they just repeat what was established by Miron and Sacerdote and some French authors. Sorry if it wasn’t too helpful, I really wish we knew more. Again,  I'd love to see the letters between Lucrezia and Louise published.  I think it would give us more information about her, but as far as I know it hasn’t been.

Adolphe Weisz (1838-1916, Hungarian/French) - The Bedroom Mirror, n/d

[Source: LotSearch]

“You saw yourself as an unholy triptych, three into one, one into three: she the girl, you the Devil, I the Saint. And you understood, finally, that there had never truly been a she or a you but only a terrible, lonely I.”

Inspired by the awesome short story The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow

prints available on my society6 

Mother and child training longsword in Chile, at the Centro Esgrima Histórica

“Arknights/Limbus Company/etc is obviously very political, why are these incels playing it?” Here’s a longer answer if you’re interested.

If you haven’t been watching gacha communities for the past decade this might be confusing to you, but these guys see the games as just apolitical stories with a majority or all-female cast being there to titillate the male viewer. They are for his consumption. It’s why in both eastern and western “gacha game” communities you can see them talking about how these games are better for having “beautiful” anime women versus the hideous hags of western media. I’ve seen so many people asking “how are incels playing a game with so many strong female characters?” They see them not as “strong female” characters but rather “eyecandy made for me”. tbh when it comes down to it I wouldn’t call any of the designs in these games absolutely groundbreaking for the anime genre they’re aiming for. Arknights even follows the standard “fully animal faced-guy” and the female equivalent “small featured anime animal girl with some fur”. This doesn’t mean the designs are bad or you’re foolish for enjoying them of course, there are a lot of fun ones. Anyway, you can see the same sentiment in the majority of anime communities as well. Like do you think that stereotype of an anime nerd who “loves 2D women but hates 3D women” means he’s a feminist because the 2D girl is still female?

To be frank, after some of the actions taken by these companies (ex. the firing of women for posting anything vaguely feminist) can you honestly say an “apolitical game with anime babes” is not the way the games are often enjoyed? The company Yostar who publishes Arknights in Korea literally wrote a statement saying the game is apolitical and calling feminism a dividing force. If the publisher can say something so flippantly like this just to appease their incel fanbase, how can the game be making any meaningful, hardline progressive political statements? I am of course not saying this renders any positive message you get from these games moot nor am I saying it’s impossible for the writers to be passionate about their work, I’m just relaying the thoughts of the incels/“gacha gamers” playing them because there seems to be confusion. What I’m writing here doesn’t mean the worst interpretation of these games are their defining interpretations. I’m trying to explain how the games that many people see as being antithetical to incel beliefs can have these same men as high-spending fans.

Gacha games are unique in the world of consumer media in their extremely close and constant relationship with the consumer. You have to not only love each character’s design (and sometimes story) but also be willing to drop serious gambling money to “buy” them every single month. It’s like merchandizing on steroids. I think the term “whale” has been watered down since younger kids have started playing, but these people spend thousands per patch. Over the years I’ve heard about multiple games like this being sustained by just a couple of high spenders. In 2018 there was even a western news article about a man who had spent $70k+ on FGO. The publisher can’t rock the boat too much to displease the consumer too many times without risking EoS. Every character design and story of a gacha game is affected by this FIRST while any artistic intent comes second.

A Korean woman who had lost her job due to similar “feminist hunting” tactics wrote an article describing the way these incel men think. I posted it here and part of it summarized: the men that play these games see themselves as buying and “owning” the female characters in gacha games, who are often dressed and presented to them in a highly sexualized manner and will obey their commands. In the same way they “own” these 2D women, they also want to own the thoughts of the real live female illustrators who work on the games. Therefore, if these women have expressed ideas that the male gamers find upsetting, they will be angry she doesn’t conform to what they want like the servile 2D girl and do everything to get her fired (this is where she mentions Limbus Company as the most recent example of this happening).

You can argue for some of these games, maybe the girls aren’t dressed super provocatively and give (you) shit instead of being a simpering doll, but in the end it’s not like they can physically walk away or stop speaking to you. For the “waifu” hunter guy it’s just a different type of anime girl to collect.

The stories in these games are generally not what gets targeted as much by incels. In gacha “gamer” communities, especially the Korean incel ones, their main concerns are: how revealing are the summer swimsuits? How many women work for the company designing characters? and related, Are the male characters designed for women or for men and do they “look gay”? If you search through this blog, you can see them directly speaking about these things in regards to their hatred of Genshin Impact and Star Rail. All of these have also been encapsulated in the original Limbus Company incel attack: they hated that the summer female character looked more “clothed” (wearing a skintight suit instead of a bikini) than the male summer character. They thought the collar necklace and open shirt on the male summer character meant he was “a slave” for the female viewers, so obviously it was designed by a woman. When they learned a man designed and illustrated those characters, they searched to find a female illustrator who worked in the game and went after her instead. These guys WERE FANS that played the game beforehand and didn’t think anything in the story was upsetting enough to attack the company about. They were familiar enough with the works of Project Moon to name their little group after an antagonizing force in one of PM’s previous (non-gacha) videogames. And Project Moon saw them as such a significant part of their gacha fanbase that they wrote an immediate apology and fired the artist. How do these actions in reality inform their fiction and the interpretation of it? Getting this out of the way, they were NOT in any danger, the “fans” were not clamoring to get in their offices or camping outside, they were let in and calmly had a meeting with some employees at the office. You can still find photos of them goofing around, the ridiculous write up they brought with them and a transcript of the conversation. This was not a “guy shows up at Mihoyo’s offices with a knife” situation. In the end it was a financial and moral loss for the studio with many new and longtime fans completely dropping the games and Limbus Company taking one of the biggest financial and D/MAU drops for a gacha I’ve ever seen. You can read more regarding the ramifications of this here, this post is already pretty long for this website anyway.

Again I’m not writing this to shame anyone who plays these games, loves their characters or enjoys their stories. I don’t really care either way, and I obviously find the genre interesting or else I wouldn’t have been monitoring it and the fans for a decade. I just want to shine a light on the thoughts of the more “incel” gamers that play some of these games since I have seen a lot of genuine confusion as to why they would play them. In the future my aim is to write a more in-depth post about these issues, their history and the way antifeminists think.