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mike-el · 2 years

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First of all I want to say that its not really my place to discuss an issue like this because it’s partially something I’m not a part of, BUT: we need to establish and clarify as people that WOMEN struggles (anyone who identifies as a women) are much greater than homosexual white men struggles. Gay men have struggled and continue to struggle every day, I’m not denying that. However, we need to (as people who respect both gay men and women) recognize that gay white men are still white men. I am so sick and tired of seeing women in this show fight for their lives to be recognized just for yet another white man (regardless of orientation) to come and suck all the viewers’ sympathy. And YES I am speaking about el and will. I love will dearly he’s one of my favorites (and bylers will never ruin him for me) but to say that his struggles “as a closeted teenager in the 80s” are more real than “a disabled abused girl” who’s been experiencing misogyny pretty much since the day she was born is fucking insane. I’m sorry that will is struggling but he’s gonna be fine, I promise you that he will be fine, it’s still sad but he’s fineeee. Yes el is privileged in the sense that she can express her feelings towards the person she loves freely but please tell me how that makes her life so much easier than will when she’s a fucking women in the 80s that should be enough, but even then that’s not even why she’s had it worse and you know it. Give me a fucking break. Will (one of the most well written characters in the show) continues to be the most selfless person on this show and his fans somehow make up for that by making every fucking thing about him. Ask any gay person in the 80s about wills story arc and I promise you they will relate. And I’m saying all of this because once season 5 comes out and El gets her happy ending with mike you best believe that will fans are going to invalidate her happy ending for will not getting his. I know they will give him his happy ending, but if they don’t for some reason I want everyone separate their own frustrations with their blatant misogyny. Please stop being misogynistic towards El, please.

OK, I think this ask deals with 2 completely separate issues and it is important to clarify the separation.

It is not my belief that LGBT people don't experience oppression nor is it my belief that gay men do not have a history of oppression. To say "Will is going to be fineee" is understating not only the character's experience, but the experiences of all those who lived in this time period. The AIDS crisis happened in the 80s; a lethal disease came out of nowhere and wiped out entire communities of LGBT folks, majorly gay men, while the government watched and did nothing. To have LGBT rep in a show about the 80s is actually super important considering the historical context, and it is actually why I understand the Duffers' decision to hold off on official coming out moments for Robin and, especially, Will. It is an authentic representation of the time period, and it honors the struggle of self-acceptance that was most likely a lot more difficult 40 years ago. In my personal opinion, it would be insulting to the experience of those people who identified LGBT in the 80s (some who married and lived lives in heterosexual relationships in order to protect themselves) to have romantic relationships come easily to Will and Robin or to have them not experience fear or shame. Only by authentically representing something can we shine light on the truth and learn from it.

It is also not my belief that we should be in some weird oppression war of who has got it worse. And I certainly hope that my blog does not come across in this way. Gay men and non-LGBT women both face different hardships in modern society, as they did in the 80s, and I don't think it's necessary to compare the two. Both can, and do, exist simultaneously, and we should be supporting one another.

All of this is separate from fandom discourse regarding El, Will, and B*ler.

It is my belief that El is perceived by many members of this fandom from a (majorly internalized) misogynistic lens. And, it's been my personal experience, that the members of the fandom who discuss el in this way tend to also strong supporters of b*ler. However, there are many important things to remember. First, being a b*ler shipper and identifying as LGBT do not go hand in hand. Second, that b*ler does not serve as the only LGBT representation on Stranger Things. And lastly, the oppressive experiences of being LGBT are not erased by having bad takes on El.

The only point I have ever tried to make is not that Will's story is less important than El's, nor that being a woman is harder than being gay (I wouldn't even know how to quantify those experiences into a value that is measurable for comparison), but that El's story is important, as is the storyline of her relationship with Mike. No more or less, it just is. And to erase that story that has been fleshed out over the course of four seasons to make room for a story that was never planned (Mike & Will), just to service fans, would be a misogynistic act, yes. As you say, it takes the light off of the main female character and shines it on two white boys. But, also, to do this (go Mike & Will in the final season) would also invalidate the experiences of those of any gender or sexual orientation who have been watching and see themselves represented in El, those who have been affected by abuse and trauma (especially women), and deserve to to see her find happiness and healthy love.

Those who identify with Will or Robin also deserve that representation, and it is also important. However, b*ler is not the only path to representation, and to actually go that route in canon would be disrespectful to the story that has already been written and to those who see themselves in El. It is absolutely possible to honor the experiences of Will and Robin and those who identify as LGBT by writing good story and character arcs for those characters and have them end the show in happy and fulfilling relationships, without making b*ler canon.

So, this is my long-winded way of saying it is unwise of any member of this fandom to mistake our personal feelings and opinions of a show with real life experiences. In order to honestly evaluate if something in this fandom or this show is problematic, I feel like we have to remain as objective as possible. I know firsthand the difficulty of that; I am not perfect and I am not shaming anyone for holding this show and certain storylines/characters close. I certainly do. But I don't think we should be dismissing real life oppressions and hardships, and history, so freely in the name of supporting a fictional character and/or relationship.

PS: why do I have these super long asks in my ask box about how this fandom disrespects women and gay people but never once has anyone brought up the blatantly fucked up way this show and fandom handles the representation of Black people and POC on the show? Just a thought.

#tw discourse #long post #asks #I share a thought

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christmasintheloonybin · 11 months

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how common do you think it *really* is for normal men to pay for sex?

i keep seeing people say that it's far more than you think and seemingly normal men that you know have probably at some point. thoughts? i'm trying not to get completely blackpilled about men.

I've certainly never payed for sex but I'm really not the best person to ask about normal men. i am an extremely abnormal man, especially in regards to these kinds of issues, and I have no friends male or otherwise. this is not to mention the fact that I live in the forest bro there are no hookers out here lol. but I can give some theories which are not backed up by evidence at all.

I think despite the best efforts of modern society to remove all meaning and significance and purity and beauty from every aspect of life and reduce everything to transactions and material circumstances there are some things which are so inherent to human beings, even twisted untermensch types, that they cannot be scrubbed away or forgotten.

of course there is the issue of love and all of this, which has been discussed enough by other people. but I would think that a sense of shame would always be present and at the very least would deter MOST men from hiring a prostitute. I mean it is a sure sign that you have failed completely at the one thing you were put on earth to do, prove to a woman that you are fit for reproduction and reproduce. and because the woman in the case of prostitution has little or no say in who she is getting fucked by I would assume that the experience would be less rewarding or interesting than actual sex, I wouldn't even consider this to be sex, somewhere in between sex and rape. the psychologically rewarding thing about sex is that someone thinks you're really great, fit for reproduction even if she doesn't see it these terms this is what is really happening. and the fact that women have the right to be selective is what gives it any meaning at all. and so not even just prostitutes but sex with promiscuous women would have significantly less value only because she is not very selective, you haven't won out in competition with other males as you should and as almost all other animals do. it's completely meaningless. but in the case of those sick pathetic people who have truly convinced themselves that there is nothing but physical pleasure and sex is nothing but an exercise in this, they should all be rounded up, sterilized and enslaved.

but I would think that it is true that most men have been infected with this sickness to varying degrees, it's hard to tell you can't really conduct polls or something. but I would think shame would interfere, as most people have at least some shame. and also I would think that most normal men, middle of the road, moderately attractive, well-adjusted guys, are for the most part getting laid in the normal, old fashioned way, and so they don't need to hire a prostitute.

the people I would think WOULD hire a prostitute would be the following.

1. those who are completely unable to attract women normally, even untermensch women, due to being extremely ugly, maybe mentally disabled, physically disabled, just having an unpleasant personality, obese, these kinds of things. one would think that this is who the market exists for, guys who are maybe not even sexual deviants or bad people, they just want to get laid and can't. I don't think they should reproduce but as long as the prostitute does not become impregnated I don't really see the harm. I mean, if it has to exist then this is the least bad form. these are guys who are completely unable to have the real thing, they will never be able to have it, and so they pay for this ersatz of sex. but this would be maximum 10% of the population, a minority of men, certainly not what would be considered normal men.

2. sexual deviants who like the idea of having control over women. I would assume that this is, after group one, the main group who are paying for sex. as I've said, prostitution is somewhere between sex and rape, sure she can say no but if she turns away every customer she'll be broke I mean this is her livelihood. and so I think some people just enjoy having control over women, which is of course unnatural and if the world was right and normal these people would be sent to the camps as well.

3. sex addicts, people who maybe have a girlfriend or wife, or can otherwise get laid normally but it's just not enough. but again I would assume that this would be less interesting even than picking up some promiscuous woman at a bar. maybe for these people it is just the act, but I would assume that having some kind of game is part of it. which of course would not be present in hiring a prostitute. either way these people should be sent to camps.

I think that this would cover the basic archetypes of people who pay for sex, and all of this would be considered abnormal behavior. however, due to the internet and these stupid ideas like tolerance, many people are able to overcome things like shame and regret and engage in things which would be unthinkable pre internet. this is also probably due to general degradation of the gene pool, it is only quite recently that almost all children born (in the west) survive to reproduction age. but anyways, I would think that if a man does not fall into one of these three groups he probably would not hire a prostitute, and I would think still that even these three groups combined would be a minority of the population, but could become a majority if things continue in the direction they are headed.

all of this gets back to the problem of equality. no two people are completely equal in ability or worth and when you try to create a situation where all people are treated the same it can only infringe upon the rights of other people. this is a great example, an inferior man thinks he is entitled to sex by virtue of being a human with feelings, and it hurts his feelings so bad that he cannot get laid. well if we live in an equal society of course he is entitled to just as much sex as anyone else, which can only violate the natural right of women to be selective and weed out inferiority. or perhaps because some people cannot get laid no one is allowed to have sex at all, which of course would violate the rights of those who can get laid normally. this is what I like about women, they're born social darwinists, they're born eugenicists. women hate equality naturally.

thank you for the ask this was quite fun to think about and write out.

#anon

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i-am-an-atomic-bomb · 1 year

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hi! no need for a lengthy reply, i just thought you might have an interesting take. ive been getting more into wiedźmin/ the witcher (am even considering listening to the books!) but i find some of its ideas about disability rather off-putting, like Yennefer’s backstory. any thoughts? <3

first i have to specify that i haven’t seen season 2 of the show and only played the third game (plus watched some gameplay of others but only some) back when wild hunt came out (holy shit that was over 7 years ago…) so my lore knowledge is lacking but i’ll try to answer the best i can

but from i remember the books are simultaneously better and worse than the show in this regard ??? specifically with yennefer’s backstory, in the novels how she looks is only magically changed after she tries to commit suicide at aretuza, but it’s also a much smaller part, pretty sure all of that is only mentioned unlike in the show where some of the plot’s messy timeline takes place when she’s young. i know this is still a harmful trope but it’s less annoying that way i think. in the games from what i remember there’s even less of that if any.

also. as someone who was raised as a woman and has cerebral palsy, if i were given the choice to sacrifice my womb to get rid of my disability i’d do it in a heartbeat (which i know is not the exact same thing like boohoo only my legs are a little fucked and kinda one of my arms and one side of the face kinda take longer to react but i’m kinda fairly priveledged ??? i guess ??? like the doctors expected it to be worse). i don’t fucking know, we live in a society. it’s problematic but accurate.

it’s also mentioned in the books over and over again that due to witcher shit i guess, geralt sees the real her when he looks at yennefer like he can see through the transformation magic. which i think is sweet goddamn i wish i had someone like that. there’s more angst surrounding the fact that she can’t have biological children i think ? but i think that was fairly accurate from what i’ve heard from women who’ve dealt with that. oh and geralt also deals with chronic pain constantly cause when his injuries are healed magically they still hurt as if they weren’t. given that sapkowski wrote that shit in the 80s and 90s as a white able-bodied guy i think he tried at least. especially after hearing from my mother first hand how awful 80s poland was about disabled people.

i can’t really speak on other characters much ??? cause like i said i don’t remember shit. i know there was filippa who gouged her eyes out but can’t recall like specific characters from side quests who stood out ect. also, geralt deals with bigotry from random from npcs all the time but that’s more of a racism simulation/metaphor/whatever i think. because he does look much less „human” in the books than in the show/game, it’s even in the book description on the cover i think ?

#sorry for making it long as shit and also spilling the tea on my dramatic backstory i almost wrote more on that but hesitated cause wtf #like i’m already processing it with a therapist no need to force it onto random strangers online #like sure self-destructive behavior over it is fine but there’s a fucking line. which i think i’ve just crossed again. sorry.#also i think it’s objectively hilarious that i don’t know that much about the witcher and haven’t played cyberpunk yet #given the fact that i know people including my distant relatives who worked on them and also kinda want to go into gamedev but ???#<- and other things that could doxx me lmao #disability tag #polish tag #the witcher #witcher #wiedźmin

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bestworstcase · 3 years

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Do you think Rapunzel can be condescending at times?

absolutely yeah

as is the case with most of rapunzel's flaws, it's most evident in her interactions with cassandra because frankly - ok i have to back up here a little and start this off with a hot take™

i don't think rapunzel likes who cassandra is very much.

she does love cassandra. she desperately wants to be friends with cassandra, and she enjoys spending time with cassandra.

but the cass rapunzel knows is this very dependable, steady person who showed her the ropes of coronan society and is always sort of there to provide support when rapunzel needs it, and who is also blunt-spoken, honest, maybe a little too closed off, and a little rough around the edges.

when... the reality is that cassandra is a very ambitious young woman whose driving motivation is to leave. she is a dependable steady presence at rapunzel's side because that is her job. she wants to be a guard. she wants to be respected and seen as her own person. she is very carefully trying to thread the needle of genuinely being rapunzel's friend whilst also fulfilling the requirements of her duty as rapunzel's servant, which necessitates being very careful about what parts of herself she reveals to rapunzel. she's brash. she's very independent. she likes to fight. she feels constrained and stifled in coronan society generally and in rapunzel's shadow specifically.

every single time rapunzel gets a real glimpse of this reality she reacts... well, in pretty condescending ways.

cassandra thinks a romantic holiday is annoying and stupid? rapunzel concludes that she is deeply unhappy because she's single and makes it her mission to cheer cass up, ignoring cassandra's repeated and increasingly firm attempts to get her to stop.

cassandra says something is going on that she isn't ready to talk about and asks rapunzel to be patient until cass is ready to discuss it? rapunzel stalks her to find out what it is, and then blames all the consequences of that decision on cass because if cass had just told her everything then rapunzel wouldn't have interfered.

cassandra breaks her leg and, after having it properly seen to by a doctor, asks to be left alone so she can rest while she heals up, and then gets increasingly frustrated and cranky when rapunzel refuses to stop bothering her? rapunzel can't fathom why cass won't accept her "help" and implies the situation is equivalent to red and angry running away.

cassandra vibes with the vardarans and happily incites a street brawl for fun and to drum up excitement for rapunzel's goodwill festival? rapunzel scolds her ("we're supposed to be celebrating goodwill!") and then tries to apologize to the sheriff on her behalf.

cassandra tries to tell rapunzel that she feels insecure because rapunzel no longer trusts her judgment, and rapunzel shuts her down hard because "i'm going to be the queen someday, and i'm going to make decisions you don't agree with, and i need you to be okay with that."

cassandra is hurt and angry because rapunzel's decision-making left her disabled and likely in horrific and constant pain? rapunzel gets mad at her, blames her for the injury, refuses to apologize, and purposefully isolates cassandra from everyone else in the group including owl with the intention of forcing cass to make up with her so things can go back to normal between them.

like...

every time they have a conflict, no matter how large or small, rapunzel's instinctive reaction is to assume that cassandra is the problem. and that's where the condescension springs from. she has this... underlying and i think probably subconscious feeling that cassandra's independence, her boundaries, her rough edges, her feelings that do not align with what rapunzel wants her to feel... that in small doses these things are okay, even appealing, but the instant they come into conflict with what rapunzel wants or thinks they become. A Problem. that needs to be Fixed.

this happens from time to time with other characters as well but with cassandra it is constant, i think probably because their personalities are so wildly different in so many different ways.

allllllllso there is an extent to which toxic positivity is just. innately condescending in and of itself. like forcing this upbeat peppy attitude on people is inherently patronizing. so there's also this like low-grade constant background radiation of condescension going on as well.

also also, i 100% believe this was an intended flaw and my pet conspiracy theory about the likely executive meddling in s3 was that the tts writing team was forced to scrap an arc that would have involved rapunzel reckoning with this, and i think we can actually still see the vestiges left over. consider the following:

1. in crossing the line, cassandra outright says that rapunzel has been condescending to her for the entirety of their relationship: "this has to stop now/this thing where you think that you've been my friend/and don't even hear how you condescend/the way you've always done" -> crossing the line in general has this odd dissonance with the rest of cassandra's villain arc where, in CTL, cass is very much focusing on rapunzel's treatment of her and the unfairness of her own position in corona more generally - all of which gets swept under the rug in the rest of s3.

2. in both rapunzeltopia and s3 a point is made of emphasizing that rapunzel's view of cass is lady-in-waiting cassandra. lotus dream cass cheerfully occupies her role as rapunzel's servant, and only appears as her "real" self (represented by her appearing in her preferred outfit) once the dream is twisted into a nightmare. and in s3, rapunzel reaches past all of cassandra's weapons - possessions that actually represent who cass is - to cry into her lady-in-waiting uniform; and every time she reminisces about cass, it's cass in the dress. it's never spelled out but the implication of all this is pretty damn clear.

3. at the end of plus est en vous rapunzel says that she always thought cassandra's place was beside her in corona, but acknowledges that was wrong and that cass deserves to leave and be free and live her own life outside of those constraints. she never quite apologizes - because evidently disney vetoed the princess being framed as in the wrong in any way - but there's still a marked difference between the attitude implied by that statement and the attitude she displays towards cass throughout the rest of the show.

so, this is my theory for how s3 was intended to play out originally:

- gothel is merely the last straw. cassandra takes the moonstone and flees after spitting rapunzel's last bit of condescension back in her face.

- zhan tiri encourages cassandra to ruminate on everything rapunzel did that hurt her, slowly cultivating the smoldering embers of her anger into an uncontrollable inferno.

- meanwhile rapunzel struggles to make sense cassandra's betrayal while it slowly dawns on her that... maybe cass was right. maybe she is condescending. maybe she did take cass for granted, and maybe she doesn't know cass as well as she thought she did.

- the symbolism rapunzeltopia set up of this divide between Happy Servant Cass In Her Gown on the one hand and Angry Vengeful Cass In Her Own Clothes + Burnt Hand becomes a visual shorthand the way rapunzel views cassandra, with Happy Servant Cass slowly being discarded as rapunzel more and more sees cass as she truly is: an independent person who has been terribly hurt by the way rapunzel treated her, despite rapunzel having the best intentions

- when they are trapped during zhan tiri's rampage, this is the subject of their conversation rather than rapunzel randomly apologizing for being an obnoxious flower child in the first few weeks; she talks about the traits that she saw that made her want to be friends with cass, and then segues into talking about how despite how much she cares about cass she really... didn't know cass that well, didn't bother to get to know her, and took for granted that cass would always be there and how that led to cass suffering so much pain - both emotionally and physically - and that's what she apologizes for.

- and then all this leads much more naturally into what rapunzel says when she and cass are saying goodbye at the very end, because we've seen that character growth happening on screen.

but since rapunzel wasn't allowed to be wrong because disney princess brand, most of this arc had to be ripped out and all we're left with is these weird hints around the edges of the hole it left behind.

#i sort of drifted away from the question but i think about this all the time #we can see! like! shadows! of character dev that once was there!!!#tts

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dallonm-archive · 3 years

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[image description: three monstera leaves. The leaves and wall are tinted purple by string lights behind the plant. In the middle, in a white serif font and all caps, reads “LIFE CYCLE OF MASSIVE STARS”. At the bottom, in the same font but smaller, reads “update #1″ /end id]

LIFE CYCLE OF MASSIVE STARS | UPDATE #1

Before I start, this is an autistic OwnVoices novel and it’s Autism Acceptance Month! Remember that awareness is passive and acceptance is active. And whilst this book is autistic OwnVoices I want to stress that it doesn’t cover the full autistic experience; autism is so individualistic and this story only stems from my experience. Make sure you to listen to all autistics, not just those who can speak and live independently and present in a way that suits neurotypical society. Support autistic creatives and if you’re also a creative, include autistic characters in your work! Autism is not a disease. It does not need to be cured.

Hey y’all! This has sure been a week! I gave myself the goal of 15,000 words for Camp Nano and somehow hit that in 5 days? I have literally never written at that pace before so I’m a little shocked lol. I don’t intend to keep that pace but the momentum has made drafting very fun and? drafting this has been a literal dream. I was really worried because March was a month long slump I expected to carry into April. I want to disclaim that I’m currently out of school and work because of the pandemic so I have all the free time to write and that definitely contributed! But also as a neurodivergent and disabled writer, free time does not always equal writing, so to know that I am capable of writing like this, even if not always, it is Such a gamechanger. Also this story makes me miss University so much I actually can’t take it :(

LCOMS has been a dream so far because the protagonists are all characters I’ve had for 5-8 years, and | spent those years struggling to figure out their stories. Even when I settled on this story, originally Patchwork, there was like 4 versions of it before I landed on this - none ever drafted beyond a couple thousand words because they just Never Worked. But the wait was worth it because holy shit I feel like I struck gold. This story feels so me, it’s so much fun to write, and I don’t think a story has come to me this easy before. It’s given me such a zest for storytelling again that I didn’t realise was missing. I’m slowing things down now because creative boundaries and self care >>>>, but I just passed 19k words - though some of the chapters are very unfinished because my priority has been mapping out the story’s skeleton as far as I can, then filling in the gaps based off what I learnt. I wanna put a passage before the cut so it’s not just me rambling about bullshit and no content, but it’s hard to pick just one, so here’s a non-linear scene that I :) cannot elaborate on :)

(CW: alcohol)

[image description: the side of a ferris wheel against black sky. The wheel is lit white, but at the bottom it’s coloured a mix of pink, blue and green. At the top, in a white serif font, reads “The ferris wheel lights blur between turquoise, magenta, mint, lavender, casts the puddles into technicolour. “ /end id]

Picture this: December 17th. End of term. End of year. Cloudless night, stars winking. Fargate glows, market stalls lit by yellow fairy lights line the street like candle stubs, gently burning. It’s raining. It has all day. Dampened your new beanie and scarf but you’re not mad, even if you’ll cringe at the texture when you take them off later. The ferris wheel lights blur between turquoise, magenta, mint, lavender, casts the puddles into technicolour. Your eyes and feet ache, but you’re not mad. And the mulled wine that buzzed warm in your bloodstream now coils in your stomach, but you’re not mad. You’re queuing for the technicolour wheel, even though you know it’ll be underwhelming and a waste of £4, but you’re not mad. Chocolate is usually too sweet for you, but he bought a pack of snowflake shaped ones - each carved with their own design - and when he passes the paper bag over you don’t say no. They taste like raspberry. He grins at you.

I have once again written a long update because I am autistic and have no self control; more excerpts and chapter-by-chapter rambles are as usual under the cut!

(content warnings are specific to the respective excerpt, but as a general warning there’s a lot of alcohol mentions!)

Originally I wanted 3 parts for 3 semesters, but I might do 2? Especially because in the UK at least the spring and summer semester kinda blend into one. The chapters are grouped by 3 - one for every POV character - but that’s more to help with writing because I get more done if I break it down like that, but I also like how it’s shaped the story structurally.

Sometimes the three chapters will be each of the character’s POV on a single event, sometimes they’re more individual but still follow a general idea (for example, one of them is how each character’s first three weeks of the semester goes). As usual for me the plot here is ~non-existent, especially at this stage, but everything is still connected and threaded together and thats all we really need. The chapters are also pretty short at the moment, none of them are over 3k and only tackle 1-3 scenes. This is something I feel is working really nicely now but I’m not gonna commit to it for the entire novel. I like chapter length variety! But right now we are just going with the flow :)

The most unexpected part is this being in second person, which I decided impulsively the night before Nano because I have :) zero self control :). I was unsure if it’d work in Multi POV, but it’s created such a unique tone that I can’t imagine the story without anymore, even if it’ll need tweaking over drafts. I think it suits the story so well! I’m just torn about it being in past or present, so if you see tense jumps in the excerpts no you did not <3 I’m not naming chapters right now beyond the character’s name, but part one is titled Growing Pains.

[image description: photo of a city at night. To the left are skyscrapers with lots of lit up windows behind a chain-link fence. To the right is an unlit building. Near the middle is a bright streetlight. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads “growing pains”. /end id]

1: Tomas

We start in the most overrated part of Uni, fresher’s week <3 The drinking and clubbing culture of UK university is a big part of this novel but in a way that’s like “hey this can be fun sometimes but sometimes it’s really not and it’s also really not for everyone.” Our three POVs go to a club night and really don’t care for it. Tomas does not want to be here, is in a weird as shit mood, and instead of looking for his friends he goes to the smoking area with a man he just met called Damiano. I really wanna rewrite this because I wrote it with Zero Idea of where the story was going, so here’s the one part of it that I consider salvageable <3

Damiano shoves his phone in your hands, brightness puncturing darkness. You hadn’t noticed the dimmed lights until then, but the room blued, music and time slowed. Though his notes are on dark mode, his phone brightness is on two fucking high. Your eyes sting. Cracks travel up the screen like veins.

Each character also has a specific image they keep seeing in things that are never actually there and they all make me like 🤠 hey besties what do these mean are you okay?? I Do Not know what they mean yet, but Tomas’ is veins. (Also shout out to me for finally settling on a spelling for his name after 5 years and by that I mean thank you to my friends for peer pressuring me into choosing Tomas lol)

My absolute favourite part of this story is the character voices. They are all SO fun to write, and I feel like I settled into a good combo of My Literary Prose Bullshit and they’re very specific, often very sarcastic voices. They also say fuck like, so many fucking times. RIP to me if I decide to query this <3

2: Kristen

Okay first off Kristen is THE funniest character I’ve written. He is SO fun. I wish I was his bestie but he’s also been my bestie since 2013. We meet him in the gender neutral bathrooms being annoyed by a very rich and very tone deaf girl. Classism and the UK class divide is one of the biggest themes of this novel, and Kristen is a very proud working class Northerner (the North is massively underfunded and unsupported by the Gov compared to the South) and cannot stand the Tories (Conservative Party). Extremely fucking valid of him

(CW: blood)

“I’m Floss. Florence.” Of course she was. Fucking Florence. “Where are you from?”

You don’t look at her. Eyes on your reflection, the glittered cheekbones. You busy yourself with your eyeliner, gliding the pen over gaps and smudges that don’t exist. “Barnsley, babe.” It’s only a half lie this time - if you tell her you were born in Liverpool she’d probably look at you like you’re a dead rat on the side of a dodgy alleyway. But maybe that’d be better because then she’d leave you the fuck alone.

“Oh! That’s like well close isn’t it. I’m from Reigate.” Her voice breathes trust fund and Waitrose, tries to speak like it doesn’t. You try not to laugh.

“Reigate! I bet your parents are right little Tories, aren’t they?”

She playfully slapped your shoulder. She thinks you’re friends. "Not every rich person is a Tory!” Don’t roll your eyes don’t roll your eyes don’t roll your eyes. “Is that blood on your hands?”

“Huh?” You look: faded red dye dried to your palm, blotted on your fingertips. It is dye, because your hair is as of four hours ago a fierce “Real Red”. But it could be blood. “No, it’s hair dye.”

If you think he’s being harsh, she literally calls him a slur like 3 lines after this <3 Fuck rich people half of this book is me clowning on them.

Kristen’s recurring Imagery is blood, except sometimes it’s less clear if it’s actually blood or not. Once again, besties are you okay ????

3: Junie

Junie my beloved <3 love her so much. She finds Kristen in the bathroom, and they agree to look for Tomas, until Tomas texts to say he already left. But the biggest part of this chapter is the absolute crisis she has over kissing for a girl for the first time to ABBA :)

(CW: alcohol)

[image description: a disco ball against a red-purple background. The disco ball casts dots of light against the across the ceiling. At the bottom, in a white serif font, reads: “Dancing Queen bounces against the walls. The disco ball casts specks over the ceiling, floor, walls, your skin, hair, eyes like broken glass.” /end id]

You don’t listen to 80s music, or 70s, but this room is smaller than the main floor, not claustrophobic, less freshers. Yet, even without the mask of a crowd, nobody notices the girl in the corner kissing the other girl. A girl you don’t know. You’d only gone up to her because she has purple hair and you had to tell her how much you love it - what dye is it? Professional or homemade? Did you have to bleach your hair? Professional or homemade? Will your hair fall out if you bleach it at home? If you dye your hair purple, do you become part of the Milky Way or part of Andromeda? She turns and sticks her tongue out to display her fresh tongue piercing, like a silver bullet lodged in flesh. “Dance with me, you look lost.” She has an allure to her, the Andromeda hair, the bullet in the tongue - do you want to pull it out with your teeth, or lodge it in your own skin? But she asks you to dance, and you fall into her orbit, if only for a few songs. Dancing Queen bounces against the walls. The disco ball casts specks over the ceiling, floor, walls, your skin, hair, eyes like broken glass. Her tongue in your mouth, yours in hers, bullet grazing against your lips. She tastes of vodka and cherries and metal.

I really, really feel for Junie. She’s recently out, and she’s only just navigating what it means to exist as a lesbian. She kisses a girl and immediately regrets it, because she’s a hopeless romantic and was hoping her first kiss with a girl wouldn’t be in the back of a club, but she also doesn’t regret it because it was a good kiss and they’ll never see each other again lol. Junie’s recurring imagery is glass and once again, besties are you okay

4: Junie

I don’t know how I feel about back to back POV chapters but that’s just how this set worked. The next 3 are immediately after the events of the first 3, after they’ve all left the club. Kristen and Junie walk home together, and most of this and his subsequent chapter is establishing relationship dynamics and <3 this story made me love writing dialogue y’all. This story has a lot of dark elements, so it’s really refreshing to be able to have the light-hearted moments as well. Like these characters are all going through it but they’re also Gen Z 20 year olds who grew up using humour to cope like what else are they meant to do

“We should’ve got that flat on Brunswick. It’s literally down the street from the SU - we’d just have to walk down a hill and then we’d be home.” He complains.

“Kristen, that flat had a rat problem. I saw one scurrying behind the oven.”

“Yeah, and we live with Tomas Meijer now, so what’s the difference?” He faces you, walks backwards, grin plastered on his face.

“That was mean.” You feign annoyance. You sound like a schoolteacher.

“It’s just how we are, you know. The love hate relationship. Like night and day or some shit. I’d kill for that boy but like, he’s still a rat. He’s the same to me - did he tell you he called me a malnourished ferret once in first year? In English and Dutch. Don’t even remember what it is in Dutch but he really came at me with two knives like that.”

Kristen and Junie don’t really know each other well - Junie is Tomas’ friend from class and Kristen and Tomas met in dorms, and a series of shitty housemates in second year brought them all together. It’s funny because I really worried Junie would end up with no clear place in the group and more like a third wheel to Kristen and Tomas but as I started writing I realised that her and Kristen are gonna become besties like. Instantaneously. Love this for them <3

5: Kristen

Essentially mirrors the last chapter. Him and Junie arrive home and have a heart to heart in the living room about gender <3 I love this for them <3

6: Tomas

Tomas goes home with Damiano and they hook up, which is very out of character for Tomas so it’s like his I Am So Random. I Can’t Believe I Just Did That moment. Damiano is a really sweet dude though it’s all good, but he’s here to stay and I can just tell it’s gonna get messy :/ I actually really love how this chapter came out but whilst I have no problem with reading or writing non-explicit sex scenes I’m also like a would rather die than put that on tumblr dot com oops

7: Kristen

we’ve skipped a week ahead to the day before semester starts, and the next three chapters are basically like a character study of where each of them are mentally. It’s not the best :/ This is also the point where Day 1 Of Camp me had literally no idea what I was doing. LCOMS is different from the way I pants Revelations, Revelations because with the latter I find it much easier to brainstorm scenes in my head but with this one, it really is a surprise until I open the doc. It’s created some really interesting moments though.

Kristen visits an amateur photographer friend named Kasia to model for her. I struggled to find anything that included info I’m fine with sharing, but I learnt a LOT about Kristen and his mental state, which was surprising since he’s lived in my head rent free for 8 years now. It’s messy <3 The summary: he sees himself as a mannequin, and he decides that he likes it that way, but he also doesn’t know who’s moving his joints into poses. Bestie???

8: Junie

Junie unpacks her room a week after moving in. Autistic queen <3 This is one of the unfinished chapters, and I have zero motivation to finish it because there’s a scene missing and I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. The gist of it though is she FaceTimes a friend from secondary school that definitely was her gay awakening that she only realised was her gay awakening in the last year. Messy <3

9: Tomas

One of my favourite chapters. It’s split into two halves, a light-hearted moment of all three housemates at a superstore because <3 grocery store scenes my beloved <3 and then Tomas’ Everything Is Bad exploration at the end. There’s a moment in the first half where Tomas and Kristen have a heart to heart in the candle aisle, and Tomas asks Kristen where he thinks they’ll be in their thirties. I winged this in a sprint and I’m obsessed with it, it’s all about the ~dynamic~

“Well, he has student debt for one. But that’s not on him. That’s on the Tories. But I like to think they’ll be out of power by then. Boris might even be dead, if we’re lucky. But again, not on me.” He’s quiet again. You watch him think. “He’d be a music teacher probably, or an English teacher. But like, a cool one. He doesn’t teach secondary school because he doesn’t hate himself. Maybe a Sixth Form, or even better a Uni. His students would love him because he’d be able to take a joke and also like, not hound on them for having mental illnesses or life struggles?” Neither of you look at the aisles anymore, just circle the home section of Big Tesco. “He’d also do a lot of charity work. He has a foundation-charity-thing for queer and autistic kids to get accessible music lessons, because creative therapy is like, the best thing - besides Prozac but I digress - and it’d be better than the old white men from CAMHs who act like you don’t exist by your eighteenth birthday. And he’d have a cool little flat in Sheffield where the landlord lets him paint the walls so every room is a different colour. Turquoise kitchen. Magenta Living room. Lavender bedroom. Mint bathroom.” He looks at you like he forgot you were there. “You really let me ramble like that in the middle of Big Tesco, huh? That felt like a fucking therapy moment.” He laughs a little, like he’s nervous.

“Nah, it was a good answer. Maybe if Tomas-in-his-thirties doesn’t move back to the Netherlands, he’ll rent the apartment next to Kristen-in-his-thirties.”

Kristen pouts. “Aw, you don’t wanna be my roomie anymore?”

“No, you called me an animal for eating pineapple on pizza.”

“Deserved. And you called me a malnourished ferret.”

You smile. “You’re not gonna let that down, are you?”

He smiles. “Of course not.”

Kristen tells Tomas he knows Something Happened to him over summer, and gets him to promise to tell him when he’s ready. The second half of the chapter takes place back at the house. Tomas is grieving, and it’s starting to creep into all elements of his thought. In this one specifically, he’s reminded of his top surgery and his memories in the hospital for that starts to blend with his memory of being in the hospital to grieve. Tomas is interesting as trans rep because like, he is trans rep curated for me specifically <3 Tomas was a huge comfort character for me when I was younger and when I realised I was trans, I looked at him and was like oh. He had a very smooth coming out and transitioning process (bc mine is the opposite and I need to project :) ), but right now he views his transness as like, a chapter of his life that was important but is now closed, so he doesn’t think about it a lot anymore, but the combo of grief and its mental impacts causes him to think about it more and he realises he has a very unhealthy internal relationship with his transness. Whilst the big idea at the start of Tomas’ arc is to show trans peace, I really wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the grieving process that comes with being trans. Literally the moment that made me realise “oh god, this is real and I can’t ignore it” was googling “im scared i might be trans” and realising how normal those tangled feelings are. Tomas’ experience of it is only fleeting, but I wanted to show that it’s normal. That being said, there’s no transphobia in this story. It is ultimately a Trans Peace story but also a trans story that, for me at least, is realistic. And the thoughts don’t last long, because his mind circles back to the grieving process.

(CW: graphic surgery and hospital imagery, vomit mention, death)

[image description: a darkened picture of an empty hospital room. The only light comes in through the window through thin white curtains. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads “ Scalpel gliding across the chest; were the cuts they made as thin as the line between surgery and autopsy? “ /end id]

Picture this: The hospital room. Clinical lights like exit wounds in the ceiling. Everything hurts. Haven’t slept properly in weeks. Can barely eat without it coiling and tangling in your stomach only for nothing to come up when you heave over the toilet. Messy hair, sunken eye bags. Dull eyes. The hospital room. The hospital halls. The hospital waiting room. The hospital car park. The drive to the hospital. The sleepless night before the hospital visit. The locked in the armchair next to the phone waiting for the hospital to call. The silence shrills harsher than the phone’s ring. But ask yourself this: who’s in the bed? You or him? The memories are different but the same. Oil and water. Shouldn’t be mixed. But it’s hard not to. Picture the two of you on the operating table and on the metal slab. Too far from reality to feel skin slice. Scalpel gliding across the chest; were the cuts they made as thin as the line between surgery and autopsy?

There’s a lot of paragraphs in the story that start with Picture This:. I have no idea what it means, it just reads cool lmao

10: Junie

we skip around 3 weeks now to see how the kids are dealing with the start of semester and well. They’re managing! Junie actually has a good chapter here, because she experiences Baby’s First Queer Class Crush

[image description: a purple sunset with a large pink cloud. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads you notice her background is of a purple sunset. You wonder if purple is her favourite colour like you and if she took it and if she likes photography and if she’d take photos of you “ /end id]

You listen, touch type your notes without properly processing the words yet, but instead of studying the PowerPoint, you study her: how she tucks a strand of black hair - free from her messy bun - behind her ear. The three studs in her earlobe, three little gold stars. The way her eyebrows furrow when she’s confused, and the way her face relaxes when she figures it out. How she touch types like you, how her two brass bracelets jangle and how you’re the only one that hears it. She minimises Word briefly, and you notice her background is of a purple sunset. You wonder if purple is her favourite colour like you and if she took it and if she likes photography and if she’d take photos of you. Lavender polo shirt, lavender perfume. She doesn’t wear make-up, but a tiny black heart sits under left eye.

Junie’s dreams of a photographer girlfriend are quickly shattered when she admits the photo’s from Pinterest, but otherwise this is so <3 the sapphic crisis of it all.

You walk out together, and she tells you she only got into Sheffield that weekend, and it was a nightmare to explain to the tutors why. “It’s like, they forget we have lives sometimes. Lives we can’t control.” She shakes her head. “It’s okay now though, I’m here now.”

You almost trip on the stairs up to the main floor, and her hand is warm against your wrist. Your cheeks redden, but she just asks if you’re okay, smiles when you are. Tells you she’s late for a seminar, but it was lovely to meet you. Thanks again for the lecture notes. Calls you a lifesaver. Fades into the between-classes rush. You’re glad she’s here now.

again she is so <3 i get it babes i get it <3

In other news, at the end of the chapter Kristen drops the most relatable line of the entire fucking book:

“You know how like, when it rains, all the worms come out and do a funky little dance? Yeah so basically: the rain is LIT3001 right. And the worms are all of my mental illnesses.”

11: Tomas

Tomas turns 21 on October 13th so naturally like anyone in his early 20s he has multiple crisis’ about it. I still haven’t figured this chapter ~out yet but it sure exists! It just sucks the same way it sucks to be a young adult in the late 2010s. But here’s Kristen being the most relatable character in the book again and getting bullied for it :/

(CW: alcohol)

"I still can't believe you both do a science. Like, it actually baffles me - I could not be more further from that." Kristen refills his glass, measures the vodka level with his index. "Just a babe and his silly little BA against the world."

"You know if you wanna be a BA babe you have to actually, like, graduate."

12: Kristen

Kristen is personally like I will pretend my degree does not exist and honestly? I get it King. He visits his Dad, since he only lives 30 minutes away, but most of the chapter is him thinking about Tomas and their messy friendship and the fact that Tomas is kinda ghosting him despite literally living together :/ Anyway here’s Kristen’s cat :)

Mar snoozes on your pillow, half curled like a croissant. Orange fluff against grey sheets, and you’re not mad at the fur debris she’ll inevitably leave. Her head pops up when you sit next to her, “you forget about me yet?”. You scratch her head and it’s like you’re 12 again and you don’t have to worry about rent or degrees or masters applications or careers or groceries or housemates and you haze through Sundays snoozing in bed with your new kitten. Technically she was a birthday present, but dad couldn’t wait an extra month to adopt her. Said he saw it in her eyes at the shelter, that she belonged here. You named her Marmalade because you were a dumbass eleven year old and also thought marmalade was the shit back then. She stretches her legs and yawns. Plops her head back down, back to sleep. “Yeah, me too.”

13: Tomas

The next three chapters centre around each character’s Halloween, because <3 Halloween my beloved <3. Tomas’ starts off with him and Kristen being ~homoerotic and him being a ~disaster about it.

w[image description: a photo of a blue planet - Neptune - against a black background. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads “You don’t know which palette he’s using, but you remember his favourite is space themed: Mars red, Neptune blue, Jupiter orange - you try to guess which planet he thinks looks best against olive. He taps the brush against the palette. Imagine the planets. How they dandelion in the air.” /end id]

When you sit in front of him, your knees press together. When he tilts your head up, thumb on chin, nail grazing the curve of your lip, his hand is ice on your skin. He studies your face, you close your eyes. When he pulls back, you swear you still feel his thumbprint on your skin. You don’t know which palette he’s using, but you remember his favourite is space themed: Mars red, Neptune blue, Jupiter orange - you try to guess which planet he thinks looks best against olive. He taps the brush against the palette. Imagine the planets. How they dandelion in the air. He holds your head in place, hand sprawls over you cheek like veins. Brushes colour into your eye socket. Underneath the radiator, your phone buzzes twice. Don’t say anything. Ignore your heartbeat.

(before this Tomas threw his phone at the radiator because someone texted him :) yeah okay mood :) )

this story is really about the ~gay disasters and also the ~dialogue

You flop onto your bed, arms crossed over your face. “I dunno. I might just print off all the emails Uni's sent me about my dissertation. Staple them to a jacket and tell people I'm going as mental illness."

"Tomas, if you want to go as mental illness then you don't need a costume at all."

Unfortunately the rest of the chapter is not as fun because plot had to happen but this first scene was :)

14: Junie

Junie is not a fan of Halloween so she gives up halfway through the night and invites the girl she met in her lecture over to bake cookies at 1am instead. Fellas is this gay?

(CW: alcohol)

The girl in the kitchen brought cookie cutters in pink Tupperware. She explains she’s had them since she was eight, but she hasn’t had a chance to use them this Autumn. She has seven: cat, butterfly, crescent moon, heart, three stars matryoshka’d together. “I have more, these are just my go to ones. I’m a bit of a collector.” She lines them up on the counter, you trace the outline of the cat. She says she didn’t want to bring too many, but she likes having the options with no plan, the potential. You want to tell her that, after you invited her over, you spritzed the counters with lavender surface cleaner twice and tucked the discarded vodka and raspberry liqueur bottles in the cabinet you can barely reach. You piled unfolded laundry into your closet and hid drooping plants behind your closed curtains when you had zero intention of her inviting her to your room. You want to ask her why she said yes, why she replied in two minutes at one in the morning, and you want to ask her why people feel the need to cookie cutter themselves into a false potential. She asks if you want to bake with coconut or chocolate chip.

she is actually such a disaster around girls i love her so much

The girl in your kitchen clears up glass that isn’t hers. You drop the measuring jug and it fireworks against tile. No shards lodge in your skin. Whilst she cleans, insists that it’s okay, you brew peppermint tea because you insist it’s the least you can do. The girl tells you a story about how she did the exact same thing, when she was nine, and her mother shrieked so loud the neighbours banged at the door a minute later. She laughs, muted. You apologise again. She insists it’s okay again. Rain hardens against the window, looks like TV static. You breathe in the peppermint steam.

The biggest thing I’ve learnt since drafting is that, at it’s core, this is a love story. And that makes me so excited because so many people, especially in mainstream media, still think that autistic people are incapable of love - or even worse, undeserving.

15: Kristen

Kristen’s favourite holiday is Halloween so naturally on his special day I had to make him go through it :) I can’t share a lot of this, but it feels right to end this beast of an update on this beast of an excerpt because it came to me out of absolutely nowhere and it is one of my favourite passages I’ve ever written OOPS

(CW: death, parental death)

[image description: a cluster of stars against a dark blue, almost black sky. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads “You want to ask your dad how something can end if for you it never began, but he’s asleep in his armchair back home. You look at the stars. You wonder if any of them are her.“ /end id]

You’ve mapped Sheffield’s streets since 13 so you know you’re walking the wrong way. This isn’t the way to Crookes. This isn’t the way out the city centre. You should order an Uber. You keep walking. You stop at a crossing. There’s no cars. You don’t cross. The traffic light flashes red and bleeds on your face. The stars are out tonight, and now it’s 2004 and you’re in the lounge with Lion King in the VHS. You’re off sick and your neighbour - Mel, recently retired, recently widowed - nurses a glass of brandy in your dad’s armchair because you don’t know it yet, but he can’t afford to miss work. You’re sprawled on the dusty-red rug when Simba and Mufasa sprawl in the grass and Mufasa tells Simba that all the stars are the Kings of the past and they are watching over him. You ask recently retired, recently widowed Mel if that’s true; her smile is happy but her eyes are sad and she says “yes, and not just Kings. Nobody leaves Earth, they just move to the stars.”

Ten minutes later, Mufasa is flung off a gorge’s edge; you haven’t studied storytelling yet, but you understand those two moments are connected. And when you relay this to dad over ready made pasta that evening, you ask him if people really live in the stars: Sometimes, when they can’t live here anymore. Then you ask if they can come back from the stars: No, but people remember them. They’ll tell stories about them, so people don’t forget. Then you ask if memories and stories are like stars: A little. Then you ask why they can’t live here anymore: It’s hard to explain, Kris.

After dinner, he lets you play on the plastic slide in the garden as he scrubs the dishes. You climb to the top and try to see faces in the stars, but it’s too cloudy. And after that but before bedtime, you’re sprawled on the dusty-red rug again, and Lion King is in the VHS again, and as Simba and Nala are bathed by their mothers again, your five year old mind connects what’s different about you. You go to ask dad about it, but he’s asleep in his armchair. It’s 2018, you’re stood on a phantom street in Sheffield. You want to ask your dad how something can end if for you it never began, but he’s asleep in his armchair back home. You look at the stars. You wonder if any of them are her.

And I usually don’t do this, but I think the playlist for this wip is absolutely fucking elite, so here’s a handful of the songs that I think encapsulate the story the best:

The Wombats – Greek Tragedy

Duncan Laurence – Arcade

FKA Twigs – Two Weeks

Peach Pit – Alrighty Aphrodite

Khalid – Saturday Nights

Alfie Templeman – Stop Thinking (About Me)

Rina Sawayama – 10-20-40

If you read this far, then I love you and we shall have a platonic wedding this summer. But I cannot express how excited I am about this story and to see where it goes!

#atlastracking #LCOMS #writing update #amwriting #seriously though i have had the best week but also my brain? a fried egg #sfoidhfsdf even before the cut this post is long i hate it here #long post

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notbellabutcassandra · 4 years

Text

If you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it. This is supporting the idea of more realism in the game, if that’s your goal as a player. If it’s not your goal and you’re trying to escape from reality, which is valid, then this post isn’t really for you. I don’t mean this as a way to shift blame and say we’re all wrong, but we do all have room for growth. Since we’re on the topic of diversity let’s consider some aspects that we can all stand to be more diverse in:

skintone (This is the one we always talk about when it’s not even the tip of the iceberg. Like even if you include a minority, some of us don’t even offer the different shades within that minority. It’s a wider range than we convey. Not all asians have that creamy, pale, skintone we see.)

race, ethnicity and nationality (we don’t play with these enough. a black american can be different from a black african or a black brit. Or how life is different when you’re a child of immigrants.)

attractiveness (Everyone makes such conventionally attractive sims, let’s make some average or even unconventional looking sims for once.)

body type (lol most of us make skinny sims, muscular sims, or safe thicc sims lol There just isn’t enough variation by a long shot. I do realize that part of it is the limitation of the game and morphs for clothing and accessories.)

gender (other than adding in trans sims, nonbinary sims, and intersex sims, most of us just make female presenting sims. Our male presenting sims all look the same, especially if the simmer identifies as fem.

sexuality (most of our sims are either straight, gay, or bi, but they have mostly been straight.)

hair (I hope that whoever is reading this realizes that these categories of diversity don’t exist separately per se. Even black ppl have a variation in hair. Not all of our hair looks the same. Not every European’s hair looks the same either.)

age (Most of us make young adult sims exclusively. For this, I can see why this one is more difficult because TS4 doesn’t really give the other ages 1) any real distinction and 2) because of that it feels like the other ages have nothing to do. But, in reality, it’s limited by our own imagination...and values.)

disabilities (Again, part of this is the limits of the game, but we make stuff in our builds and stuff that we thought of with our understanding of reality and our imagination and used the limited resources of the game to make a reality. We can do the same for disabilities. This includes mental disabilities like dyslexia, autism, and whatnot)

mental illness (most of our sims seem neurotypical, there just aren’t enough sims that are bipolar, have anxiety, or are even depressed. Not to mention the other, lesser seen mental illnesses.)

religion (most of us avoid religion all together, which I understand. But, we live in a society where some of the top religions are christianity, islam, judaism, buddhism and hinduism. Not to mention atheists and agnostics.)

careers/jobs and socioeconomic status (This is partially the limitation of the game again, but a lot of people on this planet live below the poverty line--and stay under it.)

blemishes and imperfections (Not enough sims with ‘bad’ skin, burned skin, [vitiligo, freckles and moles seem easy for you guys], acne prone skin, scarred skin, uneven skin, missing or uneven teeth, asymmetrical faces and features and whatnot.)

So with this logic, we can ALL stand to be more diverse. Including and especially myself. Taking these things into account will also make it so that we have more complex characters and interesting stories--if we’re storytellers. Also, I think exploring how these aspects intersect makes for better storytelling and a better understanding of our reality. I’m sure there are other aspects that I missed since I’m only one person.

#my posts #resources #honestly just posting this for me #do what you will #but i won't be arguing with anyone about it #just some things to consider

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citrineghost · 4 years

Text

On ADHD, Being Dramatic, and Being Lazy

Gather round everyone. It’s time for our every-few-monthsly post on ADHD by your local ADHD ghost. In this episode, we’re talking about ADHD and how it relates to “being dramatic” and “being lazy.”

On Being Dramatic

No doubt a lot of you have been told you’re being dramatic over the years. I know I have. There are a lot of reasons one might be dramatic, but they’re rarely about the drama.

If I’m to guess the origin of the word dramatic, I’d guess it probably has something to do with over exaggerating your response for the drama. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of people being dramatic - on tiktok and vine, on youtube... drama calls for dramaticism.

Do you want to know what isn’t dramatic? Genuine reactions. That’s right - genuine reactions, inherently, cannot be categorized as dramatic or hyperbolic. There is nothing about them that is being overdone with the intention of getting attention or entertaining other people. So, let’s talk a bit about how this conflation has hurt us as a community.

Growing up, everything I did was “dramatic.” Crying because I didn’t want to do more chores was dramatic. Having a panic attack because there was a spider in the room was dramatic. Freaking out because I needed people to stop touching me was dramatic. Getting angry when my mother made jokes about my sex life as a teen was dramatic (and apparently abusive, but that’s neither here nor there). Nothing I did that involved a noteworthy amount of emotion was anything, if not dramatic.

On Being Lazy

I know a lot of you have also been labeled as lazy over the years. “Lazy” is the diagnosis everyone loves to give to those who don’t do enough, in their eyes. If you “could have” done something and then “chose not to,” you’re lazy... right?

Growing up, I was lazy too. I was lazy for avoiding housework. I was lazy for not wanting to brush my teeth. I was lazy because I didn’t turn in my homework. I was lazy for staying in bed, on my computer, most of the day.

If I’d only just “applied myself,” or if I would just “put in the work,” then I would be respectable to the people around me. But, because I wasn’t “willing” to put in the time and effort, I was lazy.

Why Is Emotion Dramatic?

The short answer is: it’s not. The real question is, why do people seem to perceive emotion as being dramatic? These are real emotions, after all - real and genuine feelings that are being dismissed as playacting. There are a number of reasons.

Why Are We Lazy?

Again, the short answer is: most people aren’t. The question here is, why do people see others not doing something and assume it’s because they simply don’t want to put in the work? Why do they not seek out an explanation or consider other alternatives? There are a number of reasons for that too.

The Answer...

Editing to put a Read More here because it’s very long

(TW for each of these sections in their name)

1. Sexism

At its core, seeing emotional outbursts or responses as dramatic is inherently rooted in sexism. Whether you’re a boy or a girl, man or woman, if your emotions are being mocked, it’s almost definitely because of our world’s history of sexism and relating emotion to women, who are “illogical” and “just want attention.”

And “real men” work! They work hard! They work long hours! They put themselves into an early grave, with pride, by never sitting down to rest! For this very reason, women, housewives of decades past, were expected, after a long day of doing housework and caring for the children - things that are just as exhausting as a full time job - to dote on their husbands who had just returned from work expecting a hot meal and a beer to be ready for them. Her work is devalued. It wasn’t grueling or tiring or important. It was just “women’s work.” A wife who does all of the housework and child rearing and fails to provide a hot meal and a warm body to her husband is “lazy.”

This is further shown to affect men as well. We can see, as early as non-manual labor-based jobs existed, the men who took them were lesser. Men who work at computers are seen as nerds and geeks - weak. Men who work in universities, coming up with new solutions to our medical needs and discovering the mathematics we need for space travel and advanced technology - they’re weak too. They’re unimportant to society because they’re not willing to get their hands dirty. Those men who prefer artistry are called gay and seen as disposable. It is irrelevant to the conservative man that his artistic counterpart designs everything that fills his home and office - that without artists we would have nothing.

2. Racism and classism

You might be surprised, but racism and classism both have their hands in this as well. I’m talking full on systemic oppression. The ability for people in power to look down on those they see as beneath them for being emotional or passionate about a topic or incident is all about power. You can see a million examples of this today. POC are called dramatic or are implied to be blowing things out of proportion by conservative white people because they want equal rights and feel they’re being treated unfairly. Their emotions are dismissed as irrational and dramatic.

The cries of the poor, whether white or of color, are mocked. They have no reason to be having the emotions they’re having because they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in if they weren’t “lazy.” After all, only lazy people don’t have money. Only lazy people can’t get work. If they had just “applied themselves,” they would have an income, a home, and ample food on the table.

3. Ableism

And, last but not least, we have ableism. The neurotypical and abled people of the world, at large, cannot understand the experiences of the disabled, both emotionally(those with mental illnesses, disorders, and so on(whether or not certain disorders can be categorized as a disability in a just society is another topic entirely, but they are regarded that way, generally)) and physically.

If you have sensory overload, you are being irrational. It doesn’t matter to a NT if this is caused by an actually chemically different response in your brain. It doesn’t matter if it’s Real To You. To them, it doesn’t make sense, and so you deserve no compassion for your experience. Your emotional response is dramatic.

If you have executive dysfunction, you are simply choosing not to do your work. It doesn’t matter that there is an actual reason, buried in you somewhere, for why you have become Stuck. It doesn’t matter if you feel crippled by this aspect of your life. They see that you have neglected to do something they deem easy. Therefore, you are “lazy.”

ADHD and Being Dramatic

For those of us with ADHD, being called dramatic is a very familiar experience. After a while, we begin to internalize it. We must be dramatic, right? After all, so many different people have told us we are - and for good reason. We do tend to get overly emotional.

So the question is, why? Why do we get overly emotional? Why are our emotions so much different than those of our NT peers?

1. Lack of Emotional Regulation

A big part of ADHD, which is not yet a diagnostic criteria, is our emotional disregulation. ADHD, inherently, comes with some amount of disregulation in our emotions. We have a hard time controlling the emotions that we feel and managing the intensity of them. They may come across as overly intense, or they may seem subdued, both for reasons we can’t possibly figure out as individuals. This disregulation is entirely out of our control, happening at a neurological level. Our brain chemicals don’t work as they should. But, no matter how unregulated our emotions are, they are still real. We do still feel them, exactly as intensely as we think we do. Disregulated does not mean made up.

2. RSD

If you knew about RSD before, or you’ve read my last post on ADHD (under my tag adhdghost), which has gained some popularity, you already know what this means. For those who don’t, RSD is short for Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. This condition plagues something like 99.9% of people with ADHD (while not being ADHD exclusive.) It comes with the lack of emotional regulation and means we have a reaction, that seems out of proportion (or “dramatic”), relative to the thing that caused it.

In short, RSD episodes can look like an entire breakdown, a very sudden loss of any self esteem or confidence, the feeling that you are certain someone now hates you or has secretly always hated you, and/or an immediate need to get rid of the thing that caused it. These episodes are caused by any kind of perceived failure or disappointment. They can be caused by someone whose opinion or relationship we value who gives us a slightly judgmental look, someone saying they don’t understand why we like the thing we’re interested in, or even not living up to our own expectations. These episodes frequently lead to emotional outburts, episodes, breakdowns, and tears. Naturally, all of this is “dramatic,” despite it being very real and painful for those experiencing it.

3. Combination with Other Things

Emotional disregulation can interact with other parts of our lives as well. For instance, I have a lot of phobias. My reactions to seeing or being around the things that terrify me can be even more intense than how most people react to their phobias. They can cause anxiety attacks, emotional breakdowns, and lasting fear for hours or days after. My recovery from these instances is hindered by my inability to regulate the feelings they caused.

Emotional disregulation can also interact with triggers, trauma, sensory problems, etc.

ADHD and Being Lazy

And of course, if you struggle with ADHD, you want to know, “Why am I so lazy?” The answer is: you’re not! Laziness is a made up word. Laziness was created to pass blame onto people who struggle to do things that more typical people can accomplish with ease.

So, what is the reason we struggle to do these seemingly simple tasks?

1. Executive Dysfunction

This is The Big One. Of all the things that can cause an inability to do things, executive dysfunction is the Achilles heel of ADHD. Because ADHD causes a difficulty with prioritizing, rewarding actions with no immediate reward, and creating a list of steps for us to take (something that comes naturally to NT people), we sometimes get “Stuck.”

This feeling of being stuck may look like us just having fun and avoiding our responsibilities. You may be Stuck right now, scrolling through tumblr mechanically even though you’ve been needing to pee for three hours. Naturally, you’ve been wanting to go to the bathroom... you just don’t know how.

To a NT, this sounds ridiculous. “Just get up and go?!” I’m sure you can imagine your parents saying, when they simply don’t understand. The truth is, tumblr can be a nightmare for executive function. It endlessly scrolls, giving you post after post. There’s no natural stopping point. You keep an eye out for a natural end to this activity, but it’s hard to find the right post to stop on. If you find those, “This is your sign to go to bed,” posts helpful - otherwise locked into the activity of scrolling regardless of whether you want to - you might be struggling with executive dysfunction.

This inability to “queue” our actions or prioritize what we need to do, and in what order, can wreak all kinds of havoc in our lives. You remember you didn’t really understand that equation the math teacher explained earlier. You know today’s homework is related to its use. Therefore, you cannot start your homework. There are a number of possible solutions floating around your head. Maybe the book will explain it better. Maybe your parents know how to do this and you could ask them. Maybe you could Google it. It’s possible the homework is about something else. But, if it is, what if you don’t understand that? Maybe you should ask your teacher before class?

Even though you have all of these solutions in your head, because you don’t know which solution is the best solution, you find yourself unable to do any of them. You show up to class with no homework and your teacher gives you a disappointed look. “I don’t understand why you don’t just apply yourself more. You’re a very smart student.” The remark brings you to holding back tears, because you want, with every fiber of your being, to apply yourself and make your teacher proud, but you simply don’t know how.

This is the destructive nature of executive dysfunction, and it is not something to be taken lightly.

2. Distraction

For those with ADHD, the inability to regulate external stimuli makes focusing incredibly hard. You wake up one morning and plan to start that English paper after breakfast. You go to get yourself some cereal. You’re out of milk. You decide to make toast instead. You burn your toast because you lost track of time for just 30 seconds. You go to throw it away, feeling an overwhelming amount of guilt over the two pieces of bread you wasted. The trash is overflowing. You decide to take it outside. It’s a really nice day out. Maybe you should take your dog for a walk. You haven’t taken her on a walk in a while and you’re just now feeling motivated to, so you should take advantage of that. You go to retrieve your dog and take her for a walk. When you bring her back in, you go to get her treats from the shelf in the laundry room. Oh yeah, you’d been meaning to do laundry. You go to get your laundry hamper from your room and notice there’s a bunch of laundry on the floor. You begin picking up the laundry from the floor. You may as well tidy up the other things on the floor as well. You finally get around to taking your laundry to the washer. You’re out of soap. Maybe you ought to make a run to the grocery store. You take ten minutes to find your keys and wallet and then head out to the grocery store. When you get there, you’ve forgotten what it was you needed. “Oh, right! I’m out of milk!” You go and retrieve milk. When you get to the checkout and the cashier rings you up, you suddenly remember you need laundry soap. Well, it’s too late now. You’ll have to do laundry tomorrow. You can’t risk the cashier giving you a tired look by asking them to wait. You go home and make some cereal. You can’t really write while you eat, so you open tumblr. you scroll through tumblr for a while. Your cereal gets soggy, you notice, disappointed. You see a tumblr post reminding you that you forgot to order something important online that you need to get here as soon as possible. The day continues in this way until you finally realize at 5pm that you never started your paper. “It’s so late now... I’ll just start it tomorrow morning,” you tell yourself. Rinse and repeat.

If you relate to this, you might want to consider researching ADHD a bit, because this is a very typical ADHD experience.

3. Hyperfixation and Hyperfocus

The last prominent reason why people with ADHD are seen as lazy has to do with a cycle in hyperfixation and hyperfocus.

If you don’t already know, hyperfixations are those interests you have that fill you with an overwhelming love and which take up an incredible amount of your time, energy, and brain space. These could be fandoms, hobbies, characters, games, or otherwise.

Hyperfocus, on the other hand, can be related to hyperfixations or things that aren’t hyperfixations. Hyperfocus is when you get “locked in” on a task and can’t seem to put it down. If you started this post not knowing how long it was and find yourself still raptly reading, completely ignoring the world around you, you may have hyperfocused on it. If you ever start cleaning and just can’t stop until the whole house is clean, despite your lack of regularly cleaning for over a month, you are hyperfocusing on cleaning. If you write a 20k word fic in one night, you are hyperfocusing.

Hyperfocusing can leave you completely unaware of the world around you, causing you to neglect your own basic needs, such as food, bathroom breaks, water, and social interaction.

Because people with ADHD are able to occasionally apply themselves to such an extreme degree, NT people don’t understand why ADHD people are unable to apply themselves to other things as well. The reason we can’t is because we do not regulate our hyperfocus. Hyperfocus comes from tasks that are giving us serotonin, to make up for our brains inability to give serotonin in the way it should - in the way NT brains do. Emptying the dishwasher just felt really good. The next thing you know, you’re filling it with more dishes and wiping off counters and sweeping the floor and, “oh god, it looks so nice what if I just-” and then you move on to the laundry and the living room and the bedroom and then somehow 6 hours have passed. You don’t know how it happened, but now your house is clean and you feel amazing... but also tired and hungry. So you go make some food and then pass out on the couch.

So, when NT people see this kind of laser focus, they demand to know why you couldn’t do that simple math assignment, or why you haven’t been returning their texts, or why you couldn’t apply the same level of energy and enthusiasm on that really boring geography project. They demand to know why you’re so “lazy” the rest of the time.

There’s also the element of hyperfixation. It is the ultimate distraction. Your parents tell you to do the dishes and you say you will. Suddenly, you’ve found a fanfiction about your hyperfixation and you can’t stop reading it. It’s 60k words long and it will take you all day, but you’ll find a break to do your chores somewhere in there, right?

Your mom is suddenly knocking on your door what feels like 5 minutes later, but it’s been an hour. She wants to know why you didn’t do the dishes yet. You’re upset at yourself, but you lash out at her, because you’re unable to regulate your emotions. “I’ll do it in a minute!” you say loudly from behind your door. She walks off, irritated. You ask yourself why you can’t just do it now. Why does it feel impossible to tear yourself away? Your hyperfixation is the ultimate creator of hyperfocus. It rules you.

Before you know it, it’s midnight. You’ve finished the fic. It was amazing. You realize with dread that you still haven’t done the dishes, so you sneak out to the kitchen, hoping your parents have gone to bed. They have, but you find the dishes have already been done by someone else. Suddenly, you’re holding back tears from the RSD episode this has triggered. You ruined everything. You disappointed your parents. You’re a lazy and terrible child and they deserve better.

The truth is, you’re none of those things. In fact, you’re struggling with one of the most difficult mental blocks someone can have. But to others, you’re just making excuses. To others, you should have been able to just do the dishes and then go back to reading. But you know it’s not that easy. But why?

It’s ADHD, Babey!

If this post is hitting hard in a way that feels like your life is being splayed out before you, you might just have ADHD.

The fact is you are not dramatic and you are not lazy. You are struggling with a lot of ADHD symptoms that are making functioning in a neurotypical world incredibly difficult. This world was designed by and for NT people. Your worth is not based in how you live up to their expectations.

If you think you might have ADHD, it might be time to ask your doctor about getting an ADHD evaluation. Please check out my last post (the one i mentioned is under my tag adhdghost) to get more information on RSD and on getting evaluated.

An Important Note

Many experiences and struggles caused by ADHD are also present in other disorders. For example, RSD can be seen frequently in autism as well as in anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Sensory overload, emotional disregulation, executive dysfunction, and so on, can all be present in things other than ADHD. If you want to know if you fit the criteria for ADHD, go check out the criteria on the ADDitude website, which is a great source for ADHD related information.

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cruelfeline · 3 years

Note

(1) "[H]is needs, physical, emotional, and mental, must likewise be addressed and comfortably handled. I do not accept the idea of something being done specifically to 'punish' him..." Sure, I guess. Hordak should have medical care and mental heath care if needed. He shouldn't be physically hurt or put in jail, Entrapta can help him, etc. And he'll probably be in a lab most of the time anyways. Treating him with humanity will help him be a good person. (Insert swedish prison studies here).

I... ah... Well. Yes. It will.

Though. I guess, for me, treating him with humanity doesn’t have anything to do with helping him be a good person. It’s just a thing that I feel should happen. Whether it makes him a good person or not.

Ensuring that he is safe and comfortable and well isn’t something that I’d want to do in order to help him be a good person. It’s something I’d want to do to ensure that his safe and comfortable and well. For its own sake.

Like... to look at it from the opposite direction: I wouldn’t withhold care or comfort from him if he wasn’t being a good person. Y’know? Like... I wouldn’t deny him a comfortable sleep or medication that helps him feel well because he wasn’t hitting someone’s moral goals. If that makes sense?

(2) So that leaves this: How much freedom should he have? If there was an event where princesses could invite someone, like with princess prom, could Entrapta invite him? On one hand, all the bad stuff he did, his rebuilding/renovation sentence, and the fact that his presence might make people uncomfortable. But on the other hand, saying “you can’t sit with us” punishes Entrapta for something she didn't do. (Entrapta's war crimes and extenuating circumstances are an ask for another day).

I would venture to say he should have as much freedom as is safe for him to have. I suppose I don’t see the point in limiting it? He’s not dangerous. His motivation for taking over Etheria is literally dead and gone. I don’t see a point to imprisoning him.

As far as the specific scenario you mention (Princess Prom), well... remember that the Princess Prom seemed to have specific rules to encourage socialization and harmony in times of conflict (weapons and quarrels left at the door, so to speak). It’s very likely that enemies regularly met at the Princess Prom and were expected to treat one another with civility; I’d expect the same courtesy to be extended to Hordak.

And in terms of him making people uncomfortable... this is a difficult thing to address. On the one hand, yes: people will likely be afraid of him. And rightfully so, considering what he did. And people should not be forced to interact with him if they do not want to.

But on the other hand: such people are likely to be afraid of all of the clones, seeing as they all look the same. And sound roughly the same. And were part of a much more damaging war on Etheria.

Is it “fair” to segregate all clones, Hordak included, forever, to keep other people comfortable? Is Hordak to be kept out of society for the rest of his life, because people are afraid of him? Or should he be kept out of it until... well, when? When he reaches some arbitrary level of “penance performed?” If he finishes rebuilding Etheria, are people automatically going to not be afraid of him now? Yes? No? If they still are, does that mean that he still needs to be kept locked away?

One can go around in circles like this all day because there is no real answer. This is all entirely subjective. The level of segregation, of penance, of restriction, is entirely subjective. And that’s why I don’t really believe in it. I don’t believe in limiting freedom or inflicting suffering due to someone’s subjective opinion.

Rather, I try to ask how further harm can be minimized or prevented. And whether a restrictive measure is actually necessary to prevent said harm.

In terms of Hordak being restricted in some way: I don’t see a reason that he has to be locked away or forbidden from socializing. Do I think that he should be forced onto people? No. I don’t think anyone should be forced onto anyone else, former warlord or no. But I also don’t think that he should be sequestered away from the community that he is supposed to be working to join.

(3) Also, should Hordak have to work constantly on the rebuilding/renovation, save for sleeping and medical leave? Or should he get to take breaks? It wouldn’t be fair for him to take a vacation while villages are still in ruins. Humans and Etherians need rest to have good mental health and be productive, but Hordak is a Prime clone, and the clones are probably designed to work without much rest. So would that be okay for him or no? Do you have any posts that explore this sort of thing?

Absolutely he should be allowed to take breaks. No question. None. For multiple reasons.

First: I do not view Hordak helping to rebuild Etheria as a punishment. And I feel that viewing it that way is... I’m not sure that “mistake” is the right word. Inaccuracy, perhaps? I’m not sure. Whatever one wishes to call it, the point is that Hordak fixing what he broke should not be considered a punishment. Any more than me cleaning up a vase I knocked over should be considered a punishment. It should be considered... well, “fixing what one broke.”

Etheria is Hordak’s home now. The Etherian community is his community. Helping repair the parts of it that he broke isn’t something that should make him suffer; it should be something that he does in order to be a contributing, responsible member of the community he belongs to. If he wishes to stay on Etheria, then it is only logical that he contributes to its successful functioning. Not because he has to “pay for what he’s done,” but because that’s what a responsible community member does.

Keeping him from having breaks or... I guess “enjoying himself” as he does this is, in my mind. an actual mistake.

Something that I always have at the forefront of my mind when considering these things, anon, is that Hordak is healing. Whatever damage he caused, whatever traumas he is responsible for, he is just as damaged and traumatized. He did what he did not out of greed or genuine malice but out of a form of emotional sickness. He did it out of a need to be loved and welcomed and wanted. He did it because he wanted to belong.

Denying him those things until he reaches a certain level of “punishment complete” is... well. In my opinion, it’s another form of what Prime was doing. Another form of “you’re not worthy of happiness or love until you’ve done XYZ.” And I don’t like that. I don’t like that because it disregards the fact that, though Hordak should strive to fix what he broke, he is still an individual who underwent a severe amount of trauma and needs time and support in order to heal. If he does not get that time and support, chances are he will be further harmed. Chances are, he won’t become that well-adjusted member of society. Chances are he will remain emotionally sick and bitter and self-loathing. And those are not chances that I think are worth taking in the name of chasing an arbitrary sense of “fairness.”

Second, though just as important: I take significant umbrage with the idea that it would be acceptable to work clones harder because they’re “designed to work without much rest.”

The clones were “designed” to be brainswashed slaves. They were “designed” to labor and glorify and sacrifice themselves for their god. That absolutely does not mean that they should be exploited as such. To do so would be vulgar.

The clones are people; they should be treated as such, not as the tools their slavemaster indoctrinated them into being. Now, if a clone wishes to work hard because he is comfortable doing so, then so be it. But he should not be expected to do so and be denied rest and relaxation because he was “designed” to go without. That... I’m not sure how to accurately convey how much such a concept disturbs me. A lot. It disturbs me a lot.

Horde clones were purpose-bred as livestock. This was horrific. It is not something that should be taken advantage of by their new Etherian neighbors.

And while I do see that you specify “medical leave” and thus may have taken this into account, I still wish to mention: it is generally understood in this portion of the fandom that, despite the show not really going into detail regarding it come season five, Hordak still suffers from his defect. He is still chronically ill. He is disabled. Demanding that he work at a certain level because he was technically “designed to” is ableist and cruel and can only contribute to his already-deep self-loathing. And this applies to any other clones who might be disabled and hiding it.

Finally: I do actually have a post addressing some of this! And as a bonus, it’s not just about Hordak. It includes Catra, too. It was written in response to some of the complaints I saw regarding both Catra and Hordak being forgiven “too easily.” Specifically, about Catra being so quickly invited into the group, if that means anything. It goes into my distaste at the concept of denying someone a sense of belonging until they achieve a certain level of “redemption.”

Here is that post. A quick warning: it’s a little sassy. I was annoyed when I wrote it. Should be read at one’s own risk, if one is uncomfortable with me being sassy.

I also have an older post about the importance of emotional support in the healing process. I feel like it’s also relevant, as it addresses things like providing companionship to people who may be considered as “not deserving it.”

Here is that post.

Let’s see... what else...

Oh! I also have this post about Hordak being forgiven without being redeemed.

And I think those are the most relevant.

Anyway, anon, I hope that this provided some sort of useful answers for you! If, at any point, I came off as too sassy, I apologize for it. It is not my intention to sound rude, but sometimes I don’t realize when I do. Especially when I write about things that stir emotion in me.

So! Thanks for the questions, anon. Have a lovely evening!

#hordak #horde clones #Anonymous

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comicreliefmorlock · 3 years

Text

A Reader’s Guide to Writing: Lesson #2

I... expect to get shot for this.

-sighs and puts on a helmet- Body shots, fine, but I’m trying to avoid taking a headshot for what I’m about to say.

The Constant Reader... does not give a fuck about flat, cardboard-cutout “representation.” We just don’t. In fact, it’s downright insulting to your Readers to assume that labeling your character “insert woke points here” will automatically endear them to us.

(...god I’m going to get in so much trouble for this...)

When I see a book described as “it has two lesbians in it!” or “these characters are transgender!” my immediate and automatic thought is “...okay, but what is the story about? will I give a fuck about these characters?”

And that, right there, is something that can actually carry a weak plot (to a Reader’s mind) or absolutely drag a good plot into “well, I might as well finish reading it.”

Do I give a fuck about your characters?

Now this does not mean your character has to be Wholly Unproblematic or an Adorable Cinnamon Roll, Too Good, Too Pure for This World.

What it means is “do I respond to your character like they’re fleshed out well enough for my brain to read them as a person?”

For Comparison-- Two Characters:

Here’s an example of what is honestly a really well-written character (in a... very... ugh, look, the pervasive racism makes it terrible to read now and I just kind of wince and groan at it and wince even harder knowing how well it was received) because the character has caused Emotion in a Reader.

Scarlett Fucking O’Hara.

I hate her. I’m not even kidding, I just hate this self-absorbed bitch. She drives me nuts. I’d love to yeet her off a literary cliff and watch her drown.

...but I consider her a well-written character because she inspires emotion. I react to her. I legitimately read a page of “Gone With the Wind” (*again, I know, I’m sorry, the book’s slimy feel of ‘but... slavery was good!’ is just... horrific) and I want to grab the nearest heavy object and slam it onto her empty skull. She has obvious flaws--and they’re explicitly spelled out in the text--and those flaws totally fuck up her life. Scarlett doesn’t get what she wants because she is her own worst enemy in a lot of ways. And watching her make decisions based on what She Wants and then dealing with the aftermath feels legitimate. It feels pretty real to watch someone make a decision based on a want only to see them struggle with the result OF that decision. Not to mention the moment of realization that came too late, as let’s be fair, hindsight is 20/20 and a lot of us have had that ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhh...’ moment ourselves.

What Scarlett has a lot of, however, is Emotion. And I don’t mean she has a lot of emotionally wrenching scenes. What I mean is Scarlett is actively driven by or affected by An Emotion at nearly every part of her story, even when that Emotion is just some self-absorbed Glee at how she’s gonna one-up this whole town.

Let me compare my reactions to Miss “I’m So Self-Absorbed I Should Be Taxonomically Classified As A Sponge” O’Hara to a character that I... honestly couldn’t give less than a fuck about, despite having read six whole books she’s the main protagonist of.

Ayla of “Clan of the Cave Bears” Jean Auel fame.

In the first novel, Ayla is... actually kind of interesting. A Homo Sapien child found by Neanderthals and raised in their society, there’s a bit that can be read into just how hard it is to fit into a culture and how sometimes that involves more self-repression than is mentally healthy. And in the second novel, “Valley of the Horses,” all the parts with Ayla before her Male Perfection Love Interest shows up are also fairly interesting.

She’s alone, she’s fighting to survive with only her hard-earned skills to carry her. It’s great!

And then... Jondalar arrives and we see her through His Eyes.

I’m not sure exactly what happened here other than the novels (and Ayla) turn into a constant Display Of How Amazing Ayla Is. Everyone loves her! (And the people that don’t are Obviously Flawed and So Empty Inside.) She can do anything! She invents the needle! Horseback riding! Domesticating dogs! The travois! She’s drop-dead gorgeous, an accomplished healer, wants only to be a Good Wife (it’s a little icky, but considering the time period these books are set in, I give it a pass on that) and is always so confused as to why people seem amazed by her.

She becomes basically a Perfect Woman and to be honest, all her struggles after that just feel like they’re directly tied to how Perfect She Is. Ayla suddenly doesn’t have An Emotion behind her. She’s just a vessel for everyone’s awe that such a “perfect woman” exists. And it just... turns her completely fuckin’ flat.

What I’ve found after doing a LOT of reading is that a Writer should keep one big thing in mind.

(And this goes triple for stories that tote themselves on the representation platform.)

Emotion--the experience of it, the sharing of it, the looking for validation of it--is one of those defining things that make what we’d call the Human Experience.

People who are looking for representation in media are looking for actual representation. For a Person like them on the screen or page. Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to be a teenager struggling with a realization of sexuality, but you can ask people who do. And you can relate YOURSELF to that on some level.

Everyone in the world has had a moment where they’re trying to reconcile something about themselves with what the world expects or with what they expect from themselves. You can take that seed, that memory of sitting in your bedroom and listening to the same song on repeat while thinking wistful thoughts of what life could be like if This Was Different or imagining a future where What You Want is accessible, acceptable and within reach. You can find the Emotion and appeal to it.

I know that the experience of being gay or disabled or neurodivergent or trans or a minority is not universal; everyone has a different life, different experiences, different fears, worries, hopes, dreams.

And I say this in full awareness that someone could very rightly be angry at me for paring off societal issues and cultural problems to make this accessible to writers who may want to write a specific character FIRST and THEN find sensitivity readers to help them refine it*.

There’s a “but” to the whole “different life” thing.

Humans have felt the basic range of emotion across the board, across the world, across time, regardless of where or when or who they are. And a Character that makes you Feel is a character that you can give a fuck about. Pare off the labels and start with the tinest, most concentrated idea of who this person is so you can find their emotions to use in the story. Are they a dreamer? A fighter? A creator? An explorer? What Emotion drives them? Hope? Curiosity? Anger? Sorrow?

Because I personally have seen myself in characters that I have absolutely no surface experience in common with whatsoever, but I responded to the Emotion that drove them because I recognized it. I’d felt it. Maybe what created the Emotion was different (wildly so!) from what created it for me, but I had the Emotion. The character is having the Emotion.

And that makes me give a fuck about the outcome of their story, whether the personality carrying the Emotion makes me want to cut a bitch (fuck you Scarlett) or see them succeed in every aspect of life.

[*You will want sensitivity readers to refine the character because representation should actually represent and not be A Writer Getting Woke Points.]

#A Reader's Guide to Writing #On Writing #Reading is life #Writing is life

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blindbeta · 3 years

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Hi! First off, I'd like to say your blog has been an amazing resource and thank you for all the feedback you've given people. I'm writing a sci-fi/fantasy story and one of the protagonists is blind due to having no eyes. They are not human and the "no eyes" thing is not considered normal for their species. Their parents are well-meaning but horribly ableist to the point of funding a corrupt research facility in exchange for a possible "cure". I wanted to use this because I think it helps illustrate an aspect of their people's culture that needs to change as well as the desperation, misguided as it may be, to "help" a loved one, which is a theme that comes up later. However, looking at it again, I'm not sure how appropriate that is, given how damaging real life ableism is and how I am not disabled myself. I was also wondering what your thoughts are related to the kind of blind jokes where the joke has more to do with someone else forgetting the blind character can't see, like in Avatar

Blind Character With No Eyes, a Bit of Info on Prosthetic Eyes, Ableist Parents Who Want a Cure, and Possible Blind Jokes

Hi anon! Thanks for your question. I have helped someone with a similar question before, so I’ll use some of the same resources and if you need more help, feel free to ask.

I’m not sure how I feel about the no eyes thing. Personally I would prefer to see prosthetic eyes used in media more. If this character was born with no eyes, it might be okay, but generally the loss of eyes can affect the bone structure of the face. So, with that in mind, I assume this would also be a risk of being born with no eyes. Depending on the type of creature this character is, you might be able to deal with this if you account for it in the narrative. At the very least, they might have a ‘comforter’ put in to support the structure of their face.

Since this character is not human, it is up to you. If you go the prosthetic eyes route, you can make it more relatable for blind readers, especially because prosthetic eyes are uncommon in sci-fi creatures. I don’t have a prosthetic eye myself, but here is an FAQ about the process of getting a prosthetic eye. These fake eyes do cost a lot, but if the character’s parents fund a research facility, I don’t think it would be a problem. Joy Ross also has videos of her prosthetic eyes on YouTube. Her channel was suggested to me by a follower I helped with some prosthetic eye research.

As always, I suggest having at least one other blind character at minimum.

If you decide to continue with the no eyes thing, I would advise researching animals born with no eyes and seeing what happened with them. You might be able to research humans as well, but I don’t know how human-like your character is. You can also research how to write changes in bone structure due to a lack of eyes. If you don’t, the lack of changes should be explained somehow in the story. If you go this route, I would suggest adding more blind characters aside from the main character. My suggestion is at least two other blind characters with different kinds of blindness, but if you can add more, that would help.

As for the cure part, I like the focus on ableism and the ableism in wanting a cure for their blind child. I think it is a nice contrast to the prevalent cure narrative. It could also possibly help readers see how common and upsetting this can be, how wanting a cure when your child doesn’t tells them they aren’t accepted as they are and that their bodily autonomy is not respected as it should be. I will say that this is a very sensitive subject in real life and will require not only nuance, but also a few sensitivity readers. @sensitivityreaders should be useful.

This type of parenting is surprisingly common even if it takes different forms. It can be unwanted religious healing, discouraging blind kids from using a cane or reading Braille, assuming the child wants to be cured, limiting what the child is allowed to attempt, and surgeries. I have experience with many of these myself from different areas of my life, although not as much from my parents.

The sensitive part comes in with how you portray the parents. They should be relatable, but still portrayed as in the wrong. Because even loving their child does not mean they cannot be ableist, especially because their society, like ours, wouldn’t tell them they are wrong. The cure narrative is so prevalent that non-disabled people think it’s okay because they would want a cure for their disability if they had one. The reality is that, unless it causes them pain, many people with physical disabilities do not wish for a cure. A cure may even be impossible or painful for them and hoping for one might decrease their chances of getting aids they need or managing their disability or condition in a way that works best for them.

For example, would the parents discourage the character from using a cane while they wait for this cure? And is there even a cure for such a condition? There certainly isn’t one in real life.

As for if you should continue with the parental ableism plot, I’m not sure. Part of me thinks you could pull it off if you have a lot of sensitivity readers (with as many blind readers as possible). I also think having a few blind characters with supportive, accepting parents would be helpful. I also feel like it might be one of those stories I really like it if it is portrayed well. It isn’t that I think non-blind people shouldn’t write such a thing, but this is also one of those times where I don’t know what the wider community thinks either. And this could go badly if not handled well.

However, we also don’t see this type of story as often, with the cure being portrayed as obviously bad. With parents who are otherwise loving being portrayed as ableist because they want to cure their child. Something that is normally portrayed as a good thing by writers who don’t know what they’re doing.

I would suggest avoiding parents being otherwise abusive, forcing or coercing the character into surgeries, and otherwise taking away any of their bodily autonomy. This has real life consequences and I know I don’t want to read about it from the point of view of someone who has never experienced it. I also don’t want to see the character face unnecessarily physical altercations or violence or medical trauma.

I personally would feel better if this was just an emotional or mental thing. I don’t want to see the character get hurt or be forced into anything. It sounds like you aren’t planning on anything like that, but I wanted to share all my thoughts just in case they are helpful to you or anyone who is reading. I would also feel better if, after publishing this and being paid, you were able to donate a bit of your author rates to organizations for blind people in your country. Assuming you are going that route. If not, you could simply share some helpful links along with your story, both resources and educational links for people who aren’t disabled.

If you decide to write this plot, I’m going to say it should be fine for me personally as long as you also have sensitivity readers and have other blind characters (more than one extra) who has non-ableist parents.

In terms of the extra blind characters, here is my thinking so you have it all together. You need:

-at least 1 other blind character at minimum to avoid tokenism, if you don’t have 1 already.

-if you go with the no eyes thing, at least 2 other blind characters who have eyes.

-if you go with the prosthetic eyes, at least 1 other blind character.

-at least 2 other blind characters with accepting, supportive parents who aren’t ableist

That is the minimum. I always encourage as many blind characters as you would like to include.

Back to the parents plot. I wish I could give you a straight answer. Unfortunately I’m not sure myself. I would like to open this to any blind or otherwise disabled people who would like to share their thoughts on a non-disabled person writing a plot such as this. Should they write this or should it be more ownvoices? What might help you feel better about this if they decided to do it?

As for the jokes, I would proceed with caution. I thought they worked well in Avatar, but that was a specific situation and in real life those kinds of jokes can sometimes be cruel. To be fair, the characters always made it a point to apologize to Toph in the show. In real life, some of the jokes or reprimands I get are about how I should see something because it is right in front of my face. This can be embarrassing for me.

Can it be done well? Yes. Do I want to see everyone attempt it? No.

I wouldn’t mind if the blind character made some jokes themselves, but I would keep these to a minimum.

However, if you would really like to include a joke or two, you can always run them by a few sensitivity readers and see how they read. Some jokes might do well in specific situations and some might not. Jokes are pretty easy to edit in and out, so, as you write, I suggest making note of the joke and running it by sensitivity readers.

Here’s a post on blind jokes. It can be one of those things where if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it can stand out in a bad way and even seem cruel or uninformed if it isn’t called out as such. I don’t know if this will help, but here is another post I made, although this is about strangers who haven’t met blind people or have and still don’t know much about them, but make jokes anyway.

So, to wrap this up, I’ll leave you with this. Some of the information here isn’t as concrete as you may have liked. I can’t give you an answer for some of it. But if you are open to listening, that will show. Having a lot of different blind characters can help with almost any trope with a few exceptions, and getting multiple sensitivity readers will also help.

Good luck on planning your project!

-BlindBeta

#blind #ableism #the cure trope #the cure narrative #blind jokes #prosthetic eyes #blind characters eye conditions #blind characters ; eyes #writeblr community #writing blind characters #blind sensitivity reader

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nightcoremoon · 4 years

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weird opinion but christians aren't religious.

ok so like, jews generally follow god's rules, muslims follow allah's rules, hindus probably follow their gods rules, so on and so forth. and overall they do it out of faith; they do it because they want to honor the deity who loves them rather than because society forces them to.

granted the zionists and the radical extremists and the zealots do exist but as loud minorities and thus are statistical outliers & don't matter.

christians are... a different breed.

"if you aren't x branch and dont obey y rules you'll go to hell so we'll fucking murder you" is pretty much the main driving force behind a significant portion of christianity in history. the catholics, the protestants, the orthodoxy, all are built on a foundation of fear, anger, and hatred. it's shaped the way society developed; in the 4 nations that did the most genocidal imperialist colonialism- England, France, Spain, and Italy- a combination of convenient coastal locations, naval prowess, military tendency, christianity, and ultranationalism lead them down a path of missionaries, holding bibles in one hand and bloodstained knives in the other. the religion is inseparable from the culture and inseparable from the horrible things done in the name of their god, and the resulting cancers of society we feel today from the campaigns of slaughter. xenophobia. capitalism. savage barbarism via sensationalized capitol punishment. misogyny. queerphobia. gender fascism. classism. racism. all of these issues in the "civilized world" stem predominantly from those four nations and the disease ridden pestilent filth some call pilgrims.

here's something interesting:

there are less than 1 million rastafari in the world.

there are less than 5 million shinto in the world.

there are less than 25 million jews in the world.

there are less than 30 million sikhs in the world.

there are roughly 100 million african cultural religious adherents in the world.

there are less than 400 million chinese cultural religious adherents in the world.

there are about 500 million buddhists in the world.

there are about 1.1 billion hindus in the world.

there are about 1.2 billion nonreligious people in the world.

there are 1.6 billion muslims in the world.

and one final statistic

there are over 2.1 billion christians in the world.

the jewish count is a highball, rounded up, and includes several different definitions of jewish including people who are only one quarter. so for every single person who is even remotely jewish, there are more than 8 christians. for every hindu, there are 4 christians. for every atheist, agnostic, or "other", 2 christians. this frightening statistic should set off warning bells for everyone who is involved in a discussion about religion. and anyone who knows BASIC world history and can correlate data at all can probably piece together what I'm putting down.

now, I may be slightly biased here considering my eclectic religious beliefs. now, I personally believe that there is some primary force of energy that may or may not manifest itself as a humanoid being, that engineered the most basic laws of physics in the universe: atomic magnetism. as can be inferred by planck's constant and its implications, our universe is digital, written in binary. an electron either moves or doesn't move. there are no other options. so I genuinely believe in some form of intelligent design; whether it's a bearded guy on a cloud, some dude with six arms and an elephant for a face, just a big swirling pool of ectoplasm, or a big ol' plate of spaghetti and meatballs, something is out there that we are physically incapable of contacting from our plane of existence, just as a drawing on a piece of paper cannot reach out to interact with the world: a gif will move on its own but it will never acknowledge our existence, even if it could think by itself. and all the different mythologies of the world- egyptian, greek, norse, shinto, whatever- very well could be the agents of that unknown "god". perhaps anubis, ra, and bastet are just angels with animal heads that all of the peoples of ancient egypt saw and were like oh I guess this must be a god. maybe zeus and loki were the same person with a magic dick who fucked a bunch of animals in both greece and the scandinavian countries and spawned all of the horrible half-animal monstrosities that, idk, made vishnu think "well I have to kill that" and caused the biblical flood or something. maybe the jewish god gifted wisdom to siddhartha for sitting under a fig tree for 6 years through the angel pomona [roman goddess of fruit, had to google that one], so buddha gets his wisdom from demeter and is in nirvana right now right a step up from hades on yggdrasil the world tree keeping an eye on his charge persephone. any theory could theoretically be true but we ants of humans will never fucking know because we can't just point a telescope at the magellanic clouds and say "look, there's amaterasu with russell's teapot, and she's having tea with... *rubs eyes* lemmy kilmister??? wow I guess gods are real after all!" it's impossible to know the secrets of our universe because of the very restrictive nature of the universe itself. is it a circle? is it a donut? WE DONT FUCKIN KNOW.

we cannot know what religion is truthful.

""anyone who says that any one religion is more or less true than any other is a fucking moron, and if they're suggesting that White Western European Colonial Imperialist Protestantism is the one true faith, they're probably a fucking racist colonizer who beats his wife/sister and burns gays at the stake. and considering how that exact demographic is typically the one that murdered people for not converting to their religion, I don't think they have the intellectual non-deranged ability to make those logical connections.

again, I'm not saying that there AREN'T a lot of people of every religion who are evil assholes who contributed to mass genocide. israelites killed palestinians. shiites killed sunnis. hutus killed tutsis. danes killed geats. turks killed armenians. the ottoman empire has as much blood on its hands as the holy roman empire. germans who called themselves aryans but weren't actually aryan killed jews. but all of these tragedies were isolated incidents rather than repeated patterns over the course of two thousand years. not like christianity was and is.

just look at the United States, Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, & India's British Raj. Britain, France, Spain, and Italy, by extension Protestantism and Catholicism, are the shared factor between the long and bloody history fraught with massacring indigenous populations who wouldn't convert religions. native americans, indigenous canadians, latin americans but predominantly mexicans, the eastern chinese, coastal africans, aborigine aussies, indians- coastal coastal coastal. true the western chinese and the mongols/hunnu and xinjiang muslims haven't exactly been on civil terms and the silk road has always been a battleground and the middle east was already tenuous before murrica bombed them for oil but those happened in such a spread out area among asia which is FUCKING HUGE, MIND YOU! but also that's three high traffic places with massive diversity, it's human nature to have conflict, but not nearly to the same level as all of the shit christianity has done to the world. it's impossible to separate the religion from the cultures; victorian england without protestantism is just dirty people who die at 15 from having their 3rd child. italy without the catholicism is just grass and cheese. france and spain without religion are just kingdoms that fought wars with england for forever and now just make food that's one part delicious and three parts horrifying. religion is directly responsible for a significant portion of the evils those countries committed. one religion in particular.

they don't practice religion the same way as the rest do. they aren't faithful to their god. they don't follow his rules out of love but out of fear. they execute dissenters without a second thought, heresy they cry. they execute women and little girls for being free thinking or having sickness associated with mercury poisoning in the water, witch they cry. they slaughter men women and kids alike in the name of cramming their beliefs down the natives throats, we're chasing out the snakes they cry, we're bringing god to your godless people they cry, we're just civilizing you they cry. they shit in the streets and proudly display rotting corpses and leave the impoverished disabled and starving to die alone and whip their slaves and rape teenage girls and scrap in the streets while sopping wet with spilled ale over insignificant insults and stab people to death in the night and never even fucking BATHE, and they have the nerve to say the natives were uncivilized. the nerve. because hey. they read a magic book they stole from a culture who stole from another culture who stole from another culture, mistranslating each time from hebrew to greek to italian to english, and they think they're better because their skin is white.

christians never evolved. their mentalities have stayed the same. all thatms advanced has been technology. that's it. they're still the same evil disgusting degenerate bastards they always were. they just have the money they stole to buy stained glass windows, rosary beads, giant tacky metal statues, bigass robes, leather, and printing presses. and as time passed they used the money they continued to steal to buy cars and websites and radio stations and commit felony tax evasion and secretly molest children and line the pockets of the politicians.

all of their holidays are stolen from pagans anyway.

so fuck christmas. fuck easter. fuck lent. fuck the golden calf christian holidays that the tiny minded fragile snowflake conservatives lose their collective shit over because the pandemic response common sense stipulations won't let them buy the shit they can't afford with money they shouldn't have for people they don't even LIKE, all in the name of tradition, tradition! the rituals that worship something so much worse than satan or baphomet or pan or whatever: the dollar. they buy all the new shiny shit they can, at the expense of the chinese kids that the corporate pigs outsource to, buy the pine trees and the coca cola vunderbar and the fake mint corn syrup Js and watch the same shitty cookie cutter white supremacist hallmark fash movies and stuff their kids full of enough sugar to go into a goddamn coma when the african slaves who pick the cocoa beans will never get to know what actually being a kid will ever feel like because they're gonna die from falling into a combine harvester and be eternally forgotten to history and no christian will ever give a shit because they don't fucking care about what they don't see on their safe space news or hear on their safe space radio or read on their safe space social media. they think their worst sin is eating cheeseburgers so instead they'll go eat a mcchicken or chick fil a or an arby's chicken sandwich instead but not at popeyes because "that place is sketchy" and by that they mean they don't wanna eat where black people eat, that's why cracker barrel was so popular for so many white christians for so long because it had racially segregated seating until barely 20 years ago.

they don't love jesus. they love a paper doll they shove into their back pockets until every other sunday where they go to a fucking mall with a baptism waterslide and raise their hands like a bunch of dumbass weirdos and away to adult contemporary indie schlock with the word jesus pasted into a boring-ass hetero romance song, pat themselves on the back, then go to starbucks to scream slurs and misgenderings at 14 year old starbucks baristas who give them a cappamochalattechino instead of a fucking carmamochalattechino because you mumbled under the mask you didn't even fucking cover your nose with because you don't give a shit about the virus beyond how it inconveniences you.

they are horrible people who pretend to be good. until you suggest the slightest infinitely small inconvenience to them that would alter their holiday plans even the littlest smidge. then they would kill you if not for the police. don't get me started on them because you know by now what I'd say about those fuckers. but they'll gladly wear shirts about how they'll kill you. how they'll go back 200 years. how they'll murder you and watch you slowly suffer because their primate brains shoot a million endorphins when they watch things die by their hands because they never evolved a sense of empathy, compassion, or morality beyond how wearing a cross necklace will remove any of the consequences they will face in their afterlife.

they are horrible people who pretend to be good. unless you're gay or black or trans or Not Christian™ or mexican or disagree with them about politics economics sociology science technology music or movies. assimilate or die. assimilate or die. assimilate or die.

they don't deserve special treatment for their false idols.

they aren't better than jews or muslims.

they're worse.

so much worse.

and they should be stopped.""

-Nightingale Quietioca

save as draft arch draft bookmark draft where did I put my keys contra code kontra kode I need to remember this and copy it buzzwords keywords find it later please god tumblr don't bork on me this is good stream of consciousness repackage repackage change the words this is a great character study if I do say so myself thanks 3am me you're welcome 3am me

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cosplayswitzerlandaskblog · 4 years

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Unlike last time Hetalia got a new season, the response has not been particularly positive, and I’m seeing a lot of twisted feelings towards the show and the fandom to a point where it seems long time content creators are stepping away from it. I know anyone still active who follows me either are or were fans of Hetalia, so it should be relevant for all y’all.

As a fan who never fell out of the show, I find the response sad though healthy, and even if I know I ghosted you all on tumblr (sorry) because of time constraints and mental health, I still make the occasional CMVs. Fact is, I do not let go of special interests very easily. It seems a lot of you all started watching the show at 10-14 years old, where I myself was a bit older – 17 – and had grown a bit more. Long story short, my Naruto phase was your Hetalia phase, and no, it’s not pretty. You’re young and stupid and don’t know much critical thinking and make mistakes, and you have to forgive yourself for those mistakes, especially when the content you consume is associated with the real world in a sensitive subject.

But after seeing all these posts explaining all the bad we see from Hetalia, I wanted to make a post explaining what I learned from it – all the good that can come with a show like this if you stay aware of perspective. I am not excusing all the bad that came with it, for WWII is a serious event in history that should never be forgotten nor made fun of, but here goes:

I went from a ‘war-is-cool’ history buff to one who truly delved in and learned the intricacies of history, being fascinated with the ‘hows’ and the ‘whys’ as well as getting an excuse to look at the histories of nations which I’d never otherwise be interested in, and I know a lot of other people in the fandom did the same. This is how history should be known, as that is how we can truly apply it to the real world.

I learned to separate people from their countries. To give an example that’ll hit close to much of tumblr, when I started Hetalia I hated Americans with a passion because of the road “you” had put the world on, and I considered all y’all dumb and bad as a cause of it. Getting that excuse to take an ACTUAL look at how your nation functioned and what communities truly hid behind the borders, I learned instead that your government is corrupt as shit, your society is rigged against you and you have been forced to stand by and watch as chaos happens. It got applied to the world as a whole, where I considered other nations being as dynamic as my own, with people both good and bad, and the actions of the nation is even less of a reflection of the people in the cases of corrupt democracies or dictatorships.

I separated from Colonial world views. I was never actively racist, brought up in a proper home, and already before Hetalia I fiercely protected the rights of Muslims who are often mistreated in my nation and tried to hear them out when possible. But I was a Westerner, and even if the nation I came from had barely participated in invasions, I had learned to consider my culture ‘correct’ and native and African cultures ‘primitive’. While the journey was long, a step wise process of realizing things like there was nothing inherently ethically wrong eating dogs or partially incubated duck eggs, only in how the animals were acquired, that cultural progress is heavily dependent on perspective and that fucking genocide of native peoples still happen in this damn century, Hetalia was the stepping stone which gave me the interest in other nations to expand my world view. I probably ain’t done here – I have a whole life of outside influences to unlearn – but I’m further than most people I know in my near surroundings, and I’ve even managed to move my parents who originally taught me to respect people of all kinds in the first place.

I learned Nazis were people. This is a conversation which often comes up here on tumblr, and the demonization Nazi Germany and its government directly allows actual Nazis and fascists like Richard Spencer a free pass because they look groomed and proper. Until then, I’d simply assumed no one was ‘stupid enough to be a Nazi’ because of the atrocities of WWII and therefore looked at the world naively. Realizing how little true support Nazis had during WWII and similarly anyone could end down that pungent rabbit hole, I became careful of what I excused on social media and allowed myself to doubt seemingly normal people if their behaviour was alarming – such as the police man who is supposed to be a damn ‘hero’ of society.

I learned how to deal with material sensitive to others. A common problem in the fandom has always been the cosplaying and portrayal of Nazis, especially at cons and the like, and in a similar vein – I did blackface once because of Hetalia. The horrible thing about this is that blackface is immensely common in Europe – at least my own country – and blackface frequently happens at schools during ‘international’ events, where whole classrooms are assigned to portray a designated country. A whole of two times – in 6th grade as well as 2nd grade of high school – I was exposed to blackface as my class was given an African nation to portray – Somalia the first time, Kenya the second. No one, adult, teen or child, are aware of the history of race imitation in my country, but by the second time I was supposed to participate in dressing up as an African tribe, I’d understood the issue – thanks to Hetalia. My friend group of white, privileged, European teens discussed what symbolism was appropriate at cons or in videos – could we wear the Iron Cross? The Nazi flag? What if we burned it during the video? These thoughts are not usually a part of the mind of European youth, and I consider that a grave problem which leads to people making fun of ‘triggers’, downplaying racial issues and the like.

It offered me a means to make history personal. The biggest struggle for good history teachers and the reason we are often made to read and write letters from the periods we study is to make it seem real and get a emotional connection to these past, lost peoples. Hetalia offered puppets for me to place into historical contexts to make them truly real – the main driver pushing me away from mere fascination of war, since I suddenly felt the horrors of warfare through the characters that I loved. Things like Elizabeth I’s court, the conquests of Rome, the dissolution of the Kalmar Union, the battlefield of Somme, the invasion of America, damn slavery becomes different when something you already know is a part of it and you can see them in there. Hearing of people of the past should in itself be enough, and for the closest parts of history (WWII and afterwards) it always was for me, but we are human. We cannot understand the size of a billion, and we struggle understanding the lives of those living centuries before us, unless we are offered context.

I’m not blind to the issues of the fandom or the show. I was here for ‘the r*pist, the pervert and the p*dophile’, I know of South Korean and Chinese issues with the show, and I heard the gassing joke in the show’s dub and got nauseous from discomfort and anger. I’ve always been in the fringe of the fandom due to my social disabilities, so I don’t know everything that happened, but I’ve seen many racist OCs and disrespecting of historical sites. It’s not pretty, but I will believe these people, who were likely young, likely learned in time. And I may have been able to learn these things by other means, but not in the same way, and not through personal interest and research that’s helped me become sceptical and analysing of the world around me.

At its core, Hetalia is about watching a normal, nerdy guy learn how to draw, using stereotypic country personifications mainly from the perspective of Japan. It’s natural he chooses Japan, since he’s Japanese, and WWII is unfortunately the automatic historical event for most common people to focus on – but Hetalia doesn’t even solely focus on that, but is an amalgamation of vaguely correct historical situations played out by the characters, and often it is with the intent of comedy rather than the grimness often associated with historical settings which allows a wider audience than merely history nerds.

What I want you all to do is learn from your mistakes and forgive your younger selves for not knowing better. Maybe reflect on what you got from the show, rather than what you lost. A new generation of young Hetalians is likely coming with the new season, and us old timers might be able to help them avoid pitfalls if we stay around to teach them. The best of the show is compassion towards the people of the world combined and love of history, as I believe Hima wanted it – the worst is Nazi apologetics and racial stereotyping. We decide in what direction we take it, and what lessons we bring into the future.

TL;DR: As a lot of media intended for older audiences, Hetalia is a show which has to be watched critically, which makes it dangerous for young people to watch unhinged, but it also opens up for interest in the world beyond the borders you live within. We should be aware of the issues and learn from them, but in and of itself the show has a lot of good to offer in learning compassion for other nations and cultural groups.

#impressive how active I've become these last weeks #I kinda feel embarrassed #but Hetalia is coming back #and a lot of people are feeling dread because of it #my own feelings are mixed #but Hetalia is was gave me friends and started expanding my world view #other people might get a similar benefit from it #and I want them to have the chance #I'd love to hear the opinions of others tho #also #welcome to my usual iconic long posts

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mannatea · 4 years

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Excuse me I want the opinions about the apocalyptic humans are the real monsters please!

>Are you sure you would like to board this train?

Anyway, sure! I have a lot of thoughts. And opinions. And considerations. Hopefully this train of thought is worth the trip. All aboaaaaard!

Part I: This Mentality Doesn’t Exist in Just Fiction!

I take issue with this phrasing as a general rule because humans are still human. Calling them “monsters” for their evil deeds—something everyone is capable of performing, by the way—is just...asinine to the nth degree. Sure, we’d all like to imagine we’re not capable of Great Evil, but WE ARE.

I don’t want to dive into Purity Police Politics here, but here’s a question for (general) you: where is the line drawn? What makes a “bad” person “a monster” vs. just being a bad/thoughtless/careless person?

I think we can all agree that objectively some acts are evil. If you’ve been following the news this year, you probably have a million examples, but (TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS LINK) here’s a particularly terrible one; they even call the abusers monsters in this news article. Why? I think you know why. They want to emotionally distance themselves. They want to believe that these people are unique in their ability to cause harm and suffering to another human being.

But WOWEE!!! Spoiler alert: the writer is just as capable of abuse as the people who committed the crime!!!!

Don’t get me wrong, I think most people are UNLIKELY to commit a crime like that, or even hurt another person with malicious intent or hatred in their hearts. But to pretend we are not all capable of it is putting yourself on a pedestal above the rest of humanity, and...I dunno. That’s awfully cocky.

Tumblr in particular loves to talk about toxicity and abuse, and they love to paint themselves as “better than” or “above” that behavior, but 1) we are all capable of toxicity, have been problematic in our lifetime, and have probably done something abusive to someone else at one point or another, and 2) we must remember that this is true of everyone else as well as ourselves. The important thing is that we strive to behave better, to learn to recognize when we are hurting someone else, to CARE THAT WE MIGHT BE HURTING SOMEONE ELSE, and to actively work to just be better/kinder people.

I totally get the desire to call a cruel, abusive, or evil person “a monster” but THEY ARE NOT. They are people. People are not infallible. Monsters by definition are imaginary creatures, but the abuse these people inflict is real. The crimes are real. The hurt is real. The effect these people have on those around them is as real as they themselves are, and to pretend for even a moment that it’s not, that they are somehow separate from you and I, that the rules apply differently for them than you and I, is just...harmful?

Because again, where do you draw the line?

Part II: Using Monster as an Insult

Monsters are creations, always, as they are by definition imaginary creatures. I think some might look to the Nature vs. Nurture Debate when it comes to criminal acts to try and justify their use of the word “monster” to refer to people like the abusers in the link above (aka: “society shaped them into that, it was never their natural inclination”) but that feels vaguely like cherry-picking to me, and I don’t like it.

Also, “Monster” is used as such a joking insult online these days (you’re a monster for dissing my anime waifu headcanons) it’s lost its bite if it ever had it to begin with. My beloved cat CiCi’s nickname was ‘Monster’ because the first Christmas I had her she rolled around on the Christmas presents and hissed at anyone who tried to move them. We also have an energy drink named Monster. Cookie Monster. Created ‘monsters’ with their own lore like werewolves and vampires and kelpies and Bigfoot.

So you risk one of three things by calling someone a monster: 1) it comes across like a joking insult/cute pet name, 2) you’re putting them on par with beings that literally do not exist except in fiction, and that half of this hellsite wants to fuck MANY people actually enjoy talking/reading about as part of an entire literary genre, or 3) you’re saying they’re literally not human beings and therefore not worth being considered as such.

None of these options are good.

Part III: “Humans Were the Real Monsters All Along!™”

Maybe when literacy levels were super low and only the wealthy had the leisure time and access to literature they could read for fun, this kind of reveal was Intriguing, but I’m here to tell you that it’s never been interesting to any person who has lived in the real world, like, ever.

I feel like for children this may be different (I dunno, as a child you don’t always understand what’s going on around you/are more likely to be sheltered from these kinds of truths outside of fiction), but I highly doubt that, say, peasants in 1620 weren’t well aware that humans were capable of evil.

Sure, they did the same thing we like to do and called people who committed particularly heinous acts ‘monsters’ (probably for the same reasons we do as well as because they wanted to believe they were safe in their communities and that their neighbors were also different and not capable of doing that sort of thing) but again you see the general level of denial:

This person is not like me.

I am different.

I must call them something else.

Which, yes you are different, but the difference is NOT in WHAT you are, it’s in HOW YOU ACT and the emotions you act upon!

Society has a history of doing this separation, and of revealing in fiction that humans are actually the real monsters, but again, those of us who exist in the real world already know that human beings are capable of great evil. Even if we are surprised by the level of vileness or not is irrelevant; we all know that logically this kind of thing happens in the real world and that human beings are responsible for it.

Part IV: Bad Reveal. BAD!

In some pieces of media, the writers go out of their way to be like, “THE MONSTERS WE’VE HATED ALL THIS TIME AND HAVE BEEN FIGHTING WERE ONCE HUMAN LIKE US. WE COULD BECOME LIKE THEM! OH NO!”

Which...lol.

Let’s look at zombies, a monster created for the sake of this kind of narrative. They were “once human” but are now mindless beings completely unaware of the hurt they are inflicting, even on those they might have known in their lifetime. Zombies can infect living human beings, turning them into zombies. The humans in these stories don’t want to become zombies, so they fight the zombies (with varying results, depending on the particular piece of media you choose to consume).

Zombie stories have a huge cult following; people love this kind of thing. On the surface you might think zombie stories fit the above narrative, and they do, but like...literally. “They were human once but aren’t anymore!” is almost never a reveal in these stories; it’s something everyone already knows and is actively fighting against.

"Humans are the real monsters” rarely has much to do with the zombies. It almost always occurs when a human in the group of survivors betrays the others in a big way.

The betrayer is then painted as the REAL monster here, the REAL threat. You might notice that lot of post-apocalyptic and/or humans-vs.-monsters fiction follows the same pattern: humans fight monsters, (optional ingredient: the monsters were once human!), and then they find out that Actually, Humans Were the Real Monsters All Along!

Again, anyone reading this post already knows that. They go out in public and see people who can’t be assed to wear a mask. “Wah it itches.” “Wah I can’t breathe.” “Wah it’s inconvenient for me and I’m not infected I know I’m fine!”

These same maskless fools would tell you to your face that the betrayer in these stories is a monster. They themselves, however, are not capable of hurting other people! They’re better than that! That person is a monster! They would never betray their allies. Except they do, every day, by refusing to wear a mask to protect other people from themselves. “Just in case” isn’t a good enough reason for them because it’s an inconvenience and they don’t like how it feels.

Sure, wearing a mask during a pandemic seems like such a small thing compared to, you know, betraying your fellow survivors in the apocalypse, but you have to consider context. If wearing a mask during a pandemic that has literally killed huNDreDS oF thousands is so inconvenient they won’t even wear it for the 3 minutes they are in the gas station...would you trust this person in a post-apocalyptic setting? Would they gather food for a physically disabled survivor? Would they literally fight to protect someone ill? Share resources fairly? You know if they can’t wear a mask for three minutes in a whole damn day they wouldn’t step up like that. They could easily end up being the betrayer in a situation like that. They’ve never been desperate enough to do something like that before, and they probably don’t think they’re capable of it now, but we know what they do when something is a minor inconvenience to them. Imagine a major inconvenience. Imagine their whole life being turned upside-down!

My issues with the reveal of “Humans are actually the real monsters!” are many, but the biggest issue I take with it from a writing perspective is that it’s almost never accurate when you look at the scope of the story.

Tens of thousands of zombies vs. one (1) betrayer: and you’re telling me the betrayer is the real monster? The bigger threat??? BULLSHIT. Sure, it takes a real asshole to betray people during the literal apocalypse, but that act doesn’t take away from the fact that they are human, LET ALONE the fact that using this particular point as a Big Important Reveal tells me you’re a shit writer who thinks you’re smart.

(For the record, you might have a character who will prioritize this and consider that betrayer the bigger threat, but we’re not talking about character development/motivations so much as overarching narratives the writer includes in the story separate from that.)

Anyway, I’m not saying stories with this premise in them are shit, I’m saying that this concept as a big plot reveal/climax of a story is shit. How can this even be a reveal worth revealing? Has anyone ever turned on the news?

Part V: Drawing the Line and Other Particulars

I definitely do not have the expertise or the experience to make this a detailed point, so please forgive me for that, but let’s talk about that line again, because this point absolutely cannot be overlooked.

Where is it? What makes one person who commits a crime or evil act a monster and not another? Is it the act committed? Their mental state? What about the mentally ill? What about neurodivergent people? What about children?

As an extreme example: is a woman who throws her baby off a building a monster? NO!!! SHE’S HUMAN and she did something terrible. We might like to say we’re different and we would neVeR do that, but we don’t know because we have never been in her shoes. We are missing context even the courts will never have or fully grasp. We do not know or understand her mental state no matter what the doctors say. Calling her a monster doesn’t do anything but put her in a separate category from the rest of us, which is harmful on SO many levels, starting with the fact that it means nobody talks to her, nobody gets her side of the story, nobody listens, and so we have no perspective, no understanding, no desire to learn.

Things like this are why it took so long for PPD to even begin to be understood, and why EVEN NOW women are afraid to talk about it and all related issues. I follow a ob-gyn on YouTube and the amount of women in her comments who thank her (oftentimes VERY emotionally) for openly saying it’s normal to not immediately feel a connection to your baby when they are born is mind-blowing. Not everyone will feel that! Sometimes you have to get to know your baby because they are an individual person and that is how love works for some people! But 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 100 years ago: that was unthinkable to admit. You lied about it and you felt like a terrible person instead. What kind of mom doesn’t love their baby instantly? You must be the worst. Meanwhile, the woman you’re getting your information from doesn’t feel that bond either and is lying about it because she feels pressured and just as bad as you do. All this suffering, and for what?! Stigma. Being told you’re not human if you don’t feel like that.

Don’t you know the bond with that baby suffered from this issue, too? Don’t you think it affected the parent/child relationship for the rest of their lives?

Not everyone who commits a crime falls into a category like this, and maybe the woman in my example doesn’t either, but I hope your takeaway is that calling people monsters keeps them separated from other people to the point where their story becomes just as fictional as the monsters they are called, and when it is heard it is enjoyed as fiction, rather than seriously considered.

Let’s not pretend that this separation of humanity into “human” and “not human” based on the way someone acts hasn’t hindered progress in the mental health/medical fields for everyone. When people are not considered human they are not given human treatment, rights, consideration, or empathy.

Part VI: TL;DR:

we are all human and capable of doing bad things.

the difference between a bad person and you or I is a lot more complex and multilayered than “they did a terrible thing and I did not do that terrible thing.”

calling people ‘monsters’ for the bad things they do dehumanizes them and may:

strip them of responsibility for their actions by insinuating they were born that way or they aren’t actually human like you and I, and/or

prevent them from getting the help they need/from others who have not done anything bad yet getting the help they need

it’s not a good reveal in fiction

because most of us already know people commit evil acts,

and it is oftentimes is presented in a way that doesn’t actually make sense for the story.

Sorry that it got long and probably isn’t very well organized! I wrote it in bursts at work. But anyway yeah...

I don’t mind when characters feel this way about other characters, but to see it used as a narrative feature/reveal/et cetera in fiction is like, so tiresome. No shit, Sherlock. I turn on the news. I followed true crime for a while. WE ALL KNOW PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF DOING TERRIBLE, AWFUL THINGS TO OTHER LIVING THINGS.

Having *that* be your big reveal in a story is so childish it embarrasses me to see it. Wow, congrats on figuring out something at 47 that the rest of us learned on the playground before we turned 7!

#highwind91 #answered mail #tw: abuse #long post #idk i feel like posting this is a bad idea...??#oh well it's make idiot decisions day!#it's ok to reblog if u want thx for asking chi!

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mediaevalmusereads · 3 years

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Master of Crows. By Grace Draven. Self Published (?), 2009.

Rating: 2/5 stars

Genre: fantasy romance

Part of a Series? Yes, Master of Crows #1

Summary: What would you do to win your freedom? This is the question that sets bondwoman, Martise of Asher, on a dangerous path. In exchange for her freedom, she bargains with her masters, the mage-priests of Conclave, to spy on the renegade sorcerer, Silhara of Neith. The priests want Martise to expose the sorcerer's treachery and turn him over to Conclave justice. A risky endeavor, but one she accepts without hesitation--until she falls in love with her intended target. Silhara of Neith, Master of Crows, is a desperate man. The god called Corruption invades his mind, seducing him with promises of limitless power if he will help it gain dominion over the world. Silhara struggles against Corruption's influence and searches for ways to destroy the god. When Conclave sends Martise as an apprentice to help him, he knows she's a spy. Now he fights a war on two fronts -against the god who would possess him and the apprentice who would betray him. Mage and spy search together for a ritual that will annihilate Corruption, but in doing so, they discover secrets about each other that may damn them both. Silhara must decide if his fate, and the fate of nations, is worth the soul of the woman he has come to love, and Martise must choose continued enslavement or freedom at the cost of a man's life. And love.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: sexual content, blood, magical violence

Overview: After being a little lukewarm on Radiance, I decided to give Grace Draven one more try, mostly because her books seem to be popular on tumblr. I picked up Master of Crows on a whim, and though I think it has more plot than Radiance, the main characters were really not to my taste. For me, Martise was too passive and Silhara was too much of a jerk to be likeable, and the massive power imbalance between the two meant that I didn’t really root for their relationship to succeed. Thus, this book only gets 2 stars from me.

Writing: Draven’s prose is fairly straight-forward. It’s easy to get through and it flows well, giving the reader just enough to know what’s going on. I don’t really have any criticisms for its simplicity because Draven is writing within romance, and the point isn’t to be poetic. Rather, it gets the job done, and I think most readers will appreciate that.

Where I do think I can criticize this book is in the repetition of phrases. More than twice, I saw the term “half mast” used to convey when a character’s eyes were half open, and I think I saw “tattoo” used multiple times to describe a rapid rhythm or tapping. It’s not the biggest deal, but I was definitely pulled out of the story when I noticed these things.

I also think I can criticize Draven for telling us some things that should have been shown. We’re told, for instance, that Silhara isn’t a noble man, that he’s selfish and ambitious, etc. but we’re never really shown scenes of him acting out of ambition or being actually tempted to give in to Corruption’s influence. I would have liked to see Silhara be put in positions where he is making choices or doing things that make the reader think he was susceptible to Corruptions influence. Maybe we see him researching spells for making himself more powerful. Maybe something happens on page with Conclave that is so bad, he starts seriously considering Corruption’s offer to give him revenge. It could be argued that we do get some of that, but it felt like everything was told to us, or happened in the past, and we were expected to absorb it.

Plot: Most of the non-romance plot of this book revolves around Silhara trying to figure out how to destroy the god Corruption while Martise acts as a spy, trying to get some dirt on him so the Conclave (a collection of priests/mages) will have an excuse to kill him. To be honest, I thought the initial premise was a good one; I liked the idea of conflicting loyalties and the eventual shift from enemies (of a sort) to lovers.

However, I do not think this plot was handled well, mainly because Corruption seemed to be a background threat. Multiple times throughout the book, we see Silhara be more or less tormented by the god, whether through dreams that keep him up at night, through disrupting Silhara’s magic abilities, through manifestations, and through temporary possession. While scary, I don’t think these scenes had much lasting impact, which didn’t make Corruption feel like a real threat. If Silhara is being kept awake at night, for example, I want to see scenes where his sleep deprivation gets him in trouble. If his magic is out of control, I want to see scenes where he has to decide whether he wants to risk using it or if he should go through his life without his powers. Something other than Corruption just being a lurking boogeyman that occasionally pops up and becomes a nuisance rather than a real, omnipresent force.

I also think Martise’s plot was a bit weak, mainly because we’re never really shown her having conflicting feelings or arguing with herself about whether or not to give Silhara to the Conclave. Martise is a slave, and her master promises to free her if she can get dirt on Silhara. While fine, the desire for freedom never seemed like a driving force for Martise; we never see her digging through Silhara’s study for potential dirt, of trying to eavesdrop or do other things that would show her actively trying to achieve her goal. Instead, Martise is rather passive, waiting for information to come to her, and she never really wrestles with her life as a slave, not the decision of whether or not to report Silhara once she falls in love with him. I would have liked to see more angst or at least more of an evolution where it felt like Martise had an arc independent of her service or usefulness to Silhara.

Characters: Martise, our heroine, is rather passive and seems to exist mainly to be used. I really didn’t like that she seemed to have no ambition or agency; she mostly waited for things to happen to her, and only shows agency towards the end, when the big showdown happens. Even her “gift” - the magic ability which lays dormant in her until Silhara awakens it - seems to be built around her being a tool to be used, and I was extremely disappointed that her arc didn’t seem to be about empowering her as a woman or as an ex-slave.

Silhara, our hero, is the type of love interest I absolutely hate. He’s extremely powerful, but is a complete jerk to the heroine and commits random violence towards other people out of jealousy. While we’re told over and over again that Martise loves him because he’s a good person at heart, I really didn’t see it. He not only beats up someone who speaks poorly of Martise, but he also seems comfortable ordering her around and treating her as a servant until the very end. The only redeeming qualities he had seemed to be that he doesn’t like people treating women poorly (which, ok, I guess) and he’s kind to his servant, Gurn. Other than that, he’s not an alluring figure.

Side characters were fun, if under utilized. Gurn is Silhara’s mute servant who uses a kind of sign language to communicate. I really liked this character because it inserts some disability representation, and I liked his relationship with Martise. The two seemed to bond over their shared status as servants, and I honestly wish there had been more of an arc or exploration about class with these two. Other characters served their purposes. Cumbria, Martise’s owner, is largely absent, but manages to look bad in every way. He’s not a super compelling antagonist just because he’s not on the page too often, but when he is, I think Draven did a good job not making him over-the-top evil. He’s mostly just greedy and petty, and I wish he had been used more deliberately in conjunction with Silhara’s exile as a commentary on corruption within religious orders. Corruption, the god, is a different story. As I explained in the plot section above, Corruption isn’t much more than a boogeyman, and I got really tired of him really fast.

I’m not sure how to feel, however, about the Kurman people in this book. The Kurmans are a nation/ethnic group/tribe/society with some rather odd gender dynamics. Women can apparently own property and vote, and they are supposedly respected, but they are kept separate from men much of the time, wait on men at feasts, can’t meet men’s eyes unless they want to communicate sexual availability, and so on. It was rather bizarre to me, and I seemed to be getting conflicting ideas about whether or not this society was feminist or not. I also wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be modeled on any real-life ethnic groups or societies; they are described as wearing pointy shoes, having swarthy/dark skin, having multiple wives, etc. so I got the impression that they might have been like Arabs, Mongols, or Ethiopians (due to the food they eat, etc), but if so, I didn’t quite like how Silhara refers to them as “barbarian,” even if it was in jest.

Romance: I couldn’t get on board with this romance. At all. Martise was already too subservient as a character, and while I get that some of this could be a survival technique, it didn’t make sense that Silhara would fall for her based on the ways in which she surprised or challenged him. Because she barely did. She never called Silhara out in any meaningful way and seemed to go along with whatever he wanted until the end.

Most of my discomfort, however, comes from two main issues: 1.) Silhara never seems to put Martise’s well-being first, and 2.) there is a huge power imbalance between the two that isn’t corrected until the very end, and Silhara never seems to be interested in leveling the playing field. First, Martise’s well-being: Silhara constantly offered comments that seemed to tear Martise down or, at the very least, be a back-handed compliment. He never seems to want to find ways of making her happy, and he centers his own desire and well-being even after big things happen. For instance, in a scene where Silhara is temporarily possessed by Corruption, he hurts Martise so badly that she cannot speak (as in, he chokes her almost to blackout). When he is freed from possession, he never seems to care about what he did to Martise or how she might be in pain. Instead, the first thing he does is order Martise to get away from him, then he orders Gurn to look after Martise to make sure she’s ok. All the while, he focuses on his own pain and jokes about his balls (which Martise kicked in order to free herself from his grasp). I was flabbergasted - why wouldn’t you want to make sure for yourself your lover is ok after something like that?

Second, the power imbalance. Even though Silhara doesn’t know Martise is a slave for the majority of the book, he does take her into his household as a servant, and has no qualms about ordering her about or taking advantage of her gentle nature. You’d think that if someone fell in love with a servant, much of the romance would be about overcoming class barriers or finding some way to put the two characters on equal footing. Sometimes, this is done by the lower class person having a sharper wit or calling out the upper class person on things that make them change for the better. Martise and Silhara never seem to have that arc. Martise calls Silhara “Master” throughout the whole book, and Silhara didn’t seem uncomfortable with it except when they were having sex. He never stops presuming to give Martise orders and expecting she obey them, not even at the very end when the question of her freedom gets resolved. And there are books out there where this class barrier is done well (Jane Eyre comes to mind), so I think Draven could have put more work into exploring the dynamics and how Martise is a match for Silhara, even given her status and lack of magic (at least, for a while).

TL;DR: Master of Crows has a good premise, but ultimately suffers from unlikeable or passive protagonists, a weak plot, and a romance with uneven power dynamics.

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