hey hey! Can I req Ritsu and Rei w/ the same crush? How do u think they'd react to having the same crush?

THIS IS AN INTERESTING REQ thank u anon!! i was so stumped for a bit but i gave it my best shot, i hope i did okay :O

ritsu & rei crushing on the same person

gender neutral reader, no pronouns mentioned

ohh ritsu is LIVID

this is a boy who is going to be so clingy. he is so incredibly possessive of you. can you really blame him? he doesn’t have too many people he can rely on, you’re special to him. 

his abandonment issues are not helping him at all in this case… hell, just seeing you and rei smile at each other can put him in a bad mood.

he’s a perceptive guy. he knows rei has an eye on you as well, and he hates it. he’s upset that of all people, rei’s vying for your affection. and he’s upset that after all he and his brother have done to try to mend their relationship, there’s another obstacle in the road. 

ritsu’s love languages are probably quality time and physical touch, so he uses that to his advantage – spending long lengths of time lounging on your lap, napping so that you can’t in good conscience leave his side. other times he just simply slings an arm around your shoulder or waist and keeps you close to him – it’s comforting to him, being able to physically feel you beneath his fingertips

he’s not above physically pulling you away when he sees you talking to rei. ritsu does love his brother! but he loves you too. 

he probably requires lots of reassurance… make sure he knows he’s loved please.

rei below the cut!

rei has his charms… he’s not against putting on a charismatic front when faced with people he’d like to connect with. that’s what he does with you! he goes out of his way to see you, to show you that he really does care.

his love languages are likely quality time and gift-giving. he’s the kind of person to gladly sit and listen to you ramble on and on with the most lovestruck look on his face… and the kind of person to gift you trinkets because they reminded him of you. 

uhh let’s not talk about the fact that ritsu doesn’t like seeing you with said gifts…

he holds a lot of affection for his brother… so i think he’s likely to give up on his crush for ritsu.

the guilt of leaving ritsu alone so often weighs on him, so if you can be the one to alleviate the loneliness of the younger sakuma, rei would gladly let you go.

he’d still care immensely for you, though, so most of your interactions remain, just with the clear distinction that you two are no more than good friends.

ritsu would mellow out more once there isn’t a competition for you… but you can still expect him to drag you away from rei when he wants your attention /lh

tags: @tokusaatsus

Jesse Eisenberg on the Gendered Double Standards That ‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ Exposes

The star of the new FX adaptation also discusses why he feels embarrassed by the culture the show depicts and why he’s most comfortable playing the antihero.

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 9:30AM

Jesse Eisenberg is a bit embarrassed to be here. It’s not because of the quality of the project he’s promoting — new miniseries Fleishman Is in Trouble is based on the 2019 novel (of the same name) that was a New York Times best-seller, longlisted for the National Book Award, and landed on every major best of the year list; the FX adaptation also stars Lizzy Caplan and Claire Danes. Rather, it’s the sheer fact that he is on display as the face of this project, the subject of interest from other people. “I’m so embarrassed that I’m a public person in the first place,” he says. Also, there are themes in the drama series that are triggering for an actor inclined to humility. 

The story follows a divorce between Toby (Eisenberg) and Rachel (Danes) Fleishman, narrated by Toby’s friend Libby (Caplan). Viewers are first shown all the ways in which the social-climbing, wealth-obsessed wife has antagonized the altruistic husband, before the other side of the argument — the side that isn’t always shown in pop culture — is revealed. It all takes place on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and while the gendered themes are universal, it particularly skewers the class consciousness of New Yorkers. (Jesse Eisenberg is a New Yorker). 

“So much of this show feels embarrassingly specific to the culture I grew up with, all things I have shame around,” he says. “It can be a relief to play something familiar, but it’s also exposing the things I’ve hidden in my own life — and here I am on television feeling those things in front of everybody.” 

Eisenberg spoke to THR over Zoom (from New York, of course, shortly before the show’s Tavern on the Green premiere party) about the onscreen exposure therapy and what Fleishman has to say about marriage.

How familiar with the book were you when you signed on?

I started reading the book because I had [read] so many interesting interviews with Taffy. The trick of the book is so satisfying. You’re involved in this man’s story, he’s this heroic, sympathetic guy, and then you realize that not only is this a one-sided perspective on a tragic marriage but also a long-standing trope in stories, that we feel bad for the man. We have different expectations for what a man should shoulder than what we think a woman should shoulder. And when it comes to issues around domestic challenges, family and marriage, we expect more from a woman.

What is your take on the character of Toby?

There’s a line at the end of the book, which I think is also in the series, that says, “Toby would come close to self-awareness and then run screaming from it.” My first reaction had been that the guy is completely self-aware, but I realized that he has a sense of righteousness that clouds him from being self-aware and seeing his own contributions to the fraught in his marriage. That was interesting to me, because I don’t think of myself that way. I think of myself as not only very self-critical, perhaps more than is healthy, but I blame myself first in a situation. And sorry, I don’t mean to tout my values, I just mean this is how my brain is wired. And Toby is not wired that way.

Were you still able to imagine yourself as him?

It’s a lot more comfortable for me to play the antihero than it is to play the charming guy. I just tend not to think of men in that way, as put-upon, I think of them as really in control. I don’t love the idea of male sympathy, which is one of the wonderful elements of the show: It makes the viewer complicit in that sympathy because you’re thinking God, this guy’s a victim. And then by the end you realize that’s just one version of this marriage. I felt it was easier for me to play the ending episodes of the show, which are more in line with the way I view complications in relationships: that there’s no saint.

Brodesser-Akner (also the series’ showrunner) is well known for her keen celebrity profiles of people like Bradley Cooper; did you feel like she was scoping you out?

I’m so glad I know Taffy through this experience, because there was a safe thing to talk about, which is the show. She did hit the thing right on the head for me, which is that I deflect from talking about myself by asking a lot of questions. She said if she was going to try to write a profile on me, it would be about the profile that I’m trying to do on her.

What did you think of the way the show depicts New York?

This show portrays what I call Zabar’s versus Sarabeth’s, which is fascinating to me. I’m sort of neither. I was born in Queens, and when I was 5 I moved out to New Jersey, so I’ve been on the outskirts of Manhattan culture. I’ve always had this fascination with very rich people, that they could live side by side with everyone else and have these extravagant lives. I suppose there’s a bit of cynicism because you think, “I’m an artist, I’m doing it the right way, and I hate that you have to be a billionaire to get a two-bedroom apartment now.” And all that is in the show. As my character says to his wife, “I’m a rich person everywhere in the world except the 40 square blocks you insist we live in.”

SOURCE

friend, i've been thinking about yuko for weeks now and i wanted to hear more about your ship!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for asking! I’ve got a couple ships in rotation for Yuko, varying from AU to AU to the canon plot.

She and Tachibana certainly have shared life experience, as I’ve touched on before. They both suffer from chronic illnesses. They’re both very attached to a sibling of the opposite gender despite the emotional baggage their relationship with that sibling carries with it. They both suffer from social obstacles attached to parts of their identity - the xenophobia Tachibana faces for his mixed heritage, the isolation Yuko’s illness forces on her. They’re both very closed off, guarded people as a result. They can both be found making eyes at Kiryu at any given moment. 

Like, even outside the bounds of a romantic relationship, I imagine they’d appreciate each other’s company very much. In an AU where Tachibana survives to see the 90s and maintains a friendly relationship with Nishiki & Kiryu, it’d be fascinating and heartbreaking to see how he might interact with her while she was on her deathbed. He might have an innate understanding of what she’s going through shared by no one else in her (very small) circle, a supportive dynamic which I’d love to explore someday.

I’m a sucker for a good height difference, so Aizawa’s on the list as well. They’re both ostensibly very quiet, put together people, hiding some serious resentment & acknowledgment issues underneath: sort of desperate to just feel seen by people, y’know? Except Yuko is a very delicate college-age woman and Aizawa is a thirty something brick shithouse, so he has much more power to externalize his feelings than she does.

Another choice height difference: in an ongoing AU of mine premised upon Yuko getting her heart transplant and living to see Nishiki’s rise to power, she develops a very odd, very uncouth relationship with Koji Shindo, of all people. As Nishiki’s closest underling and immediate successor, he ends up being the only major member of the Nishikiyama family she gets acquainted with. He’s drawn to her right the fuck away, for reasons that are characteristically shallow - she’s young, she’s hot, and she’s his boss’ sister, so there’s an air of unattainability there that he's reeeeeaaaal into. As for Yuko, she’s spent most of her life in a hospital with little expectation of living long, so she’s torn between being grossed out by this deeply immoral representative of her brother’s corruption and enamored by the prospect of open, unmistakeable male attention in an adult context. It’s a relationship with a lot of conflicts of interest built in, which, as always, is juicy as shit.

Y’know the song “Fuckboi Rejects” by Royal & The Serpent? That’s Yuko and Shindo. The man isn’t completely devoid of admirable qualities, by any means - his loyalty, his combat prowess, his twisted code of ethics, his coarse/understated capacity for thoughtfulness - but by and large, he’s a deplorable person who’s completely devoted to being deplorable, and that vileness bleeds over into his behavior towards his boss’ sister, no matter how much her brother tries to insulate her from the truth of his business. 10/10, would cringe at again.

As alluded to above, I’ve thought about pairing her up with Kiryu; or at least, about her having latent feelings for him that are never acted upon. In the past, I’ve described Kiryu as her “surrogate brother” to people who haven’t played the game, just because him and Nishiki consider each other brothers and the whole sunflower dynamic is easier to explain that way, but considering the flexibility of Kiryu’s relationship with Yumi, the idea of a relationship between them being placed center stage in Ryu Ga Gotoku Online, and the fact that Yuko specifically was raised lately in the hospital, much more removed from the orphanage than the people around her, I don’t think that’s necessarily the canon status of their relationship.

So, the prospect of the two of them dating is the premise of her story in Ryu Ga Gotoku Online - y’know, the one where Yuko has lines and a role in the plot, but not a face? Even then? I’m still mad about that! - and even if it turned out to be a joke on her end, I love the little details that plot line reveals about both her and their relationship. She’s the sort of person who would twist the truth a bit for her own entertainment, yes? And Kiryu, he’s separated from her, but he’s not forgotten about her. He sends her flowers, and specifically says he did so on Kazama’s advice because it “aligned with his feelings.” In the opening of Kiwami, he’s explicitly thinking about what would happen to her if Nishiki got arrested, even when Nishiki isn’t. 

I can imagine Yuko herself feeling a little complicated about Kiryu. He’s handsome, yes, but also dependable, stoic and (from her perspective) very sure of himself; traits which are very valuable to someone like her, who lives in constant struggle with chronic illness with only her fiery, emotionally erratic brother as a support system. 

On the other hand, she’s a very lonely person, and is not incapable of being possessive. Yuko might not consider Kiryu her brother, but her actual brother sure does, and while Nishiki is visibly Goin Through It™ with Kiryu during the plot of Yakuza: 0 I can definitely picture her (internally, subliminally) being like “he’s not your real sibling, like me, yes? All these feelings you have for him shouldn’t be equal to, or god forbid greater than, the feelings you have for me, yes? YES??” There’s a weird combination of jealousy and admiration at work there.

There’s also the matter of Kiryu’s decision to take the fall for her brother’s murder of Dojima explicitly for Yuko’s sake; at once a gesture of immense concern for her and value placed on her life and an uninvited usurpation of her agency. (I’m not judging him for this, it was a spur of the moment choice, I’m talking about how she’d feel about it.) Kiryu makes this massive life decision using her as a justification which ends up doing more harm than good, ripping his own life up by the roots, emotionally devastating Nishiki and seriously complicating things for the already traumatized Yumi. 

For someone like Yuko, who is both unused to being treated like her life has tangible significance and resentful of her suffocating inability to exert any influence over her circumstances, the fact that Kiryu did something like that without her consent would be. Just. There’s a lot of ways I could describe it, but I’m gonna go with “wildly conflicting.” It’s similar to her relationship with Shindo, but tilted more towards genuine, mature emotional connection and less towards the crude temptation of rebelliousness and the ugly underside of luxury.

And also, before I close this out. Reina is there. Reina, who is an independent, self-sustaining woman, has a healthy, active social circle, is strikingly beautiful and friends with everyone Yuko knows - a nonmember of the sunflower quartet who Yuko might’ve canonically met at some point! I can imagine her being fascinated by Reina, definitely envious but besotted with her underneath that. Her immediate impulse would be to put her up on a pedestal, this intelligent, regal woman who has control over her choices, whose company her brother enjoys despite his lack of romantic interest in her (moron.) She also might have to reconsider her opinion on those closest to her if they ever got to know each other better, ticking the “conflict of interest” box I’m so fond of subjecting her to. Yuko/messy relationships ftw!

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Labels

I noticed labels are a concept in which we use it describe our identity or existence. I always found labels to be just stereotyping yourself and putting yourself and other people into boxes. Which is partially true, but at the same time, I notice the world runs on labels. It’s rare to see someone not acknowledging their rage, age, gender, occupation, and religion. At some point in time, we’ve all communicated our identity through labels. 

From my perspective, and this might sound negative to many, I find society in general really shallow, lazy, reckless, selfish and cold. It could be based on the experiences I’ve dealt with but I genuinely believe it to be true. I did see this social experiment in which someone wrote on cardboard paper and he wrote that he felt depressed and wanted to talk to someone. He walked around with the sign but no one approached him. Not one single person asked him if he was okay. People just minded their own business and ignored him. So, he got real money and placed it in a jar, and than he changed the sign to ‘free money, please take it.’ People started approaching and talking to him, and then they took the money from him. 

This doesn’t imply that there isn’t any good or kind people in this world. I’m sure they exist. A while ago I saw people in the city talking to a homeless person and try to strike a meaningful conversation. But unfortunately, maybe out of hundreds of people, those people would only represent a rare minority. I always thought people are so judgmental about others who are different. Yes, we live with our labels, and they carry real weight, but aside from our labels, stereotypes and biases - aren’t we all human beings with the same desires? We all want to be listened to, loved, accepted and find social connections with other people. It seems like our labels make more of an impact to a larger society. People don’t want to associate with a depressed person, because it would make them look bad. But if the person has money, than people would want to be with someone who appears wealthy because they can benefit from said person. 

I thought about the underlying reasons why. Is society truly lacking a sense in humanity over materialistic success? I don’t believe it to be true, but I personally experienced ostracization for being ‘different.’ Because if you don’t have qualities that makes you seem valuable to society, people treat you differently. I think the larger issue might not be the individual but the culture. Perhaps, the fierce competition to be the most wealthy, good looking and smartest individual has caused people to become less empathetic. Anything that would deter this deterministic goal or expectations would be harmful to one’s status, reputation and survival. I always felt this competitiveness has created a society of narcissists. But somehow, it also pulls me into this idea that I also need to behave this way to be more likeable or else the consequences would be ostracization. 

It’s like part of me understand human nature really well, but than I think overly optimistic people who see society too positively wouldn’t really like my perspective. They assume I’m being misanthropic but I’m just trying to be realistic. Personally, I find it a bit delusional to believe everyone's intentions are good or ‘nice.’ It seems really idealistic to believe everyone is nice. That’s not necessarily true, some people act nice because they don’t want to be ostracized or rejected for being truthful. Therefore, some people lie or put on a facade to be more socially accepted. They behave like a chameleon who just change shape whenever society changes their opinion on what’s acceptable but they don’t have their own voice. On the other hand, I also don’t believe everyone is inherently bad. We are all flawed people with qualities that are deemed ‘bad.’ I think people do have potential to change and improve on themselves, but I rarely see many people put in the hard work. 

The Standard

Bodies are identified biologically in the context that we are whether man, woman or an intersex. A human's sex is usually assigned at birth due to physiological features such as genital area and chromosome structure.  

During my late childhood was when I saw changes on my body, not just my height and weight, somehow my hips also widen. Fat buildup in the buttocks, thighs, bust area and belly also took place. I also started having menstruation and acne began to appear too that made me so upset because I used to think how horrible it looks. As my puberty occurred that is when I learned to seek freedom and control over myself.

Living in this generation where beauty standard is about looking slender and having a perfect plum lips; self-worth and acceptance has been a great challenge for most of us. Insecurities build up and body alteration has been normalized just to meet the society’s standard of what makes an individual beautiful. 

It was all about what is pleasing in the eyes, nothing more, but sometimes good-looking people are conscious too, notably if they genuinely think their charm exists merely from luck or genes. Promoting appearance-based positivity is never the answer, insisting that “everyone is pretty, sexy, cute etc.” to make them feel better and is obviously a bad thing to say when there are people who’re suffering from obesity, malnourishment along with anorexia and bulimia. Yet a reminder, respect should always come first. Better try to encourage and reassure them that it’s alright not to love our bodies all of the time but may still continue living and appreciate what our bodies can do.  

I chose this topic for my blog because March is the month where us, women, needs to be empowered and be comfortable with our own skin. We do not have to fit everyone’s expectations to be called pretty and to pressure ourselves to look good for other people.

Attractiveness is subjective. Everyone tend to lay so much attention on one’s appearance when in fact being pretty shouldn’t be as important to our self-worth as it is. There are dozens other qualities that attractiveness should consider, compassion, intellect, empathy, talent, sense of humor, and so on. It goes for everyone, but women especially need to be valued for something more than mere physical attributes. True beauty arises from the type of person we seem to be, the decisions we create, and how we able to acknowledge others.  Having a specific body measurement isn’t the epitome of beauty. 

The Women's Month Celebration in the Philippines has served as a forum for highlighting women's achievements and discussing ongoing and emerging women's empowerment and gender equality issues, concerns, complexities, and responsibilities. Hopefully, with the help of this blog I can able to reach out girls of all ages to be more confident with themselves no matter what they look. Happy National Women’s Month!

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Hi how are you what’s up? Mwah <3

ANYWAYS

I NEED ALL OF THE OURAN CLUB X READER ROMANTIC HEADCANONS NOW PLEASE-

Host Club Relationship HCs

Anon I love your energy I hope you're doing well! Also fair warning since this is the first time I'm writing for Ouran! <3

Also, I will be using They/Them Pronouns for Haruhi !

Tamaki Suoh

Oh be prepared to get SMOTHERED in affection

Literally he's so clingy there's not a chance someone would see you two apart (aside from Club hours)

But with him being known as the princely type, he's quite the master at romance !

He'll be celebrating all the small anniversaries and holding candlelight dinner dates for the both of you every time

Also remember the weird Tamaki is the Dad thing? Yeah, the position of Mommy (regardless of gender) goes to you now

So expect your ever so loving boyfriend to drag you into the Host Club's antics frequently

Kyoya Ootori

In all honesty he can be rather detached and seem like he doesn't care, but he makes it up with his reassuring words and and actions

He's very observant, so much so that it's nearly impossible to get anything you want to hide by him

If you're ill? He's getting you the best doctor there is stat. See a clothing item you want while you're around him? It'd arrive on your doorstep the next day with a loving note attached to it

To onlookers, it might seem like Kyoya might be buying your affections, but it's not really the case

Although he's in a host club, Kyoya isn't the best at maintaining his romantic endeavors due to his cold demeanor

Behind closed doors he is trying to be just as loving as you can be and it's easier that way too. When it's just you and him he could finally have a chance to relax and spend more quality time with you

Haruhi Fujioka

In all honesty, your relationship with Haruhi is as normal as it can be

I can also imagine them going for more low key dates like simple movie nights and dinner at their home

Plus Haruhi is like the perfect partner omg-

They can actually be so comforting when you're stressed and someone who you could easily be vunerable with

Haruhi isn't one too be touchy and clingy, but they'll gladly settle for holding hands with you if you ask

Hikaru Hitachiin

Although he's not as clingy as Tamaki, I put him in the top 3 for the clingiest people in the host club

He always likes having you nearby him whenever it's possible and he'll always be attached to you when he spots the opportunity

The boy just has attachment issues don't mind him

Also I see him being the more jealous one of the entire host club

He gets moody if he gets jealous, making passive aggressive remarks to the other person

If you point out that he was jealous after his mood is better, he'd immediately get flustered and act like it didn't happen

Kaoru Hitachiin

He's another host to give you the most normal relationship (as normal as he can be when involved in the host club)

He's less clingy than Hikaru and (in my opinion) the best host to manage a relationship with you

I'd imagine him being afectionate still, holding your hand to classes and leaving you with a small kiss before you two leave

He's also more understanding, being a great listener and a decent source of comfort

Takashi Morinozuka

First thing: you will be carried. Like all the time

It doesn't matter how big you are, Mori loves carrying you around

Mori is a man of little words, but his actions are enough for you to know his affections

He leaves lingering touches and small kisses, all soft and gentle with you

When he does choose to speak, his words towards you are filled with so much love

He's also very protective of you, intimidating anyone or any fangirls who would give you trouble for dating the silent host

He's so soft for you omg

Mistukuni Haninozuka

The clingiest host out of all of them (unexpectedly)

If you are taller than him, there's no escape from being climbed like a tree and have Honey latch onto you like a koala

He loves gifting you Usa-chan privileges and encourages you to stop by when he's working as a host

He also loves gifting you various sweets and cakes to try ! He loves picnic dates and brings in so many cakes for the two of you

“The Ladies Waldegrave” by Joshua Reynolds, 1780 (NGS NG2171)

I’ve complained before about two very big pet peeves of mine - corset stuff and Regency women being dressed in 1770s-1780s clothes - but one that may dwarf them because of how frequently it comes up in historical and fantasy fiction is the oppression of embroidery.

That’s probably putting it a bit too strongly. It’s more like ... the annoyance of embroidery. Every character worth reading about knows instinctively that sewing is a) boring, b) difficult, c) mindless, and d) pointless. The author doesn’t have to say anything more than “Belinda threw down her needlework and looked out the window, sighing,” to signal that this is an independent woman whose values align with the modern reader, who’s probably not really understood by her mother or mother figure, and who probably will find an extraordinary man to “match” her rather than settling for someone ordinary. To look at an example from fantasy, GRRM uses embroidery in the very beginning of A Game of Thrones to show that the Stark sister who dislikes it is sympathetic and interesting, while the Stark sister who is competent at it is boring and conventional and obviously not deserving of a PoV (until later books, when her attention gets turned to higher matters); further into the book, of course, the pro-needlework sister proves to be weak-willed and naïve.

Rozsika Parker, in the groundbreaking 1996 work The Subversive Stitch, noted that “embroidery has become indelibly associated with stereotypes of femininity,” which is the core of the issue. "Instead embroidery and a stereotype of femininity have become collapsed into one another, characterised as mindless, decorative and delicate; like the icing on the cake, good to look at, adding taste and status, but devoid of significant content.” 

Parker also points out that the stereotype isn’t just one that was invented in the present day by feminists who hated the idea of being forced to do a certain craft. “The association between women and embroidery, craft and femininity, has meant that writers concerned with the status of women have often turned their attention towards this tangled, puzzling relationship. Feminists who have scorned embroidery tend to blame it for whatever constraint on women's lives they are committed to combat. Thus, for example, eighteenth-century critical commentators held embroidery responsible for the ill health which was claimed as evidence of women's natural weakness and inferiority.”

There are two basic problems I have with the trope, beyond the issue of it being incredibly cliché:

First: needlework was not just busywork

A big part of what drives the stereotype is the impression that what women were embroidering was either a sampler:

sampler embroidered by Jane Wilson, 14, in 1791 (MMA 2010.47)

or a picture:

unfinished embroidery of David and Abigail, British, 1640s-50s (MMA 64.101.1325)

That is, something meant to hang on the wall for no real purpose.

These are forms of schoolwork, basically. Samplers were made by young girls up to their early teens, and needlework pictures were usually something done while at school or under a governess as a showpiece of what was being learned - not just the stitching itself, but also often watercolors (which could be worked into the design), artistic sensibility, and the literature, history, or art that might be alluded to. And many needlework pictures made in schools were also done as mourning pieces, sometimes blank, for future use, and sometimes to commemorate a recent death in the family. A lot of them are awkward, clearly just done to pass the class, but others are really artwork.

Many schools for middle- and upper-class girls taught the making of these objects (and other “ornamental” subjects) alongside a more rigorous curriculum - geography, Latin, chemistry, etc. At some, sewing was also always accompanied by serious reading and discussion. (And it would often be done while someone read aloud or made conversation later in life, too.)

Once done with their education, women generally didn’t bother with purely decorative work. Some things that fabric could be embroidered for included:

Jackets 

Bed coverings and bedcurtains

Collars and undersleeves 

Pelerines 

Neck handkerchiefs and sleeve ruffles 

Screens

Upholstery

Handkerchiefs

Purses, wallets, and reticules

Boxes

Book covers

Plus other articles of clothing like waistcoats, caps, slippers, gown hems, chemises, etc. Women’s magazines of the nineteenth century often gave patterns and alphabets for personal use.

(Not to mention late nineteenth century female artists who worked in embroidery, but that’s something else.)

You could purchase all of these pre-embroidered, but many, many women chose to do it themselves. There are a number of reasons why: maybe they wanted something to do, maybe they felt like they should be doing needlework for moral/gender reasons, maybe they couldn’t afford to buy anything - and maybe they enjoyed it or wanted to give something they made to a person they loved. That firescreen above was embroidered by Marie Antoinette, someone who had any number of other activities to choose from. It’s no different than people today who like to knit their own hats and gloves or bake their own bread, except that it was way more mainstream.

embroidery patterns from Ackermann’s Repository in 1827 - they could be used on dresses, collars, handkerchiefs, etc.

Second: needlework wasn’t the only “useless” thing women were expected to do

Ignoring the bulk of point one for now and the value of embroidery - I mentioned “ornamental subjects” above. As many people know, young women of the upper and middle classes were expected to be “accomplished” in order to be seen as marriageable. This could include skills like embroidery, drawing, painting, singing, playing the piano (as well as other instruments, like the harp or the mandolin), speaking French (if not also Italian and/or German), as well as broader knowledge and abilities like being well-versed in music, literature, and poetry, dancing and walking gracefully, writing good letters in an elegant hand, and being able to read out loud expressively and smoothly.

This wasn’t a checklist. As the famous discussion in Pride and Prejudice shows, individuals could have different views on what actually made a woman accomplished:

“How I long to see her again! I never met with anybody who delighted me so much. Such a countenance, such manners! And so extremely accomplished for her age! Her performance on the pianoforte is exquisite.”

“It is amazing to me,” said Bingley, “how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are.”

“All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?”

“Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens, and net purses. I scarcely know anyone who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished.”

“Your list of the common extent of accomplishments,” said Darcy, “has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a screen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half-a-dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really accomplished.”

“Nor I, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley.

“Then,” observed Elizabeth, “you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.”

“Yes, I do comprehend a great deal in it.”

“Oh! certainly,” cried his faithful assistant, “no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved.”

“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

Mr. Bingley feels that a woman is accomplished if she has the ability to do a number of different arts and crafts. Miss Bingley feels (or says she feels) that it goes beyond specific skills and into branches of artistic attainment, plus broader personal qualities that could be imparted by well-bred governesses or mothers. And Mr. Darcy, of course, agrees with that but adds an academic angle as well.

But what ties all of these accomplishments together is their lack of value on the labor market. A woman could earn a living with any one accomplishment, if she worked hard enough at it to become a professional, but young ladies weren’t supposed to be professional-level good because they by definition weren’t going to earn a living. All together, they trained a woman for the social and domestic role of a married woman of the upper middle or upper class, or, if she couldn’t get married, a governess or teacher who would share her accomplishments with the next generation.

(To be fair, almost none of the trappings of an upper-middle/upper class male education had anything to do with the kind of career training that college frequently is today, either. Men were educated to know the cultural touchpoints of their class and fit in with their peers.)

There are reasons that an individual person/character might specifically object to embroidery, but it was far from the only “useless” thing that an unconventional heroine would be required to do against her inclination by her conventional mother/grandmother/aunt/chaperone. Embroidery stands out to modern audiences because most of the other accomplishments are now valued as gender-neutral arts and skills.

“The Embroidery Frame”, by Mathilde Weil, ca. 1900 (LOC 98501309)

So, some thoughts for writers of historical fiction (or fantasy that’s supposed to be just like the 19th/18th/17th/etc century):

- If your heroine doesn’t like embroidery, she probably doesn’t like a number of other things she’s expected to do. Don’t pull out embroidery as either more expected or more onerous than them. Does she hate to sit still? I’d imagine she also dislikes drawing and practicing the piano. Would she prefer to do academic subjects? She probably also resents learning French instead of Latin, and music and dancing. Does she hate enforced femininity? Then she’d most likely have a problem with all of the accomplishments.

- If your heroine just and specifically doesn’t like embroidery, try to show in the narrative that that’s not because it’s objectively bad, and only able to be liked by the boring. Have another sympathetic character do it while talking to the heroine. Note that the hero carries a flame-stitched wallet that’s his sister’s work. Emphasize the heroine’s emotional connection to her deceased or absent mother through her affection for clothing or upholstery that her mother embroidered - or through a mourning picture commemorating her. There are all kinds of things you can do to show that it’s a personal preference rather than a stupid craft that doesn’t take talent and skill!

mourning picture for Daniel Goodman, probably embroidered by a Miss Goodman, 1803 (MMA 56.66)

I was wondering about your take on Lesbian Jane?

I’ve been thinking about her a lot. Jane isn’t inherently a villainous character. She was raised to take on a position of power so it’s not surprising she seek that out in adulthood. But more the that, I think about how she was born in a time when certain things were expected of women. And how she may have internalized the idealism of husband and child due to that. In HS2 it’s clear she doesn’t have any true romantic feeling for Jake. And part of me wonders if she ever really did? Or if her infatuation with Jake English as a person was due to the fact that he was a “attractive boy”. After all, in HS2 she does marry him and they do have a child. Fitting what would have been seen as a perfect family construct in her original timeline. But she openly neglects both in favor of things she actually finds important. I know Gamzee exist. But I still wonder if her performative gender roles and inherent straightness isn’t all one in the same. I.e, BS. 

I’ve always been partial to lesbian Jane. I don’t think ‘gamzee’ is much of an argument against it if you’ve ever been in contact with actual lesbians; there’s women who spend decades of their lives putting work into a straight marriage that doesn’t truly satisfy them beyond the barest needs for companionship, but it is what they’ve been taught to accept and what they believe Everyone Else Feels. The human experience doesn’t work in a tight binary where you automatically know *what* is wrong with you. Sometimes the problem makes you believe it is actually a feature, and that it’s normal, and that you should just muscle through it no matter how shit it feels like. And that’s kind of Jane’s whole thing- Jane has Girlboss disease. 

Like, “yeah, this all sucks, and it makes me feel like garbage, but I have Numbers, and i have Prizes, and I have Accomplishments, and I am a Strong Independent Woman, and that’s what everyone tells me SHOULD make me happy, so I guess this is what happiness feels like.” And she just doesn’t know when to stop. She’ll dig her own grave with a golden shovel if you leave her to it.

I think It’s interesting to note a few things when breaching this subject:

1) Nanna Egbert chose to be a single mom. It’s not that she’s a widow, is that she never pursued marriage. You can make a lot of fail arguments on this one like ‘oh but in the lore nannasprite section we learn that jane and jake had a marriage prophecy or whatever blah blah’ but Beta Jake avoids her for eternity and while Beta Jane found someone to have a son with, she didn’t make it any more than that. Instead, she built a practical jokes and pranks shop and ran it for as long as she was alive, because again, she’s a girlboss. A lot of lipservice about traditionalism on this one and very little actual effort put into fulfilling it.

2) Jane doesn’t actually “love” Jake. She’s infatuated with what he represents, which is a recurring theme in Homestuck. Be it about Terezi and her relationship with Alternian Law, or Dave and his coolguy schtick, or Jake and his flimsy adventure hero persona- characters have “expectations” and these come with a set of rules that must be fulfilled. Sometimes, these self-imposed challenges are more harmful to the character than they’re ever going to beneficial for their growth. It’s effectively like shooting themselves on the foot.

This is actually an ongoing thread during act 6, but not one that I see brought up a lot. Jane projects what she believes are desirable qualities about a man onto Jake, what she’s been taught is the norm and dreamy- but she has negative interest in who he actually is. If anything, Jane finds him tacky, annoying, weird, and unbearably boring. But she thinks she can ‘fix’ him into a model companion if she tries hard enough.

Jane “reinterprets” a lot about Jake as a person to make him more digestible. She does this deliberately, to pad out how little interest he seems to have into the whole thing, and also to depersonalize him enough that she doesn’t have to feel bad about not... actually liking him.

(worthy of note, her “two favorite dames” are married as of catnapped in HS2)

They’re friends, i’m not disputing that, but friendship doesn’t necessarily translate into “compatibility” or “romance”.

“Jake” as a concept in Jane’s glossary is interchangeable with “7th grade 1st place trophy on the national Spelling Bee championship”, and that’s where most of our issues come from. He’s an achievement to be crossed off from a checklist, on the road of becoming an Independent, Successful Businesswoman. At best he’s a status marker, at worst he’s a commodity. Jane didn’t come up with this by herself, though, these ideas are closely linked to HIC’s influence on her life and Jake’s. (It’s not for nothing that Crockertier Jane is the one to be most outspoken about it, or that Epilogues Jane is characterized as a Crockercorp-monster. None of this exists in a vacuum.) These ideals are part of her familial upbringing and corporate brainwashing, the endgoal of them being simulating the Condesce as closely as possible. 

When HIC goes undercover as a Human Woman Of Earth, the figure she picks to represent her is a housewife. The fictional Betty Crocker is the apex of Girlbossery- and how can you be a housewife, in 20′s America, without a husband?

Jane is discouraged from being an “individual” and told what she needs to be is a suitable heiress, and that’s her own tragedy. (She has failed to consider wives can have other wives.)

I have babbled about Jane before, particularly when it comes to her also being trapped by gendered expectations she doesn’t want & being gender-nonconforming (a butch, if you will) here.

do you think there is any significance that alex's colour scheme is green and pink? or do you think rr went "u know what this character needs? to look like a watermelon"

((Prefacing this by saying that I'm giving RR way too much credit here, but you shouldn't take anything an author does for granted— even a serial author who often makes blunders and mistakes.))

A while ago I saw a (pretty unfair) assumption that RR made it green and pink because blue and pink would be too obvious, but that his intention was obviously to reinforce the gender binary by using two distinctly gendered colors for a character with two distinct genders. Of course, they did not phrase it so delicately. No offense to whoever made that post, but I disagree.

Although that may have had to do with it, there's other things to consider. One of them is color symbolism. And oh. OH. I ADORE symbolism— especially flower/plant symbolism (Language of the Flowers and all that jazz), seasonal symbolism (there's a reason that evermore is my second favorite Taylor Swift album), and color symbolism.

GREEN

Let's talk about green first. Green can symbolize a lot of different things, and there are a few that can be applied to Alex's character. The most obvious thing that green often represents is jealousy— hence the expression "green with envy." But envy is not really one of Alex's character traits. Feel free to argue with me if you think that Alex is significantly envious. Just because I couldn't think of substantial textual evidence for it does not mean that there isn't any.

One of the traits that Alex does have is wealth. Green is the color of American currency, and since both RR and Alex are American, it's safe to take an American lens while looking at this color. Alex's socioeconomic background effects her in a big way. I mentioned in a previous post that I think that Alex's fatal flaw is her sense of entitlement. That kind of entitlement is a quality not exclusive to but common among the upper class. However, her distance from her wealthy background enhances the sense of irony in the story, which is a VERY big thing that we NEVER talk about within the fandom.

This is kind of a little thing, but it's worth noting that when it comes to Valhalla and everything, Alex is "green"— as in new and inexperienced.

The color green also emphasizes Alex's connection with nature. This is one of the parts of Alex's character that the fandom consistently underplays, which is an absolute shame. I don't think I have to explain why the color green is associated with all things natural. Alex's association with nature provides a few key things to her character:

It makes her a more well-rounded character. Another criticism of Alex I believe is totally unfounded is that "being genderfluid is her only personality trait because it influences her philosophy on pottery, which is her only hobby." I'm probably going to make another post in, like, a few minutes about why I find that argument a little silly, but the primary problem is that pottery is not Alex's only hobby. She also loves camping, hiking, and ice wall climbing (I bet y'all forgot about that last one!)

It gives her a connection with Magnus. I mentioned in a previous post that Magnus and Alex are foils, but I neglected to bring up why that also makes for very good chemistry between them. Of course, yes, they have different goals and philosophy, which is what makes them foils in the first place. But foil relationships function best when the characters also share some traits. As it turns out, Alex and Magnus share several hobbies, and one of them is a mutual love for nature. This is a very unexplored thing in fics. Start doing it more plz.

Finally, and this one's kind of minor, but the Alex's green gives her a connection to Natalie. I know, whenever Alex and Natalie are compared, either in canon or in fandom, everybody kind goes "eww. Oedipus complex." Which is very fair and true. But they really do have a lot of similarites. The green of Alex's hair and clothes connects her to the green of Natalie's eyes. It's worth saying, too, that Alex has one amber eye— and amber is pretty close to dirty blonde, like Natalie's hair.

If I had more faith in RR, I might bring up the concept of intextuality and how Alex wearing green is an allusion to The Great Gatsby and how Alex is elusive to Magnus, just like Daisy is to Gatsby. But I don't.

PINK

To give credit to the person who wrote the post I mentioned at the beginning of this spiel, I do believe that part of the reason pink was used was to support femininity. Please keep in mind that Alex dresses in an androgynous way— not that there is an actually "gendered" way to dress, since gender as we perceive it is mostly made up. But Alex's existence as a transfemme person (which I will maintain until my dying day) means that pink has a certain significance to her. A lot of AMAB people embrace traditionally feminine things because if they don't, they will not be accepted as genuine women or genuine nonbinary folks, since masculine dress is unisex and kind of the default. So Alex wearing pink probably had something to do with her gender, yes. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's certainly not an unrealistic thing.

Speaking of Alex's gender in relation to the color pink, let's talk about pink's use as a queer rights symbol. Alex was RR's first character to be introduced as a queer character from the start. This was not an insignificant thing, especially in the year of our Lord 2016 (which, despite popular belief, seriously had an entirely different landscape of queer rep. Though it's commonplace now to include genderqueer characters, it was exceptional at the time— especially by such an accomplished and mainstream children's author.).

Let's go back in time to Nazi Germany. Some of you might know this, but for those of you don't this transition must seem jarring. I swear there's a point. In addition to Jews, Romani individuals, people with disabilities, and Poles (among others), gay men were victimized by the Nazis. If you're wondering why lesbians weren't persecuted, it's because the Nazis didn't see them as a serious political threat, or as a threat to the perpetuation of the Aryan race since they assumed gay women could be forcefully impregnated if need be. Yeah, ew. Anyway, much like the Star of David being used to mark Jewish people, gay men were forced into concentration camps and forced to wear a pink triangle. Years later, after the gay population somewhat recovered, the pink triangle was reclaimed and used as a symbol for gay men. Some people who were not gay men used it, too, but that's somewhat controversial since it wasn't their symbol to reclaim. When the first pride flag was created, it had a pink stripe at the top to signify sex (this was later dropped so flags could be more easily produced). The pink triangle (inverted) was used during the AIDs epidemic with the caption "Silence=Death."

My point is that this is a very important color to queer folks. Having one of the first genderfluid characters in kid's lit wear pink...... I mean, it makes sense.

The last and final thing that pink represents, in this context and in general, is innocence. Granted, this kind of connects to feminitity since women (especially white women) are often infantalized and seen as innocent— which is another issue. In any case, the use of pink to represent innocence in Alex's dress is ironic. Alex has been robbed of her childhood innocence, first by her abusive parents, then by her life on the streets, and then by her eventual death at age sixteen. But then she actually regains her innocence. At the beginning of the—

Hold on. I just had a revelation. I'll make a post about it soon.

At the beginning of SotD, Alex is acting a little childish. The most obvious example is him jumping on Randolph's bed to "make noise." Alex's life is stable and relatively healthy for the first time in the years, and she experiences something that a lot of queer folks experience: a re-emergence of childhood at a late stage.

I imagine you didn't expect a post this long. I either make essay responses to asks or I add on one sentence and post it. Oops. Anyway, I believe the mcga fandom can be more creative than calling Alex a watermelon. Here are some other (kinda romantic) pink-and-green alternatives:

Roses

Dragonfruit

Grapefruit

Cherry blossom trees

lets talk: popular iwwv criticism

(disclaimer: i know criticism is subjective and thats why im doing this, i wanna look at some common points made against iwwv and dissect them just a little bit in the opposite direction. also none of this is directed at any individual- it’s all based on the general talking points i’ve seen surrounding the book.)

SPOILER WARNING !!

lack of exploration into james and oliver (+ gay characters feel performative)

i’ve seen loads of people say that oliver and james’ relationship felt very performative, a way of including the queer romnce which clearly is very important to the plot but not actually giving it any space in the novel, nor developing it to the same extent which meredith/oliver was.

oliver and meredith had a very strictly physical relationship and while he did love her, he wasn’t in love with her the way he was with james. the juxtaposition in the way that oliver/james is delivered and the way meredith/oliver is delivered is, i believe, far too repetitive to not be intentional. i actually realised upon re-reading how much focus there really is on meredith’s sexuality, even in subtleties in the book. meredith and oliver get more blatant sex scenes, get more physical parts because oliver was (to an extent) using his attraction to meredith to distract himself from his infatuation with james.

we also have to remember that oliver and james didn’t get their real moment of honesty about their relationship till extremely late into the book. i’d honestly see it as more ‘performative’ to then after or in the middle of kind lear throwing in some wild sex scene between the two. it wouldn't have fit.

“why didn’t james and oliver get together earlier then >:(((“ because the slow burn between them, the subtext, the subtle-ness, the yearning, they were all crucial to the decision which oliver made at the end. the fact that they burned so bright for each other but (oliver particularly) were so desperately repressed, that was what made this such a tragic romance. yes its tiring to read stories about queer people being repressed, yes its tiring to see the bury your gays trope. but like oliver says, it goes beyond gender.

if oliver’s second love interest was a girl, and treated this way, we’d be a lot more on board with these tropes- but the fact that james is a man, and this therefor becomes a queer relationship, makes it feel performative. i can’t convince you of anything- but i like to believe that their relationship being treated like this not only makes it so much more “heart wrenching because why! why couldn’t it work out, why couldn’t it be better!” - not because its a queer relationship but because they were soulmates.

alexander wasn’t performative. not in the slightest, rio just didn’t make being gay his entire identity. same goes for colin. just because they’re queer doesn’t mean it needs to be the only thing about them. this isn’t a lgbt novel- characters dont have to be gay just for plot. they can just be gay.

i’ve also seen people complain about not just making oliver bisexual. guys. did you read the book? he was bisexual. he was emotionally and physically attracted to both meredith and james. guys that’s literally what bisexual means.

i'm totally on board with the coming out scenes! and realisation of feelings and all that stuff- but again, not an lgbt centric novel and also- these were things oliver probably did and realised far before this book. remember that its set in 4th year, at an art school. he knew he was fruity ok. not every queer character in every queer book have to have these grandious coming out scenes or realisations. the lack there of doesn’t equal performance.

the ending was rushed and bad

believe what you will, but i don’t think james is dead. there’s a little too much ambiguity in that ending, in the extract he leaves oliver, in the “his body was never found.” so if your main quarrel with the ending is that “bury your gays” situation- please know there’s a chance- and that giving it that chance opens up so much more discussion and reader response.

yes, the ending is sad. but it’s not rushed. “but that is how a tragedy like ours or king lears breaks your heart- by making you believe the ending might still be happy until the very last second.” doing king lear, doing macbeth, doing romeo and juliet, the plays are chosen not only for reader convenience (they’re plays readers will most likely be familiar with) but also because they all, so very deeply, foreshadow a “bad” ending. killing james, makes sense. as much as people don’t want to hear it, from an authorial perspective- from the reader’s perspective and as a human being it makes sense. why do keep arguing that he “should’ve stayed alive for oliver” or that “if he really loved oliver he wouldn’t have done it” - why are we limiting a character’s entire existence down to their love interest. yes, they were best friends, yes they were set up as lovers but that doesn’t mean that that would be enough to keep james around. james was a fragile character- he was always checking with oliver if he had upset him, he was always worried, overthinking, james wasn’t strong minded- and he was suffering. the only person he had left to depend on was in prison, he was plagued with the guilt of causing the death of a classmate and letting oliver take the blame, if he did kill himself, it sure as hell doesn’t have any reason to sound forced.

“its not nearly as good as the secret history!!!!”

to be honest here buds, why the fuck do we keep comparing them so insistently. they are not the same book. iwwv wasn’t trying to be tsh 2.0, yes there are similarities because hey! guess what! books in similar genres tend to do that! always comparing it tsh when they have different motives, different plots and vastly different execution makes no sense. the only reason that they are compared is because tumblrtm dark academics like to group the two together. and yea- makes sense, but stop trying to belittle iwwv because it isn't as grandiose as tsh, because it’s a little more literal, because it’s not as intertextual as tsh. half the people saying iwwv isn’t as good as tsh are practically just subtly going “shakespeare isn’t as complicated as ancient greek huehue” stop forcing the two together and let them be separately appreciated.

the characters were flat/archetypes/etc

sigh. okay.

these characters are actors. this book shows us their transition from themselves entirely into a conjunction of the roles they’ve played and the stereotypes they’ve portrayed.

“we were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.”

“for us, everything was a performance”

“imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. it can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.”

“far too many times i had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around”

“it’s easier now to be romeo, or macbeth, or brutus, or edmund. someone else.”

are you seeing it now? this focus on their archetypes, this focus on the character they are; the way they see themselves not merely as human but as a walking concoction of every character they have turned into and out of. they depend on their archetypes to give them meaning. rio uses these archetypes to remind us of the submersion of her characters. they weren’t flat, their intentional lack of dimension due to their pasts is what makes them so intricate. furthermore, there's an evident subversion- the tyrant becomes a victim, the hero becomes a villain (they all become villains really), the ingenue becomes corrupted. like mentioned before, i think we forget ourselves easily reading this book but there is a great deal of emphasis on this being their last year- which is so important. the damage has been done and a lot of the issues people have with the content (or lack thereof) in this book has to do with the fact that it’s all things that would have occurred in books focusing on previous years at delletcher.

“it didn't live up to expectation” (also leading on from read tsh to this and being ‘disappointed’)

i cant argue this because its entirely subjective. whatever expectation was created for you, i cannot know that and appropriately respond however- if you liked the secret history and understood the secret history then there's a good chance you also liked and understood this book- even if not to the same extent but you must be able to recognize the authorial approach and its significance. i think a lot of ppl read iwwv (and a lot of “dark academia” texts and films) and hope to be able to romanticize the aesthetic or the concepts and then are disappointed when they are presented with mildly unlikeable and overwhelmingly human characters who aren’t easy to romanticize.

a great majority of these books are criticisms of the very culture you’re trying to romanticize, and the only time you’re willing to admit that is when boasting about the ‘self-awareness’ of the people indulging in them, and then a moment later complain about those same qualities because they don’t serve this idealized expectation.

bad rep for arts/liberal arts/ humanities students as being pretentious/cultish

as a humanities student with a great love for eng lit- all of these things are indeed pretentious and cultish. not all the time and not always and not every person- but it is a common theme. academia is overwhelmingly obsessive and extremely white-washed. people become so fast to believe that they are indulging in finer arts and are therefore a higher standard of person. academia is problematic. and the recent influx of people interested in it is good, very good because hopefully, we’ll be more diverse, more open-minded, more accepting. that's what i hope at least. if you know, as an individual, that you’re not a pretentious academic who places themselves above non-academics then that's wonderful- but there are dangers and negative sides to academia that need to be understood so that we can see to not perpetuating them.

i cant refute all points, mostly because there's a lot of good and well-explained criticism because no book is perfect. and my intentions are not to belittle anyone's opinion. these are merely opposing arguments, food for thought and to be fair- a critical look into why not everything is always going to be what we expect of it and why every ‘problem’ can be assessed.

zhongli ideal s/o and relationship hc’s

note: reader is gender neutral- this is also my contribution for zhongli to come home pls 😃💔i hit my pity but i pulled mona- and i keep getting constellations for razor/chongyun bc i have all 4*’s and probably i bc i also pulled childe while he was out- time to save up for venti when he comes back in march ig (UID 608839674 ar 44) also there’ll probably be more hc’s in the future coughcoughxiaocoughcough

Ideal s/o

Someone who listens to him. As we all know, he’s very knowledgeable about Liyue and the past. He has tons of stories he could drone on about for hours, and he wants you to be there to listen. Be it you listening as a bedtime story or during afternoon tea.

Someone who’s patient with him. Being alive for thousands of years causes him to bear lots of emotional weight, and as stated in his past, he sometimes has trouble expressing himself or coming to terms with his feelings. In public he’s seen as a stoic and calm figure, but behind closed doors is when he lowers his guard, especially if you’re around.

Someone loyal, reliable, and truthful. Being someone who values contracts, if you can keep your word to someone and follow through, he’ll respect you for that.

Someone who’s humble. Zhongli himself is a humble person, he isn’t flashy with his money and prefers things to be kept on the down low, regardless of price or quality.

Someone he can spoil. As the God of Mora, he has unlimited money. Although he may not flaunt it, he can and will buy you things that remind you of him, or things that remind him of you.

Someone who can hold conversations. As much as Zhongli loves sharing his own stories, he too would love to hear from you. He wouldn’t mind listening to you either if you want to get something off of your chest.

Relationship hc’s

Please, please keep a good amount a lot of money in hand just in case he forgets his wallet. If you do end up paying for him, he’ll find a way to repay you back of course.

As stated before, this man can and will go on and on for hours about stories. Please be patient with him, especially when it comes to his emotions. I have a feeling that after losing Guizhong, he still has issues addressing his feelings and a great fear of losing you.

Exploring with him is a big thing. On his days off or late at night if you’re not tired, he will take you to his favorite spots in Liyue just to get some alone time with you. As the Geo Archon, he knows spots that have beautiful views.

Expect lots of trinkets from him, we know he doesn’t look at price tags for anything or he forgets his wallet yet somehow pays it off. A jewel that brings out your complexion? Sold. A hairpin that compliments your hair? It's yours.

Lots of fine dining but he’s open to any requests you may have. Want street food? Be sure to share some with him. Although he’s the oldest archon, I suspect there are many modern things he has yet to try.

Zhongli isn’t big on PDA, but once you two discuss it I’m sure he wouldn’t mind opening up to the idea. Of course, it’ll start as simple as hand holding in public, but behind closed doors he’ll give you as many cuddles and forehead kisses as you want.

He looks to be or is 6ft (182cm) tall, so I suspect that he’ll end up being the big spoon most of the time big spoons need cuddles too sometimes. When you’re cuddling together, expect him to be super warm.

After a stressful day, sometimes he’ll come to you and let his hair down so you can comb your hands through it.

When he gets extra busy, sometimes Zhongli will send you something in the form of a greeting when he isn’t able to see you in person.

gonna be honest i lowkey don’t like using the word ‘transgender’ to describe myself at this point, like idk maybe this is because i’m Chronically Online TM or whatever but i feel like the term ‘transgender’ carries like,, so many implications about someone’s political stance and how they view themselves, or that just being trans is a political identity in and of itself, and like fair enough if that’s how it feels for other people but like,, that’s definitely not how it is for me. i view myself more as just some dude who happens to be afab, my being trans has fuck all to do with my political stances, my personality, or my personal preferences. like i am literally Just Some Guy. the issue here isn't that i’m ashamed of the term ‘trans’ or feel that its literal definition doesn’t apply to me any more, it definitely does, but more so that i hate how just one singular word is used to imply so much about who someone is as a person and their relationship with gender, whereas a term like ‘blonde man’ literally just tells you that someone is a man and is blonde.

like as far as i’m concerned i have no ~special~ relationship with masculinity, my gender is identical to that of a cis guy’s in the way that a blonde guy and a ginger guy are both guys, and thus the same gender. and the only reason i have ‘relationship’, (if it can be called that), to femininity at all is because i was socialised as a girl for roughly 14 years. and if i’m honestly, femininity means nothing to me in the sense that it doesn't apply to me at all nor do i have any desire to partake in it, or be perceived as someone who posses the quality of femininity. not to say that men cant be feminine, or that femininity is an undesirable trait, neither of those things are true at all, but rather just that i hold no connection to femininity at all, other than an understanding of what it is like to be socialised as somebody possessing that trait, and i feel like these days ppl who are defined as trans men are expected to have this complex, possibly resentful, possibly nostalgic relationship with it and are also perceived as like, being men, but being men in a different way from the way cis men are men, which is honestly fucking infuriating to me because i’m just a man, period, and my being trans doesn’t actually affect how i’m a man because i just am. 

to me the word ‘trans’ should imply just as much about somebody’s relationship to gender as the word ‘brunette’, which is to say, absolutely nothing other than that they are a person of a particular gender who also happens to posses a particular superficial trait, but it doesn’t. instead, ‘transgender’ is used as a shorthand to imply a whole lot of complex gender shit, or that ppl who are trans are actually a somewhat different ‘type’ of male or female than ppl who are cis, and as someone who absolutely none of that is true for, it makes using the term ‘trans’ as a self descriptor really fucking annoying. like i said, i view myself as Literally Just Some Guy who also just so happens to be someone who was assigned female at birth, which doesn’t actually mean very much in regards to my relationship with gender, because i’d be a man in the exact same way if i just so happened to be someone who was assigned male at birth. i don’t have any special relationship with masculinity or femininity by virtue of being trans, nor do i feel that i navigate my gender identity differently from that of a cis guy or that my gender is inherently different from that of a cis guy’s, and i definitely dont consider my gender to have a bond with or encapsulate or overlap with femininity in any way. 

as fucking dumb of an oxymoron as it is, ‘cis man who happens to be afab’ honestly feels like a better description of my gender than ‘transgender man’ because of the way i feel that the term ‘trans’ has been warped by online spaces and irl political discourse. like, trans masculinity is meaningless to me in the sense that i don’t feel that it’s any different from cis masculinity. or rather, i dont feel that there are such separate things as ‘trans masculinity’ and ‘cis masculinity’. men are men, women are women, enbies are enbies, yknow? things like ‘trans’ and ‘cis’ are just vague descriptors that don’t actually mean anything in regards to gender identity and self-image, (as well as political leanings, personality traits, etc) in the same way that ‘blonde’ and ‘brunette’ don’t tell you anything actually important about someone’s gender identity. i just dont feel, that im my own particular personal circumstances, that there’s actually any valid distinction to be made between ‘trans’ manhood and ‘cis’ manhood, male-ness is just male-ness in and of itself. 

In Other Lands Character Arcs

(Spoilers Abound)

I’m thinking about how the character arcs of all three main characters from In Other Lands center largely on moving away from what their families expected of them, even as each of them doesn’t necessarily think moving away from that is possible. And how it’s their relationships with each other that help them move in the directions they actually want to move in, and believe in their abilities to forge their own paths and lead fulfilling lives. Even if it’s not what their parents or home communities think a fulfilling life entails. This culminates in their refusal (along with Golden) at the end of the book, to let anyone else influence them when it comes to deciding where to be stationed. They’re ready to choose their own paths, together.

There’s something deeply appealing to me about this as a queer person, even as queerness (as defined by orientation or gender) is not actually a central factor in the shifting of each character’s relationship with their families. Actually, the character who comes closest to that is Serene, who is presumedly straight, but whose pushback against the rigid gendered expectations of her society so challenge her community that she and Golden are essentially banished at least for a time. This is only tangentially queer, I’d say, because she does this not for herself, as she seems to proudly fit & identify with elven womanhood, but recognizes the false limiting of manhood within her society and fights fiercely for Luke, Elliot, and eventually Golden, who I’d say is GNC for sure. For Luke, it’s not his being gay but his being monogamous and waiting longer than they expected (though he’s like, still 17!!! that’s still young!!!) to become sexually or romantically active that is off-putting to his family. For Elliot, his father is shocked not to see him with a man, but to see him happy (cue my tears). 

I was just thinking this after reading Girl, Serpent, Thorn especially, but I really love when queer books parallel queer narratives of shame and struggle and difference and growing pains, with queer characters, but about issues unrelated to their being queer (especially when they’re about magical/fantasy elements). Then we get to relate to queer characters and see them process a lot of the feelings we have experienced, but also get to see them be loved and value and supported unconditionally in their queerness. Anyway, for an individual analysis:

Luke Sunborn

First, because I know a lot of people might not have read it, I’m going to quote Luke’s perspective from Wings In The Morning:

There were reasons Luke hadn’t kissed anybody. The Sunborns, as a family, loved life and loved love, and treated it as a game. It was fine for them: it worked for them.

Luke had always known that a riot of brightness and different loves and leaving someone laughing was beyond him. He wanted kindness and steadiness: he did not want someone who would leave. He wanted love that would last. (location 2527 in my kindle book, I can’t tell what page)

Luke, the Sunborn champion, expected to excel in battle, and love (read: have sex) freely and easily and non-monogamously, becoming an avid reader because of Elliot - something his father is shocked by and a little ashamed of. Learning Elvish because of both of them. Breaking border camp rules, threatening superior officers, to protect Elliot, and to support Serene, even as he continually complains about it and, on paper, would always argue that those choices are Not Okay and Very Bad. Luke, whose bashful shyness around his crushes, whose concern over his first kiss, whose choice of Elliot as a partner, is incomprehensible to his family, snapping, “I don’t want anyone else,” at the elves. He’s chosen Elliot, even as Elliot still doesn’t at all believe it at that point, and he’s happy with that decision. Elliot’s his choice, and only Elliot. Notorious Sunborn sexual voracity be damned.

Luke’s journey is also largely about him working through his external, and later internalized, biases against magical creatures. It’s pretty clearly an analog to xenophobia, and Luke expresses more disgust, disdain, or fear, the more different a culture is from the one he grew up in. This obviously becomes internalized against himself, when he realizes he is half-harpy. He literally represses his wings from coming out, he sees harpies as monsters and includes himself within this. It’s awful, and it’s sad, and it’s a mixture of Elliot’s meticulous research and adamant arguments that harpies are people, and that Luke isn’t a monster at all (and neither are harpies and other non-human creatures), and Serene’s calm acceptance of him, that helps him move through this. 

This xenophobia, although clearly ingrained since childhood, don’t seem to be coming primarily from his family (certainly not from his mother) but from the culture of the borderguard in general. To me, it is implied that his father might at least casually buy into a lot of this, although he would never extend it to his son. It also is an interesting dynamic as related to the other two’s relationships with family, because Luke coming to love and accept himself, and to open his mind about non-human creatures, is actually him coming closer to his mother, rather than moving away. In my view, a part of why he bought in so clearly to this prejudice coming from the general bordercamp culture is because he was pushing away from his parents in the first place - he saw his parents being so wild and free in a way he knew he could never be that he pushed himself into the opposite side, into “reason” and restraint and conservatism. What he needed to learn was how to hold his more “traditional” wants and needs (although like, he’s kind of wrong about that. Elliott Schafer is not the traditional kind quiet love he’s imagining, and he didn’t want that anyway) while still celebrating all of the different approaches and cultures and loves out there, and that’s what he’s learning alongside Elliot and Serene. And he does this partially because Elliot’s love for him as a half-harpy is, according to his previous beliefs, just as wild and out there as his mother’s affair with his biological father, or all of Elliot’s flirting with various magical creatures. And as he accepts Elliot’s love, he accepts that too.

Serene-Heart-In-The-Chaos-of-Battle

From the first moment we meet Serene we know she ran away from home to join the border camp. She’s chosen to join the humans, to fight alongside men, to learn about the borderlands from a human perspective and use that to create an alliance and to create peace. She enters a world where she is looked down on, where she is sexualized and punished for trying to swim shirtless, and has to fight hard to take the classes she wants and have the opportunity to prove herself as she wishes. Instead of deciding her parents and community were right and going back to the elves, she digs her heels in and with Elliot and Luke’s help, fights back, fights to excel at the border camp and make things different and better, and prove her detractors wrong. 

Not only that, but she learns to respect men in a way she was not raised to do, learns to treat men as equals and partners, always defending both Elliot and Luke when her community disrespects them. This prepares her for her relationship with Golden (although Elliot still helps her along a lot, especially with their written correspondence) and ends in her and Golden essentially eloping after Golden ran away to fight alongside her. It’s also important that she accepts Golden fighting alongside her. That was not at all a given, especially as even towards the middle of the book, she seems to be thinking of human men as capable of fighting and strength and other “womanly” qualities, but not necessarily believing the same of elven men. She’s chosen a nontraditional path and a GNC partner in Golden, and for the time being, her closest family is not her blood but her beautiful boyfriend, her swordsister, and her loved and loving best friend Elliot.

Elliot Schafer

Last but the opposite of least is Elliot. What Elliot learned from his family is that he will come to nothing, that he will be forgotten, and that he will not be loved. I am so angry on this child’s behalf, for the ways he was neglected not only by his parents but by everyone before Serene. The ways his father had no interest in him because all he wanted was Elliot’s mother back (and I love Elliot’s observation that even if his mother did come back, his father wouldn’t know what to do, and would not be happy). The way his teacher literally accepted a small bribe to just...... leave him at the entrance to the borderlands, and none of the students cared. The way his mother not only left when he was a child but knew who he was the second she saw or even heard about him at the bordercamp, and never bothered to tell him, or show any interest in him whatsoever.Elliot has been taught, over and over again, that he is unwanted and uncared for. That he has to go it alone, and fill his own needs.

Elliot learns to respect Commander Woodsinger and to know that while she doesn’t necessarily love him, she knows him, and appreciates who and what he is, and sees value and strength in it. She, unlike his previous teachers and school professionals, understands him, and likes him, and values him. She’s not warm, but she’s a positive presence in his life, and part of him learning to believe he has value just as he is, and not just because he spitefully decided it to go against what everyone else has told him, but because it’s actually true.

He didn’t want his parents and his peers and the adults who have let him down to be right about this, so he does dream of being loved back. But he shows himself fully prepared to be the one who loves more in relationships, especially with Serene. He’s ready, at first, to take all she’ll give him, and revel in each part of it, even if it doesn’t match up to his love for her. It’s not until the moment he turns down Serene’s final advance (when she’s clearly settling for him) that he realizes how much he wants to be chosen first. And he believes that’s possible, and worth waiting for (and that in the meantime, he will help Serene up and help her find what she truly wants too).

Elliot knows Serene loves him. She shows him he deserves love, and in his devotion to her, Elliot begins to excel and challenge himself and learn to see his brand of obnoxiousness as something that might not be everyone’s taste but isn’t inherently bad. He trusts Serene to love him, at least as a friend, but he doesn’t trust that Luke will, because Luke reminds him of all of the kids who hurt him in the past.

And that’s why the slowest arc of this whole book is probably Elliot realizing that Luke.... actually likes him. Actually wants to be around him, and enjoys his presence, and even like-likes him - loves him even. It just can’t compute for him. And so we get basically an unreliable narration for most of the book regarding Luke. Elliot’s “aha” moment about Luke rewrites years of his life, shifting his understanding of so much of their lives together. And it solidifies Elliot’s discovery that he can be loved exactly as he is, obnoxious and annoying and all. He’s found people who love him for it, and they’ve chosen him, and they’re going to stick around.

A letter to #stopasianhate

We’ve all seen the rise and the fading of the hashtag but instead of crying about why it’s not pinned, it’s important to actually talk about the issue and where we go from here.

Do people even know why it started? Who started it? The boiling point was obviously the Atlanta spa shootings in combination with anti-Asian hate crimes and covid but anti-Asian racism has existed long before the hate crimes of 2021 and 2020 and long before covid in 2019. It’s just that mainstream media attention has only picked it up over the last year and a half or so. Some of y’all, or perhaps most of y’all just haven’t been paying attention to your fellow Asian human beings.

Like any other form of racism, it’s an experience over a lifetime and shapes the quality of life for both individuals and groups over the course of generations in a triple constant state of time in the past, present, and future AND is committed by individuals, groups, societies, and the social systems that keep our current world going. It’s like air, it’s everywhere. Now obviously, we can’t get into everything since this isn’t an extensive history lesson but Anti-Asian racism isn’t just something that started a year ago nor is it exclusive to western countries, which is something we’re all really fucking tired of saying and arguing over.

#stopasianhate is a grassroots, on-the-ground-street movement that was started by Asian people that were new to the activist scene and also had little to no activist knowledge, many that were getting involved (or had the courage to) for the first time. It was not born from large political or organizational think-tanks. It was born out of sadness and anger at the most basic human level by the most basic, everyday people. And because it was born in such a way, it didn’t gain much traction or support among some groups, such as the right-wingers that don’t think racism hinders the quality of life nor from the leftists that demand more from new activists who don’t even know much to begin with. The attacks and insults come from both sides.

#stopasianhate was and is still plagued by ignorance, erasure, and elitism. And let’s not act like racists, non-Asian individuals, and Asian leftists haven’t been trying to discredit the movement since the very beginning. Who it did bring in and appeal to however, were the larger, semi-apolitical masses that wanted to do something—anything. Thus we started to see the bridge and coalition-building between the masses that may not have known much, through no fault of their own, and between those that did have some knowledge and were willing to educate or spread awareness. Of course, we are still seeing that now and in my opinion, it’s better to bring in and teach folks than to discredit or even degrade them before they even begin the journey into something as complex as race and racism, as simple as it may sound.

Though the movement is still on-going, it has largely faded from mainstream attention and tumblr is probably one of the only social media sites where some people still use it on the daily, though there are pocket communities that still use it on Twitter and Facebook for example. In my opinion, it was a missed opportunity for us Asian folks to build the movement into something far beyond ourselves. If we can’t even push a movement that was made by us and for us, what changes can we expect in the long run?

Too often have I seen Asian folks fighting over the fucking name of the hashtag instead of building on it into a larger mass movement to address the reasons as to why it even came about in the first place, reasons that stretch back years, decades, and centuries even. It ain’t just the divide-and-conquer tactics of white supremacy that break up or stagger movements, sometimes it’s just the little petty in-fighting bullshit like that.

Now this isn’t to say #stopasianhate has failed or anything, not even close. I’ve seen people across the US, to Canada, to Australia, across Europe, even folks in Asia and elsewhere that have pushed the movement. For the basic, everyday person to come together with others to create a movement spanning one part of the globe to the other is amazing and highlights the power that people wield when they are united on something. It shows that we as Asian people regardless of country, ethnicity, nationality, gender, class, sexual orientation, political and religious beliefs, and everything else, could come together on one thing if nothing else. Who says we can’t come together because we can, we did, and we will.

Movements don’t stop just because a hashtag gains less traction or because the mainstream media ain’t reporting on it as much. Movements have always been here and will continue to be built so long as people come together as we always have. So sure #stopasianhate isn’t as mainstream as it once was but who’s to say that Asian people aren’t organizing, building, and rallying as they’ve always done in the past, present, and future, and across the US and other countries across the globe? There are movements all across the world right now if you pay a bit more attention.

So where do we go from here? That’s up to us, simple enough. We don’t need to be activists to do something or say something. We don’t need qualifications to speak on something that we know is morally, ethnically, and just plain humanly fucking wrong. And we certainly don’t need to set a goal so fucking high, it can’t even be done in our lifetimes. I really hate this toxic elitism in social justice spaces where people only want to do something or celebrate when society is completely fucking destroyed or something. Honestly, that shit ain’t happening anytime soon so shut the fuck up about it and find ways to navigate and change shit, if not for yourself then for people beyond you and ultimately for society as a whole.

Who cares if someone is only concerned about politics and signing bills? Who cares if someone is only concerned about media representation and movies? Who cares if someone is only concerned about opening up a small business or owning something for themselves? Who cares if someone just wants to draw or make music or write stories or play sports or something else? Let people do what they do best in THEIR field or passion.

When it comes down to it, we need ALL people across ALL fields and passions to contribute to the larger means of human rights and social justice. It ain’t about grooming everybody to adopt some grand utopian self-destruction plan that doesn’t have any fucking sense of reality. It’s about compassion, rebirth, discovery, change, creation, and whatever other shit that comes about when basic, common, everyday ass people come together to do something beyond themselves. And in the grand scheme of things, #stopasianhate is just one of the many proofs of that.

Regardless of where we go and what we do, #stopasianhate is part of human history in the year 2021 and for that, even with all its criticisms and support, you as a movement have my love and this letter is being offered to you.