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cedarxwing · 14 days

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The ending of Hannibal the novel explained

(aka the breastfeeding scene)

Here's the passage (end of Chapter 101):

I thought everyone was kidding about the breastfeeding kink jokes until my partner read Hannibal and the whole ending flew over their head. Their main takeaway was "that was weird." When I checked reddit, it seemed everyone was confused there too. I was gobsmacked to see one guy say that Thomas Harris was playing some cruel joke on the reader by writing an ending that didn't make sense!

How many people are reading Hannibal like this, completely missing the resolution to Hannibal's character arc? They must finish the book confused about what it was all about in the first place. So here's how I understand it!

First, I need to get this out of the way: a lot of people hate this scene, and from what I understand it's because they're weirded out by the "breastfeeding kink." Which is fine, but it makes me want to gently hold them by the hand and tell them that it's ok for someone to suck on a nipple. It happens all the time. Sometimes it just feels good, sometimes it's part of a breastfeeding fantasy, and sometimes it's literal breastfeeding. Between consenting adults, this is all fine and normal. Let's all move past this knee-jerk repulsion (or alternatively, sit in our discomfort and expand our horizons) so we can analyze this piece of art together. :)

Next, authors LOVE Freudian psychoanalysis. Even though it's all nonsense, it's full of literary allusion and makes for compelling narratives and character studies (childhood maladjustment, repressed memories, etc), which is basically catnip for a writer. Thomas Harris was no exception, and probably creamed himself (as I did) when he learned that Freud's oral-sadistic stage was also termed the "cannibalistic stage," referring to the time when an infant is growing teeth and begins to bite at the breast--the psychosexual urge to devour and destroy the thing you love. What could be more appropriate for Hannibal?

Next, consider the pattern of Hannibal's Il Mostro murders. He killed young couples in one of the most romantic cities in the world, then arranged them as Chloris and Zephyr from Botticelli's Primavera, exposing Chloris's left breast just like in the painting. In classical art, an exposed breast is often a symbol of fertility. Chloris is associated with spring, new growth, and transformation.

Perhaps, at the time, Hannibal rationalized these murders as retribution for rude behavior. Maybe the couples were performing disgusting PDA. Maybe they were obnoxious tourists on their honeymoons. Either way, it's clear to the reader that Hannibal has some deep-seated hang up about sex and romance.

The particulars of this hang up are open to interpretation, but based on Hannibal's obsession with the rape and transformation of Chloris as well as his embarrassment at the paintings of Leda and the Swan in the German's house, I think it's safe to say that Hannibal feels like any relationship he has with a woman who isn't aware of his true (monstrous) identity would involve a degree of violence/lack of consent. He is forever barred from normal romance.

Having given up on sex/romance, Hannibal is unable to consciously recognize his desire for Clarice, so he sublimates it into a more general familial love. He longs for a return to innocence, to return to the time before he ate Mischa and became an unlovable monster (cue the teacup metaphor).

But even familial love seems like too much to hope for, so he sublimates it further into something that seems more attainable: resurrecting the person whom he loved and devoured, and who loved him in turn (Mischa) through Clarice.

So we have the breast as a symbol of sex/fertility (Chloris/Clarice), as an object that is loved and devoured (Mischa), and as a literal source of sustenance that must be given up during infancy (mommy).

Big brain Clarice connects all these dots and, in the very same style of therapy that Hannibal has been using on her, distills Hannibal's psychological problems into a single poetic gesture that completely fixes Hannibal in an instant, proving that she's not only his intellectual equal, but is, in some ways, his superior.

When Clarice asks, "Did you ever feel that you had to relinquish the breast to Mischa? Did you ever feel you were required to give it up for her?", she's ostensibly asking Hannibal if he's stuck in the oral stage of childhood development (which yeah he probably is). On a deeper level, she's asking Hannibal to consider if he's given up on love.

When Clarice exposes her breast in the same fashion as Chloris, says, "You don’t have to give up this one", and suspends the drop of wine from her nipple, she is shifting his perception of her breast from familial devoured sustenance to a sexual object. Basically, "Why do you want me to pretend I'm your sister when we could be banging?" Hannibal is being aged out of his childlike mindset, not regressing into one.

There are other layers of meaning in this act. The hedonism of using thousand dollar wine for food play is a sign of Clarice's character development. The way Hannibal kneels before Clarice is a position of subservience, but could also be interpreted as devouring Clarice in a way that's new to him. It's the most self-actualized thing Hannibal has done since escaping prison (LOL) and marks the end of his hero's journey (as one of the first things we see him do in Hannibal Rising is nurse).

Personally, I don't read this scene as breastfeeding kink. Yeah, Clarice talks about breastfeeding, but that was more a metaphor for other stuff. Considering the direction of Hannibal's character arc, I understand this scene as him briefly licking the wine off before they have sex. But to each their own! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ANYWAY, yeah, it's unsettling. It's obviously meant to be. But it's beautifully unsettling! Hate it all you want, but this is peak cannibal romance, to me!!

#hannibal meta #hannibal #clarice starling

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canmom · 22 days

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reading Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt. it's interesting. clearly part of the post-Topside wave of trans lit, with the same 'plugged in to twitter' energy, but way more British about it. which means most of the allusions are very transparent to me. it's a combo of... hardcore kink driven romance as the main arc, in a near-future setting in which TERFism goes further to the point of outright bombings, and a scifi element with alien brain parasites that it's gradually building towards.

compellingly written, I'll give it that for sure - I lay down to read for a bit and before I knew it I'd read like a third of the book. the main character's disaffected, traumatised air is well observed, and the kink doesn't hold back.

I think my reservation with it so far is that it feels a little too much like a polemic blog post about the way things are going. the MC Frankie is a trans woman with a pregnancy kink who survived a bombing at a GIC and now works in social media moderation - it's all stuff that is blatantly Relevant To The Argument, as it were. it's tricky to criticise it for that because it's like, what you're saying is that it's tightly constructed and thematically consistent and that's bad somehow? but I think I've come to feel that I like fiction to bring me something a little new and unfamiliar.

the chapter I most enjoyed so far was actually a more metaphorical, abstract interlude, in which resistance to fascism is cast as becoming 'one mass of queer flesh, which now grabbed and clawed...'; 'faces locked in kisses until they became one face. the cops would try to pull at this mass, but to no avail'. very 'faggots and their friends between revolutions' stuff.

the chapters which are presented directly as social media posts and articles are also sharply observed. i think a lot of fiction in which the internet features heavily suffers from not understanding the internet very well (Hosoda's Belle for example), but for example the chapter 'Curious Cat' where an anonymous person (blatantly Vanya) is sending messages asking for help with a parasite, and getting rebuffed or misunderstood, and the chapter where Frankie relates a murder of an instagram model by a stalker who posts about it to a reddit community devoted to her, read as very real.

a lot of the story is about responding to a terrifying political situation in sexual terms - a flashback chapter depicting Frankie having sex with some terf's pretentious brother ("with each thrust from him, she thought to herself, I am a traitor, I am a traitor to the cause"), or the preface which jokes about how in another world the author would be writing 'cool horror stories about vampires raping werewolves, ones with no subtext at all'. I prevaricate a little on whether this is a compelling examination of a theme that I do find interesting (the mysterious origins of sexual desire) or just edgy for its own sake.

this is an odd novel for me in some ways because while on one level, this is about people who I could very easily be a single degree of separation from were they real, it's also about a facet of life that is still quite alien to me and in many ways I only know about second hand. I've never been to a kink club (that wasn't in an MMO anyway lol), I'm way too much of a nerdy autist shut-in to know what it's like to be someone who would feel put out if she hadn't had sex in a week. so even before the parasite stuff, it's hard to know how much of Frankie and Vanya's stuff is real, and how much is fantasy. is this really how things go between people? it sounds kinda fun, but unlocking the door this far has already taken years.

when I've read books about the crazy lives that American trans girls supposedly live and interesting sex they're apparently having, they've been at a certain remove, the other side of the Atlantic. and this book feels sort of similar, even though I know it's set right on my doorstep. idk, I've never been good at this.

anyway I don't think I want to write fantasy novels so directly about The Discourse of the day, but it's probably good that someone is. that said, it's hard to parse like... ok, it's titled brainwyrms, and 'brain worms' is a common way of describing an obsessive, cultish idea you receive from the internet.

and like if you look at the newspapers, or twitter trans discourse, you certainly could believe that this country is on a rapid slide to putting us in camps. however, my day to day life has been... it's not without hostility, but the average street harasser isn't doing it because of a Guardian or even Mail article. this country has a subculture of deranged weirdos who hate our guts, and a political class who will happily stoke culture war shit to score points, but most normies I've met don't care one way or another that I'm trans - they might mention a family member or friend they know who's also trans. the day to day conflicts are over way more prosaic shit, the landlord vs tenant forever war, or how the kitchen should be cleaned. which of these windows is more informative of the 'overall' state of affairs? not that a more violent terf cult is a bad premise to write a novel around, but a sense of impending doom is a pretty powerful mechanism to keep you scrolling, right?

like in 20, 40 years - will the terfs really be bombing the Tavistock and banning transness, as Rumfitt imagines in her near-future setting preface? or will they go the way of those newspapers in Thatcher's time who smeared the gay movement, just as they smear us today? of passing political obsessions like 'new atheism'? I don't know the half-life of cult shit.

anyway, time to read the rest of the novel, and see how it handles this brew that it's concocted.

#fiction #sff #novels

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pinkeoni · 10 months

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The Big AIDS Metaphor Post

In her essay "Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" from her book The Language of the Night: Essays of Fantasy and Science Fiction, science-fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin writes—

"The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, of your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny."

It would be easy for me to claim that Stranger Things is a show that utilizes its science-fiction elements as an AIDS metaphor, but that only goes so far without being able to prove that the show is in fact employing said metaphor. "The show takes place in the 80's -> AIDS was a big part of the 80's -> therefore the show is about AIDS" isn't an airtight argument in itself. I can quote famous sci-fi writers all day but that still wouldn't prove that the Duffers themselves are actually following similar trains of thought.

So here's my big long post about why the show is utilizing it's science-fiction elements as an AIDS metaphor.

Lengthy discussion of rape, violent homophobia and drug use below the cut.

A Brief History of HIV/AIDS in America

For those not in the know about HIV/AIDS, and in order to all get on the same page, here is a short recap. For my information, I will be this timeline from hiv.gov as well as this timeline created by History Channel, as well as some of the supplemental hyperlinks provided. Any other sources I use will be linked throughout.

HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus is a virus that attacks the body's immune system, making it highly susceptible to infection and cancers. The virus can progress to a more severe version of the infection, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS. The virus spreads through bodily fluids such as semen and blood. The most common ways for HIV/AIDS to spread was through unprotected sex and sharing needles while using drugs.

The initial cases of HIV were present in America in the 70's but become much more rampant starting in the early 1980s. Because cases of AIDS were most commonly seen in gay and bisexual men, there was a large misconception that AIDS was a "gay plague" or a "gay disease" as it was nicknamed. By 1984, 3,500 Americans had died from AIDS related illnesses.

The reason that AIDS epidemic got as deadly as it did is often attributed to the Reagan Administration's failure to act, something that President Reagan denied. Reagan would not publicly acknowledge AIDS until 1985, despite U.S. health officials being aware of AIDS since 1981.

Understanding just how entrenched this metaphor is in the story will include going through each season and examining in detail how each one plays into this metaphor.

Season One: Establishing Metaphor & Government Cover Up in Early Years of Epidemic

The AIDS metaphor is most closely connected with Will's storyline, although it's not exclusive to Will nor is his storyline exclusive to AIDS. Furthermore, the supernatural elements of this show are multifaceted. AIDS is but just one of the metaphors expressed in the show, but for the sake of this post it's what I will be focusing on.

The setup begins following Will's disappearance in episode 1, when Joyce introduces Will's queer coding to us.

By 1983 the terms "gay disease" and "gay cancer" had been in the public vocabulary for a couple years now. So when Joyce brings up his queerness in regards to to his disappearance in a show that takes place in the early 1980s, there is a subconscious correlation that can be made in the watchers mind. His sexuality is significant to the why he went missing, otherwise why bring it up?

We then hear through Troy exactly what the town believes happened to Will.

I think that Troy essentially being a mouthpiece for his father is significant to show that Troy's beliefs are not exclusive to him and they do not exist in a vacuum. Troy's homophobia is a product of his environment, which includes his home and by extension, Hawkins.

The specification that Will was killed by "some other queer" adds another layer under the surface of Troy's statement, one that implies that Will was raped before he was kill, otherwise, again, why bring up sexuality in the first place? This was the attitude toward gay men— they rape and kill little boys.

In early 1984, there was a study conducted by the American Journal of Medicine to trace the sexual partners of a cluster of patients with Kaposi Sarcoma, one of the common cancers that killed AIDS patients. The study identified a flight attendant as "Patient O" who was among the first to exhibit symptoms of HIV/AIDS and had a rather active sex life with a multitude of sexual partners. The study was soon misconstrued by the public to claim that there was a Patient Zero who was "a promiscuous or even malicious gay man who single-handedly and knowingly touched off the AIDS pandemic in the United States."

Another crucial factor of the metaphor is the cover-up and blame shifting from the government lab, the exact thing that allowed the problem to escalate and become as deadly as it did to begin with. In the early years of the epidemic, Reagan slashed the budget of public health agencies like the CDC, and it would be years until he ever made a speech about it let alone even mentioned AIDS publicly.

We see how adamant the lab is to cover up any supernatural involvement with Will's disappearance in an attempt to cover their own asses. Framing his death as an accident was their call, all while being acutely aware of what the actual problem was. This confrontation from Joyce to Brenner puts it pretty aptly.

Tangent About Barb

This AIDS metaphor is something that I thought of when I first watched the show back in 2016 (humble brag) but what tipped me off the most wasn't Will or the lab but it was the fact that Barb was the other victim shown.

Barb's queer coding was clear to everyone and their mother. Hell, there's even a joke about it in the Bad Lip Reading of the first season. Barb, Nancy's short haired female friend who takes issue with Nancy's new relationship and has a hard time fitting in with with all of the heterosexual antics of Steve's house party. She's singled out, and while the rest of the gang get to casually enjoy the pleasures of sex, while Barb, another member of the queer community, sadly loses her life. The show cuts between Nancy having sex with Steve with Barb being killed to emphasize this stark contrast.

Season Two: Personal Effects of HIV/AIDS & Social Stigmatization

Season one was surrounding Will while not really showing us much of his pov, but season two dives right in to his perspective.

So, remember when I talked earlier about how Troy, and by extension the town, believed that Will was raped? Well, he wasn't exactly wrong.

This moment wasn't lost on me when I originally watched the show, although I think I ignored the implications because I didn't want to believe what I was seeing. But it's pretty well spelled out— A long, tentacle-like organ used for the sake of reproduction (Will "births" D'Art as a result of this), is inserted inside of Will's mouth without consent.

It's been a year, and Will is still dealing with the trauma of what happened, along with all of these new changes to his life. Will frequently attends doctors appointments at the lab, where the lab themselves aren't completely confident what is happening with him either.

When cases of HIV/AIDS were first appearing in the U.S., health officials were unclear as to what exactly this virus was and how it worked, only that clusters of otherwise healthy gay men were suddenly developing rare and aggressive infections and cancers.

Owens refers to the spread of the Upside Down very clinically— describing it as some cancer. One of the first articles published about HIV/AIDS in America before more information was known was a New York Times article titled "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals." The cancer the headline refers to being Karposi Sarcoma, the rare skin cancer developing due to their weakened immune system.

HIV/AIDS in itself isn’t the disease that patients die from, but instead the weakened immune system allows for diseases to take over the body without much defense. After his visit to the Upside Down, Will faces a series of “True Sight” visions as Mike puts it, which allows for a destructive foreign entity to invade Will's body and slowly take it over.

HIV.gov lists the following as some of the symptoms of AIDS:

"Rapid weight loss"

"Profuse night sweats"

and "Memory loss"

To the government agents in the lab, we see just how disposable Will is to them. In their words, if it kills him, it kills him. (thank you to @emblazons for being the one to point this out to me)

Owens may have held more concern for Will, but he still continues the government cover-up started by Brenner in season one. We also see the fallout of Barb's death, with Nancy and Jonathan fighting to uncover and reveal the truth. Owens is the one who tries to put a stop to their exposé of events to Barb's mom.

Not only is Will facing trauma and his body being ravaged by this new illness, but he's also facing social stigmatization, something common among gay men with positive HIV statuses at this time. There seemed to be some sympathy from the townsfolk when Will was missing and presumed dead, yet he faces animosity almost seemingly because he came back.

The "Zombie Boy" Nickname

I once made a whole separate post about this, but Will's "Zombie Boy" nickname from season two fits in with this AIDS metaphor.

On a surface level, the nickname is in reference to the fact that Will seemed to come back to life despite having a funeral and being buried. In a literal sense, however, his peers are quite literally referring to him a walking corpse that spreads disease. Individuals suffering from AIDS often have very short life expectancies, and zombies are the re-animated dead that aim to infect and kill as many people as possible. It is a very coded nickname.

In the post that I linked, I speculate the possibility that some people in town may even believe that Will has HIV. Remember earlier when I mentioned Troy's comment "he was probably killed by some other queer" which implies a belief that Will was raped. The town don't know about any of the supernatural goings-on, but they do know that Will went missing, was found in a cabin a week later, was hospitalized shortly after and attended frequent doctor visits through the following year. I don't see a reason that malicious rumors would cease, especially considering that they already continue to be cruel and ostracizing with the Zombie Boy nickname.

Look also at this moment of Will getting weird looks as he is being pulled from school to attend his doctors appointment. Why so much stigma around simply going to the doctor?

The 1984 Reelection of Ronald Reagan

In 1984, Ronald Reagan won reelection in one of the biggest election wins in history. And— subsequently continuing his and the governments silence towards the AIDS epidemic.

Season two takes place in the week leading up to the reelection. There are small set pieces that draw attention to this, such as this election sign in front of the library.

If the date November 6th sounds familiar, it should.

Dr. Owens mentions the anniversary of Will's disappearance. The one year anniversary of Will's disappearance is the same day that Ronald Reagan was reelected. Will's trauma is being purposefully associated with that day.

I've also made a separate post before just about the Reagan/Bush '84 signs that litter the lawns of Hawkins houses. They appear most notably in the Halloween episode, building to when Will has his true sight episode that night. There is one clearly in frame just before Will is separated from the group, called a "Zombie Boy" and a "freak" (two very coded nicknames) before he falls into his vision.

We also get a clear view of the Reagan/Bush sign outside of the Wheeler house before Will describes his experience to Mike.

A Tangent About the Wheelers

And now the question on everyone's mind: Are the Wheeler's homophobic?

Ted and Karen Wheeler are not violent, homophobic bullies. That would be a massive reach. But it would also be a reach to say that they are vocal allies. And maybe that's just what the average middle class family

In the very least, the Wheelers are passively contributing to a system that enables homophobia. To be honest, they are probably just going along with what everyone else is doing. Like I said earlier, Reagan was an incredibly popular candidate for the 1984 reelection. The Wheelers have the privilege of being able to comfortably conform without having to worry about much of the consequences. (I'll talk more about the Wheelers later)

In the episode where Will is possessed by the Mind Flayer, Joyce calls the school and we get an extended shot with Reagan's portrait in the background. The shot begins with the portrait slightly obscured, then the camera dolly's in towards the receptionist with the portrait still in frame. Shortly after this Will is possessed in the field. Here is one of the camera begins the shot and where the camera ends the shot.

I also wanna note that when Joyce calls in this scene, the receptionist makes a side comment about her and rolls her eyes. There's a clear animosity towards not only Will, but the whole Byers family, including the adults of the town. Including Reagan's portrait in this shot is meant to create a subtle correlation between him and the stigma that the Byers' face.

Season Three: The Façade of Patriotism Over a Dying Nation

It's 1985, Ronald Reagan has been reelected, and this season introduces Hawkins Mayor Larry Kline.

Is Larry Kline meant to be Ronald Reagan?

I would say that Mayor Kline is probably exemplary of American politicians in a broader sense (in fact the Duffers may have been making allusions to Trump with his connection to the Russians) although the fact that he's in office the same time as Reagan is still significant.

In the beginning of the season, Mayor Kline is being met with protesters outside his house, not unlike many of the AIDS awareness protests from the 80's.

The townsfolk are angered with Kline for building the mall and running some of the small businesses into the ground. During Reagan's run, he implemented a system of economics called "Reaganomics," which aimed to cut taxes and support economic growth. Although critics of Reaganomics will point out that his policies had actually increased the wealth gap, making the rich richer and the poor, poor. I want to keep this post about the AIDS metaphor, although I wanted to point this out as it is a connection between Kline and Reagan. And as I said earlier in this post, the metaphors are multifaceted and not just about AIDS.

But continuing, later in the season Kline puts on a big 4th of July festival to celebrate the independence of his country with neon lights and flashy fireworks. Meanwhile, the people of his town are dying right under his political reign.

During season 3, the AIDS metaphor actually moves away from Will, with the focus of his story shifting slowly to romance. This was setup at the Snowball at the end of season 2, and season 3 hints at some of Will's feelings for Mike which will be carried into season 4.

But the metaphor is carried on by Will's name twin, Billy.

Billy and Will sharing the same first name, that being William, feels significant as Will basically passes the baton to him and Billy now becomes the focus for this metaphor. We learn from Max that Billy is very sexually active, and in the beginning of the season he has eyes for Karen Wheeler. It is while he is on his way to this illicit sexual affair when he is "infected" by the Mind Flayer. (this was pointed out to me in the comment of one of my posts, but have since lost it. If you are reading this— thank you.)

Billy then passes the "infection" along to a girl he was flirtatious with, before the "virus" begins spreading over town.

There is also language and rape imagery associated with being flayed. There is the repeated lines "hold still" and "it'll all be over soon." When Heather's parents are flayed, they are tied up something is forcefully inserted orally, not unlike what we saw with the tentacle inside of Will in season one and his possession in season two. (I first saw this pointed out by @kaypeace21

The flayed begin to eat chemicals, and Nancy makes the comment that Tom, one of the flayed, appears to have been on drugs. Another common way that HIV is spread is through the sharing of drug needles.

HIV/AIDS in the Press

Nancy's arc with the newspaper this season reminds me a lot of how AIDS was first being reported in the press. Nancy begins her search for a story with stolen fertilizer and diseased rats, not realizing that there was a much bigger and much more dangerous story at hand. One of the first reports HIV in the media was from a CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from 1981, which cited five cases of pneumonia in previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles. While still a deadly number, it was relatively small compared to the massive number of AIDS cases and deaths that would soon follow.

When Nancy brings her story to work, Bruce, one of her higher-ups, sips from this rather patriotic coffee mug before telling Nancy to drop the story.

At the end of the 1985 summer in Hawkins, the flayed have died in a "mall fire" and Larry Kline is arrested for colluding with the Russians, and their patriotic façade is shattered.

In September 1985, shortly after actor and close friend of Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson dies, of an AIDS related illness, Reagan makes his first public acknowledgement of AIDS.

Season Four: Further Stigmatization & LGBT Witch Hunting

In season four the town is finally privy to the fact that there is something wrong going on, although they are unsure of exactly what. When things begin to escalate, instead of blaming the actual guilty party, they go on an all-out witch hunt.

Once again, Will's pretty removed from the AIDS storyline in this season with his arc focusing on his romantic feelings for Mike. With Billy dead and Will out of town, the baton passes once again for the metaphor to be carried by Eddie Munson.

In the first episode of season 4, Eddie is reading a magazine with an article about the Satanic Panic, a real case of wide-spread hysteria in the 1980's regarding the fear of rising Satanism, supposedly promoted by D&D. The article links the game to violent behavior, Satanic worship, sodomy and murder.

Tangent on Sodomy and Sodomy Laws

Merriam-Webster defines sodomy as "anal or oral copulation with another person." The definition is often expanded to include copulation with animals, although the term sodomy, according to Merriam-Webster, means "especially: anal or oral copulation with a member of the same sex."

While definitions may vary depending on states, some states have specific laws outlawing sodomy, even between consenting adults. In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia's anti-sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick, after a homosexual man and his partner were arrested after being caught while having sex in his own home. Sodomy laws would eventually be challenged again in 2002 with the Lawrence v. Texas case.

While sodomy can technically can refer to both homosexual and heterosexuals, it is especially and historically has been used in regards to homosexual sex. When Eddie reads the word sodomy here, gay sex is being lumped in and made equivalent to violent behavior, Satanic worship, and murder. Quite literally in season four, Hellfire Club is seen as the evil Satanic sodomizers who bring death to their town.

While trying to find a substitute for the D&D game, one of kids Mike asks mentions 60 Minutes in his rebuttal of Mike's request. This episode takes place on March 21st, 1986. On March 16th, 1986, 60 Minutes played a segment called "Life and Death in San Fransisco," a segment about the AIDS virus on CBS. (EDIT: I originally attributed this to the wrong person, but thank you to @aemiron-main for being the one to point this out. Apologies for my memory mixing up my ST analysts in my head 😔) The archived footage can be viewed on YouTube.

When Chrissy is killed by Vecna inside of Eddie's trailer, leading the town to suspect that Eddie was the killer, she was going there to do drugs. Again, a common way for AIDS to be spread was through the sharing of drug needles. After the town and cops suspect Eddie, the town goes on an all-out witch hunt for him and other members of Hellfire, invoking Christianity as their reasoning. In Eddie's words— "Hunt the freak, right?"

Does this mean that Eddie is queer?

The black handkerchief in his back pocket and Joseph Quinn's flirtatious ad-libs with Steve are not completely lost on me. And the AIDS coding here does seem to be pointing in that direction, but here's what I think.

Eddie's actual sexual orientation, and by extension that of Hellfire, is beside the point and doesn't actually matter in the eyes of the town. Every member of Hellfire could be straight and every member of Hellfire could be gay, but what matters is that Hellfire Club is a group of outsiders that participate in recreational activity that is deemed dangerous, and that in itself is queer, regardless of who they may actually be attracted to.

Another Tangent on The Wheelers

During Jason's religious spiel in town hall which invoked the witch hunt against Eddie and Hellfire, we get this shot of Ted and Karen Wheeler upon remembering that Mike is a part of Hellfire. And boy do they look terrified.

This moment, right here, is what I believe to be the Wheeler rug pull. They may not have been signing up to witch hunt their son when they put that Reagan sign in their front lawn, but this is what it leads to. They're being confronted with the most extreme end of their forced conformity and they fear what they see. I think part of what causes this change in character is because they know Mike, had Mike not been a Hellfire member, who is to say if they would have changed their tune or join in the witch hunt. At the end of the season, when the news reports that the giant gate in town is a "doorway to Hell," both Ted and Karen scoff at the report, calling it "hysteria." The conformists are beginning to un-conform.

Concluding Thoughts & Season Five

Providing a story about HIV/AIDS through a science-fiction metaphor is both practical and ethical. The metaphor allows the show to tell the story to a wide audience without the reliance on outside knowledge. You don't have to be an expert in HIV/AIDS history to understand the story that it's trying to tell. It's ethical as well in that it doesn't force it's incredibly young actors to have to act out being raped and developing HIV/AIDS.

With Eddie Munson dead and Zombie Boy back in town, I think that the AIDS metaphor will shift it's focus back to Will. I think we may see a colliding of the AIDS plot with his romance plot. How do you pursue romance with a HIV+ status? Can you?

The way I see, season 5 has the choice to go in one of two directions:

But first, a short tangent about my uncle

In recent years, I came to learn that my uncle was HIV+, something that wasn't known to me when I was younger. Him and his partner are both in their sixties, and they currently bought a plot of land in which they plan on building their dream house together.

But anyways, the two choices are this:

Will dies by the end of the season. He becomes one of the many gay men with HIV/AIDS who lived a short life, unable to grow into adulthood and pursue his love life. His story is a tragedy.

Will lives. He becomes one of the many gay men with HIV/AIDS who survived and is able to live a long and happy life full of love. His story is an uplifting one full of hope.

Tagging: @emblazons @italiantv @gaysmindpalace @ven0moir @punkwillbyers @mikesbasementbeets @quinterobb @drangues @basiltonpitch @howtobecomeadragon

#stranger things #stranger things analysis #st aids metaphor #tw rape #tw drug use #tw homophobia #okay. after much teasing and putting it off. it is done #if you ever expressed any mild interest in this post then i tagged you #but also apologies if i missed anyone #edit to tags btw i probably did not cover everything just everything i felt most confident on. i know this topic is probably pretty expansiv #if you have additions feel free to add!!

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marquisoforder · 2 years

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This song is about being raped when you are underaged and still having to deliver the child of your rapist because your right to an abortion has been taken from you. The running metaphor is about being “occupied”, both politically and physically, by those who are more powerful than you. It contains extremely relevant themes about abuse, colonization, and loss of autonomy. And people still disregard the politics of his lyrics and try so hard to stick this man in their autumn forest fae fantasy I’m so done with it

#this is a disservice to his activism #swan upon leda #hozier #andrew hozier byrne #tw rape #rape mention #abortion #tw abortion

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romanticizingmurder · 2 months

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One of the things that comes up a lot in meta on the vampire chronicles is trying to delineate between "this is being treated as a kink fantasy", "this is fictional trauma beinf sexualized", and "this is being treated like real trauma would be" and I think the interesting and almost unique to itself aspect of TVC is that...it's almost always all of the above.

I've been thinking about David and Lestat's respective turnings lately and what strikes me about both is how they don't really neatly line up into "portrayal of horrific trauma", "rape fantasy", or even "cnc fantasy" (hear me out, we'll get there), but are an uneasy mixture of all of them at the same time.

Disclaimer: I am going to be talking about rape in a fictional story both as a traumatic violence and as a fantasy. I am coming at this from the point of view of someone who enjoys kinks, including nonconsent in fiction, and who is a real life survivor.

Using David's turning because most of the discussion around it is neatly in the same one or two places, we see it treated as all of these things in turn.

Lestat undeniably rapes David. That is not only the implication from blood drinking as a metaphor for sexual desire, but explicitly the language used:

There are scenes of genuine anguish after the assault:

At the same time, the scene is, at least in my opinion, pretty sexualized! We linger in descriptions of David's body, of Lestat's pleasure in this monstrous deed.

And if this was all there was to it, I'd feel pretty comfortable putting this (and the many situations which mirror it in TVC) as a dead dove sort of situation. It's erotic horror, and this is both erotic and horrifying. What else did you expect?

And yet.

Let me make a relevant digression:

Up until 2012, when new research started coming out, the most popular theory for why rape fantasies are so prevalent among women was something called sexual blame avoidance. The idea being that women's sexuality and desires are so shamed by society as a whole that fantasies wherein they are forced allow them a guiltless way of experiencing desire.

This actually appears to not be the case for most people with these fantasies, but it certainly still is for many, and, possibly more relevantly: when these books were written, this would have been The theory on rape fantasies. That rape fantasies are a manifestation of desires that one feels ashamed of, so the fantasy of being forced removes one's agency and thus blame.

And here is David, having been raped by Lestat, saying he really did want it, he just couldn't allow himself to want it.

David had a desire he felt shame for desiring, and Lestat took away that shame by forcibly acting upon it.

It's easy to read this as simply rape apologism, and I can't stop anyone from reading it that way. And I don't and can't really know what Anne was thinking in this or in any number of other scenes that encompass erotica and horror and the comfort of fantasy all at once.

All I can do is say that the first thing I thought of when reading David's speech was how it felt directly lifted from any number of conversations I've had with other survivors on the appeal of cnc scenes. All I know is how I felt reading this and any number of other scenes in this series, which was: oh, finally someone understands what the fantasy is about.

But I think what trips people with that is that these stories aren't "just" short or erotica without weight. These are long stories with character development and emotional weight and real explorations of trauma. And I don't think that's inaccurate! I think they are that. I think these are, at least to me, also long explorations of kink fantasies and how the dynamics of those fantasies, removed from the need for consent and risk awareness of the real world.

Lestat can rape David and it can be something traumatic, something erotic, and something he ended up believing he wanted, because it's not one or the other in this universe. It can be an exporation of cycles of trauma, erotic horror, and long form kink fantasies written with real emotion, all at once. We don't have to choose just one - and I don't think Anne did, either.

#'im going to make a webweave' 4 hours later:#tripping and falling into meta about kink in tvc

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opinated-user · 7 months

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LO, fourteen year olds and incest

for a while now i have noticed a trend of LO to concentrate on the age 14 specifically, even more specifically about incest, and i couldn't understand why. let's count the ways in which 14 as an age appears in LO's works. 14 was the age of Elethyn Crane in the Scar universe. she has a crush on Ascentia (now called ass-ana), her adoptive older sister, and this is completely normalized by everyone in the family.

14 was the age of sexual consent in Equestria in the fic stockholm. the cutie mark crusaders, all of them with explicit sex scenes between each other, are all 14. one of them seduces a pedophile (rainbow dash) and later has sex with her older sister. this same character admits that she found out she was a lesbian by watching her older sister naked. 14 was the age of the girl in that disgusting video in which LO defends incest, pretending it was in response to a concerned father that never existed.(link to archived video so anyone can confirm) 14 was the age in which CLO was mentally/metaphorically raped by G in pokemadhouse. they were both raised together, almost like sisters.

so what, someone might ask. 14 is still underage, it's a child anyway, so why does it matter that 14 as an age appears so frequently? what i didn't realize until Courtney started talking is that LO was 15 when Courtney finally managed to stop the molestation at her hands. meaning that Courtney was 14 when LO's absurd fantasy of being "in love" with her sister ended.

LO has been romanticizing the 14 year old version of Courtney for years throughout many fictional characters, across multiple fandoms. all this time, she has been writing nothing else but cope fics where her "love" is normalized, accepted or even reciprocated. fics that she has continued to write even to this day. the concerned father in that video was supposed to be her own father reacting to the news of their "relationship." LO's advice of "don't do anything" is what LO would wish her father did. it all finally makes sense now and i hate it so much.

#lily orchard #courtney orchard #tw: incest #tw: csa #tw: rape

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telomeke · 4 months

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THE SIGN EPISODE 4 – MUCHNESS IN THE MIX (BUT THE NAGA AND GARUDA STILL PEEK THROUGH THE MUDDLE)

This episode of The Sign somehow managed to be a LOT and yet not quite enough (for me) at the same time.

After the languid pacing of Ep.3, set in far-off, semi-rural Nong Khai and punctuated only sporadically with moments of drama and foreboding, Ep.4 took a jarring tonal leap back into the darker, sleeker world of modern Bangkok as the boys got stuck into their day jobs as newbie investigators for a mysterious crime involving rape, abduction, torture, murder and media manipulation. 👀

Maybe it's just me, but the show is starting to show signs of having bitten off more than it can chew – with aspirations to being a fantasy, a procedural crime drama, a supernatural thriller, a comedy and a love story. Is it some of the above? All of it? At the same time? It's early days, but there are hints it may be going down the same meandering path trod by KinnPorsche, flailing in several directions on a whim. (At least KinnPorsche flailed with style, but I'm not sure The Sign has quite the luxury of a Romsaithong budget to ladle on the bucketloads of sugary gloss needed to make a ramshackle raft of uncohesive elements at least superficially appealing to the palate, if not exactly good for your soul.)

Don't get me wrong though. I think there is a place for the mixing and even blending of genres in media, and there is a long history of this in the Asian cinematic universe (what's coming to mind are Bollywood/Kollywood films in which a mafia tale can also be a love story and musical for example – echoes of KinnPorsche here, though most of KP's musical bits were tacked on in the after-concerts – and also Hong Kong movies of decades past where a martial arts movie could also be a slapstick comedy and nobody would bat an eyelid).

A culinary metaphor might be the easiest (laziest) way of making my point: the mile-long ingredient list and complex spicing of a curry may seem like you're inviting nothing but clashing and competition in the claypot, but careful dosing can stew them up into a sumptuous, unified result. And the myriad of ingredients in East and Southeast Asian noodle soups and flash stir-fries not only foreground contrasting textures and flavors in a single dish but actually celebrate them. Both approaches assert that artful assemblage and the right dosage can bring together disparate components (that might seem uneasy companions in their raw and uncombined state) to finish up with a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I'm no media expert (necessary caveat inserted here) but I think The Sign needs quite a lot more finessing with all that it's taken on, and getting the proportions, mixing and balance correct will be the tricky bit given the wildly contrasting ingredients they've already added to the pot. I'm not convinced KinnPorsche got it right and I have concerns The Sign may slide down that slope too (if Ep.4 is anything to go by).

Even the acting is starting to betray the fact that Kruu A's assured directorial hand, so evident in the first three episodes, is possibly losing its grip on all the disparate threads and themes. (It's not too late for him to pull it back though, so I think the next two episodes or so will be critical to see if The Sign can live up to the promise of its first three episodes.)

I think this loss of control is especially noticeable in Billy's acting for Ep.4 – his thespian chops had been confident and dependable enough in Episodes 1 to 3 (even during the high tension fight scenes and especially during the quieter emotional interludes with Babe). But in Ep.4 he crossed the line repeatedly and was visibly overacting in almost every take. I'm guessing they needed to amp up the energy level of his portrayal since Phaya is supposed to be a hot-headed garuda after all. But I think the actorly resources currently at Billy's disposal don't quite allow him to pull off the bigger emotions and scenes with authenticity, not just yet anyway. (Babe showed characteristic restraint throughout though, and I thought he consistently did a good job.)

Unfortunately Billy wasn't the only one falling short in the acting department; the extras and bit players were also allowed to ham it up no end (yes, I'm sorry for the kid who was sexually assaulted, but the hysteria on display was jarringly and completely inauthentic, and drew more mockery to the predicament rather than sympathy, which is such a shame). 🤷‍♂️

Special mention also for the OTT expressions of the investigative group during each team meeting – they all appeared to be reacting exactly in unison to every turn of events, whether it was exaggerated focus on new findings, flinching in collective disappointment whenever their leads were thwarted, or looking around suspiciously and suddenly when it was suggested the murderer might be one in their midst. It looked far too much like a group of actors responding to instructions from outside in, rather than a team of individuals reacting from inside out, each with their own agency but choosing to align themselves as one. And this should have been weeded out by the director, since we know this team was largely able to deliver on the acting front in the first three episodes.

I stand with Inspector Akk whose confused expression in most of the group scenes seemed to be saying "What the hell is going on here?" 🤣

(above) "Inspector" Akk Akarat Nimitchai: "What is going on? Why am I here? Why did I listen to my agent? I am an Actor!"

Although this is probably just The Sign telling us that Akk knows more than he's letting on, and the newbies he's assigned are doing a far better job than he thought they would (and which is maybe not the desired outcome?). 🤔

Anyway the writers dialled back somewhat on the naga/garuda mythology in Episode 4 to shine more light on the NCIS-style criminal investigation, and this isn't doing The Sign any favors because the mythological themes roiling beneath the surface were what set this series apart in the first place and made it such a fascinating watch.

We still got to see some of it though. Whenever the naga and garuda's inner energies are especially stoked, the lighting often plays along (e.g., the brightly sparkling lights that accompany garuda Phaya charging up his batteries at Ep.1 [4/4] 14.20 and Ep.3 [2/4] 19.07, PhayaTharn's toilet encounter at Ep.2 [4/4] 9.12, the Mekong rescue at Ep.3 [2/4] 19.18, and Tharn's erotic dream of him and Phaya having shower sex at Ep.4 [2/4] 5.52). When it's fiery garuda Phaya and watery naga Tharn experiencing this together, the lighting dances between warm tones (suggesting the flames of the garuda) and cooler blues (suggesting the watery world of the naga).

I think that's why they made such a big deal with the blue and red lighting in this scene:

Phaya and Tharn have just survived an encounter with an armed and possibly insane killer. The flashing lights (blue for the marine naga, red for the fiery garuda) quite literally signal them recouping their respective beast energies after their near-death experience. (I also like that in the screenshot above, the light on Phaya is blue while the light on Tharn is red – each seems to be reflecting what the other is giving off. 👍)

There are also a few other examples of the naga and garuda dynamics in Episode 4, if we look a bit more closely.

Naga Tharn really had to fight to overcome his aversion to the flames in the abandoned mental facility (the Molotov cocktail is also I think a callback to the naga fireballs of the previous episode); garuda Phaya on the other hand breached the fire without a second thought.

But in hand-to-hand combat with the masked Molotov man (an agent of the malevolent naga out to get him and Tharn I suppose) Phaya is swiftly overcome – take a look at where they're fighting though (at Ep.4 [3‌/4] 12.25); it's a forest clearing right at the water's edge (with water being the nagas' stronghold, while it seems to weaken garuda Phaya's abilities).

When Phaya insists he and Tharn have dinner, it's at a hot-pot place (a culinary experience of both fire and boiling water at the table, another metaphor for the coming together of the naga and garuda). And the red and blue lighting of the restaurant also pays homage to the mythological pairing:

‌

When Tharn is cooking breakfast for him and Phaya, it seems the sizzling on the stove is all it takes to remind him of his sex dream with hot-as-fire Phaya (although that is likely an induction hob though, not an open flame 🤣):

‌

And when offered the breakfast, Phaya lets us know in no uncertain terms he prefers the more liquid option (just as his garuda self has chosen a waterworld naga):

‌

OK so on to the most direct reference yet to the fantasy world-building in Episode 4 of The Sign – the visitation from the mysterious old woman spouting warnings and exhortations to Tharn and Phaya:

Her serpent bracelet and subsequent physical transformation show that she is most likely a nagini from Tharn's past life, come to warn the pair that the vengeful naga whom Tharn betrayed previously (see Heng Asavarid's interview spoiler here) is nearby and out to get them (remembering also that at least some of the nagas have the power to shapeshift).

My guess is her golden eyes and general coloration at Ep.4 [1‌/4] 15.40 are signaling that she's Wanwisa, Tharn's sister in his previous life as a naga:

‌

Going off-tangent just a little, the mysterious gran/golden dragon lady is another example of a wise and mysterious elder popping into a Thai drama to dispense life-saving wisdom.

Not sure if it's enough to be a trope, but The Sign's psychic gran calls to mind a couple of other almost deus-ex-machina plot-helpers:

the loong with the time-portal crystal ball in Be My Favorite; and

the wise monk at the end of Nang Nak (the Sine Inthira version).

There are surely others (but I just can't recall them at the moment). I also can't help but think Uncle Tong in Bad Buddy fits this mold as well, because his wise, unworldly advice helped PatPran re-think and re-chart their lives (except that Director Aof had the good sense not to spring this sage and magical loong on us at the very last minute, and introduced him to us earlier in BBS Ep.6).

Anyway, on to Ep.5 of The Sign. I can't wait to see what's in store, and hope they can get the series back on track! 💖

‌

#the sign #the sign the series #the sign episode 4 #naga and garuda #billy patchanon #babe tanatat #phayatharn #billybabe

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feralkwe · 4 months

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whenever you're ready: what the FUCK did Terry Goodkind do to you 😭😭

*cracks knuckles*

hoo boy. are you ready? because the things i am about to say are objective fact and not up for dispute. some of them are mean, but rest assured i mean every word.

terry goodkind created a sweeping and gorgeous world full of magic, ruled by incredible, complex, powerful women. some of the women remain to this day some of my favorite characters in all of fiction. the confessors could compel the truth with a power based in utter love. the mord-sith, could turn pain into power, making them fierce warriors (first antagonists, later allies). sisters of the light, powerful sorceresses who train young wizards and protect sacred prophecies, and their evil counterparts, sisters of the dark. it's just layered with so many amazing women. good. evil. everything in between.

and then he shits all over them.

he brutalizes them with all sorts of sexual abuse. the second book features an evil wizard who uses nipple magic to defile and control women who he deems impure. it's implied, if not outright stated, that the mord-sith are all sexually abused. in book three, kahlan amnell, the mother confessor, is forced to marry and sleep with a man who is not richard, and then richard spends forever punishing her for it, even though it was against her will. he kills one of the only two lesbians in the series, which was my first "bury your gays" experience. richard has a sister who is "pristinely ungifted" (immune to all magic, which i ate up with a fucking spoon as a concept) and she, too, was manipulated and brutalized to further richard's narrative. nicci becomes the most powerful sorceress in the entire world, but spends most of the story being abused, sexually and physically, and the rest in unrequited love with richard in the most egregiously shitty love triangle ever. the last two books are just brutalization porn, detailing every horrific way kahlan is beaten and tortured. every single powerful woman is brought violently down, often through rape. always through violence.

and as if this wasn't bad enough, the entire series is a libertarian allegory. it's not subtle. it's filled with self-aggrandizing conservative-lite morals entrenched in purity bullshit. goodkind was a huge fan of ayn rand, and his penchant for writing richard giving three page monologues that could have all been summed up as "hey idiots, i am right and you are wrong" demonstrate that with astonishing deftness. magic becomes some metaphor for everything that is wrong with the world and society in the clumsiest way possible, until the world must literally be split in two in order to create a libertarian non-magical utopia.

if that wasn't enough, he was so insufferable about everything. he created a rich and detailed fantasy world then constant bemoaned being called a fantasy author. he felt it was beneath him and his talents. he remained pretentious about speculative fiction while profiting from it.

oh, he also famously threw a massive tantrum about one of his later book covers, insulting the cover artist openly and publicly. if you know anything about publishing, you know that authors getting any input over their cover is a huge privilege. so he was a massive asshole, too.

never in my life have i had such a complex relationship with a book series. it has so many spectacular things going for it, but goodkind couldn't step off his own dick. he took himself way too seriously, overused lazy tropes (richard was the most powerful wizard ever but only ever used his powers at the most convenient moment when only a deus ex could save his hole-ridden plot), and can't write a sympathetic protagonist to save his life. idk how you write such amazing women while obviously having disdain for them. some kind of asshole magic, i guess.

anyway, this just scratches the surface. any single thing here would be annoying on its own, and combined it is just exhausting. idk how i suffered through the whole series apart from my commitment to these characters i loved despite his every effort to make the rest of the story unbearable. my one life's regret is that he died never knowing what a hack i think he was. he probably wouldn't have cared because obviously i am inferior to him in every way, but i lament he will never know.

anyway, fuck him.

#from the annals of my askholebox #asks #kidspawn #god i hate him so fucking much #terry fucking goodkind

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mthofferings · 7 months

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aimmyarrowshigh

See aimmyarrowshigh’s existing works here and here.

Preferred contact methods: Tumblr: aimmyarrowshigh Email: [email protected]

Preferred organizations: - Anything from the list of approved organizations

Will create works that contain: I only write canon-compliant and canon-adjacent fic, so I'm not the person to request for totally AU AUs! That said, I'll write AUs that exist within the canon-adjacent space (Shrunkyclunks and Shrinkyclinks, X Character Lives, Everyone Lives In Avengers Tower, Omegaverse, fix-it, etc.) I love writing about food as a metaphor for love, and that will probably show up in anything I'm writing in some way. I love writing about the recovery of the Red Room characters (Natasha, Yelena, Bucky, Nadia, Ying). I love writing Jewish characters. I love a lot of rarepairs -- please check here for more information and to check if your preferred ship is one that I will write.

Will not create works that contain: I will not write breathplay, impact play, hard BDSM, scat, watersports, vore, "good" or "redeemed" Nazis, "sexy" rape including rape fantasy or role play, werewolves, mermaids, catboys, bestiality, furries, or cheating. I also will not write wild AUs that are not connected to the canon world in some way -- I'm just not the best writer for those requests! And I'm not the person to ask for Peggy Carter-centric fic. I pretty much only know how to write flangst -- don't ask for anything with a super dark ending, because I can't do it.

-- Fic or Other Writing --

Auction ID: 1057

Will create works for the following relationships: Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers - MCU Natasha Romanov-centric - MCU Bucky Barnes & Yelena Belova & Ava Starr - MCU Yelena Belova/Kate Bishop - MCU Xu Xialing-centric - MCU Scott Lang/Steve Rogers - MCU Wanda Maximoff-centric - MCU Darcy Lewis-centric - MCU Steve Rogers-centric - MCU Nadia van Dyne-centric - 616

Work Description: I will create a fanwork of 5,000 words for the starting bid of $15, with each additional $5 increase equaling an additional 1,000 words (up to a total of 15,000 words). I will also most likely make a little picspam/graphic for the story. :)

Ratings: Gen, Teen, Mature, Explicit

Can pods bid on this auction? Yes - Podbids welcome!

CLICK HERE TO BID ON THIS WORK

The auction runs from October 22 (12 AM ET) to October 28 (11:59:59 PM ET). Visit marveltrumpshate.com during Auction Week to view all of our auctions and to place your bids!

#aimmyarrowshigh #auction: fic #mth 2023

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bthump · 9 months

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Sorry if you’ve answered this before but you know how you say femto is just the worst darkest aspects of Griffith’s character brought to the surface and the good and humane parts of him burned away, wouldn’t that contradict how the apostles work in general because we see that a lot of them still are able to act good? Or do you think Griffith is also still capable of acting good too? (Though wouldn’t that then make all the bad things he did e.g. what he did to Casca so much worse in a way?)

Enh I mean I think it's a distinct personality change, and one apostles also undergo. It doesn't necessarily literally mean that they're incapable of feeling any kind of positive emotion or taking any kind of positive action, it's more like it gives a power up to their dark side, imo.

I'd probably assume that godhands get it extra hardcore, while apostles likely retain a little more of their capacity for positive humanity. My reasoning for this is that we do literally see Griffith losing pieces of himself as he transforms and finding it odd that his emotional responses are blunted/gone, and the Idea of Evil says his heart is frozen. And on the other hand, apostles have a physical range from nearly-human to full monster, which seems like a solid reflection of their emotional states as well.

It also makes sense to me because these transformations are literal fantasy versions of like, trauma responses to stuff, right? Becoming a monster after sacrificing your loved one who betrayed you is a heightened, symbolic version of, say, the mundane typical human thing of being hurt and shutting people out and becoming kind of a dick in response.

The fantasy metaphor doesn't work as well, imo, if it's just the usual human response + cosmetic monsterism. It's a metaphor for that negative emotional reaction, so in the fantasy equivalent it's heightened, as a magical personality shift that blunts some emotions, like empathy, and makes others more powerful, like rage.

I consider Guts and the berserker armour to be another illustration of this concept. We see from his perspective when the armour takes over, and we can see that Guts' humanity is no longer in the driver's seat, and he's been taken over by his negative feelings like rage. The armour is probably a more extreme version since he loses his ability to reason, but I think it's a good comparison that can show us what happened to other monsters in terms of their emotional capacity, and how they stop viewing humans as fellow people and start seeing them as lesser exploitable beings. Victims, food, servants, etc.

SO basically I think Femto technically had the capacity to not rape Casca, as in he could've just killed her instead, but he's not gonna be consumed by guilt the way Griffith would've been as a human. He's a different version of Griffith, with his positive/empathetic feelings blunted (though presumably not fully gone since he hesitates and lets Guts escape, though whether that's a glitch in the transformation or part of the usual end result is up in the air) and his negative feelings heightened. To blame Griffith for raping Casca would, imo, be the equivalent of blaming Guts for trying to kill his friends while the armour has taken him over. We can blame Guts and Griffith for wearing the armour/succumbing to it and choosing monsterism, but once that happened their human minds and feelings aren't much of a factor anymore.

All that said I definitely do think NGriff is capable of doing good because we see him do it, but whether he's capable of real altruism or only doing good in service to his greater goals is up in the air. I figure we'll probably never find out, since his ambiguous capacity for emotion is probably going to be pretty focused on Guts, rather than on morality.

Thanks for the ask!

#ask #anonymous #a #b #theme: morality #theme: inner darkness #character: neogriffith #character: femto

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the-resurrection-3d · 3 months

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@glitteronin activated my autism trap card so I decided to expand on my "the poison song in Hazbin ep 4 feels like rape porn" hot take.

I'm kidding. My actual hot take is that the episode is pretty alright anyway.

So this originally was going to be a reblog of someone else’s posts about how Angel’s characterization "makes it obvious [Viv] doesn’t think abuse is bad,” but I decided to just leave that person alone. I’ve also revised this quite a bit, because I want to present ways of thinking about representation of trauma that aren’t just “graphic = bad” and “metaphor/off-screen=good,” and preserve my own attempts to think through this conflict. So don’t expect a definitive thesis or anything too prescriptive—I welcome other perspectives here!

It is also worth noting that someone with a rape kink DID help storyboard the Poison montage. Last I heard, they are not a survivor and just grew up very repressed. I didn’t bring this up before because the Instagram post I saw from them only said they helped “choregraph” the dance, so I wasn’t sure if they has only storyboarded the dance sequences or if they’d done the entire thing.

Anyway.

Based on the latter part of episode 4 and what Viv has said in the past about being a survivor (IIRC) and Angel Dust being her comfort character, I feel like she does care about abuse, but there are a ton of little different points of friction that are all coming together to undermine Angel Dust's arc as a part of a larger anti-abuse project for many people.

I want to say I’m coming at this from the perspective of someone who largely appreciated what the episode was going for, and was not triggered by the montage. Not to say that people who were triggered are wrong in their criticisms – just that I’m not coming from a place of immediate emotional distress, and I’m not judging Angel’s reactions to his trauma against my own.

I’ve said elsewhere that the Poison montage has the same energy as a lot of rape porn—meaning it has the same focus on the heightened emotional states but none on the real physical toll of these events. Specifically, the scene made me think of this quote from Angela Carter’s The Sadeian Woman, which is a book-length academic work on the rape porn of the Marquis de Sade:

It follows that prostitutes are favourite heroines of the pornographic writer, though the economic aspects of a prostitute's activity, which is her own main concern in the real world, will be dealt with only lightly. Her labour is her own private business. Work, in this context, is really dirty work; it is unmentionable. Even unspeakable. And we may not talk about it because it reintroduces the question of the world. In this privatised universe pleasure is the only work; work itself is unmentionable. To concentrate on the prostitute's trade as trade would introduce too much reality into a scheme that is first and foremost one of libidinous fantasy, and pornographic writers, in general, are not concerned with extending the genre in which they work to include a wider view of the world.

Of course, this does not perfectly map onto Hazbin Hotel: indeed, the project of episode 4 (however successful the individual viewer found it to be) is to introduce a lot of reality into Angel’s facade of a Being A Walking Hole.

Still, to me, a lot of the episode still works on a similar wavelength as the porn author’s “libidinous fantasy,” as even the parts of his story we are supposed to find upsetting and painful are still the parts that are sexualized in conventional rape/non-con porn, and follow the same fantastical logic. By which I mean, Angel can be shown briefly in pain or tired from being attacked for hours, but never for too long, and he certainly doesn't get too tired or high he stumbles in his high heels, or so tired or sore he messes up a take and they have to stop and redo shots (something that is very common in the production of even regular ass porn, btw). Hell, his bruised eye from Val slapping him is gone by the time the montage is over.

Indeed, the montage revels in forcing us to become not merely witnesses, but spectators to Angel’s victimization: the song is energic, the cuts frenetic, with tons of small shots that can easily be clipped out and used as regular pornography—the shots of Angel and Val fucking being probably the most obvious example, as without context, there’s nothing to suggest that Angel is being coerced, even as he is bitten. Part of this is intentional, since Angel Dust is supposed to be "addicted" to the lifestyle—the song itself is clearly supposed to have the energy of something like "Toxic" by Britney Spears, which Viv said in a Q&A was Angel's audition song.

And despite our culture’s increased awareness of and (lip service) empathy to survivors, it is truly daring to be portraying this kind of reaction to abuse. I saw multiple people on my timeline say this made them feel seen, and I am happy for them.

But then we have Husk calling Angel a loser over being abused a few scenes later, and them singing a fun, jazzy song about it. Sure, we now have a good grasp of Angel's character motivations—and I wouldn't be surprised if this pacing decision was in response to Angel getting blasted for years as an offensive caricature of gay men—but would someone who just got gangraped for hours really be receptive to THIS message from someone they were just fiercely arguing with? Furthermore, on a purely character level, why is Husk doing this and not Charlie, who is the one Angel was having actual conflict with earlier in the episode? The scene itself is fine, and it's completely understandable why they would want to end the episode on a lighter note, but the way the story is being paced makes it feel like Viv wants to just rush through to get to the HuskDust stuff.

Revising this essay, I revisited an old essay by Will Harris that I frequently cite when discussing ethics of representation, wherein he points out that the “I”/eye of the [there poet, here viewer] is not ethically neutral:

Witness carries no moral imperative in itself; the act of seeing is not inherently virtuous. Or you could say, its moral charge lies less in the “evidence” it provides than in how it’s rendered in language. The viewing “I”/eye is a fiction, inasmuch as it cleanly separates the subject from the object. So the job of the writer is not just to choose what to look at, but to work out how to represent the complex relationships embedded in the act of looking.

The paragraph before this has Harris cite Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, wherein scholarSaidiya Hartman refuses to reprint Aunt Hester’s beating from the first chapter of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. “It’s too easy to put such horror into words and so think that you’ve faced up to it,” as Harris writes. “Accounts of extreme hurt may prompt indignation, but Hartman argues that they eventually “immure us to pain by virtue of their familiarity.” That in some sense, to demand “suffering be materialized and evidenced” is more “obscene” than the original torture.”

Of course, placing this quote here in this essay about a show that is currently being lambasted for portraying graphic rape at all, in an online culture that often conflates representation with endorsement or some secret moral deviancy on the author’s part, would be to suggest that portraying rape on-screen is itself an issue, when representations are always bound by their historical and social contexts. Sometimes you do have to be that graphic, but like Harris says, it’s easy to think just showing the horror in itself is meaningful — and I think we all are a little too blackpilled here on Tumblr to think that just Showing The Horrors is enough to produce meaningful change within the average person.

However, I think the more useful idea of Harris’s is “withness.” Harris writes that in these more ideal poems,

Subject and object are no longer distinct from one another. In such a state, the self is implicated—emotionally and ethically—in the other. It’s impossible to conceive of “being” without “being-with.” Hopkins writes: “With witness I speak this.” In my head that line always reads: “With withness I speak this.”

I think this is what the episode was attempting to do—to force us into the uneasy position of a spectator before moving us into witness (as Husk is asking the same kinds of questions we would be asking about Angel’s behavior, reacting with concern as we would even as we see through Angel’s facade) and then withness. Literally, two characters dueting about finding comfort in their core similarity. This is why it had to be him and not Charlie: Husk is in a much better position to produce withness than Charlie, given how the episode clearly parallels his deal with Alastor to Angel’s contract with Val.

Still, this kind of emotional-logic-driven storytelling leaves out any viewers who don’t resonate and does not offer them anything else to latch onto. It also does nothing to satisfy the structural questions raised earlier (couldn’t Charlie have sent Husk to deal with Val for some reason? It probably would be a dumb reason but at least the episode would have symmetry).

I still hold the big problem with the episode is that we are directed to think—indeed, are told directly—that Angel is “addicted” to this lifestyle, but we aren’t given a real origin point for this behavior: the trauma and addiction to said trauma are a closed loop. Val is such an obvious piece of shit, to the point of even sexually harassing the literal Princess of Hell the very second he meets her, that we get no sense of what drew Angel in. Sure, we can make inferences that he likes sex, likes drugs, liked fame, but if Val has always acted like an obvious psycho, Angel blaming himself for his abuse is, in a very cruel way, completely justified.

But in real life, even people who get with obvious shitbags often have reasons for this laid in their past: it’s rarely the case that a normal, well-adjusted person is just so fucking stupid they end up marrying Mister Rape.

This disconnect between what I’m being told to think and what I’m actually being shown is where this attempt at withness failed for me, and the lack of attention to reality and general indulgence of the montage is probably what people are picking up on when they say it gave them kink vibes.

But still! Looking at the montage in context, I can appreciate what Viv was trying to do. The real sickening thing, to me, is that the internet is so unwilling and unready to engage with Viv’s work and with this type of representation in any type of good faith, so even if it were a 10/10 absolute masterpiece, it wouldn’t have mattered. Can’t wait for the next Angel episode so we can have this discourse all over again!

#rape mention

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