#i fucking care about the ancients and their descendants and their being a dynamic cultural group and not a source of random mcguffins!!!
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doodle i did in a small fit of hysteria
#shut the heck up#midnight rambles#kirby lore rambles#no one gets it.#not even kumazaki#he sees halcandra as any b-tier fantasy sees their Ancients(tm)#but he fucked up by designing Halcandra to be such a visually striking wasteland juxtaposing the metallic urban and fiery rural hellscape-#-with the majesty imagined by the lor#he fucked up cause now ive been obsessed with it for the past 4 years of my lifeshdgfj#ive read history books for this shit#ICAREabout the original implication of magolor being from halcandra cause it both gives him a unique envirornment to inform his-#-shitty behaviors#and that it then alludes to the types of people who once lived on the planet and possibly even what their downfall was!!#and hwo far theyve fallen and the types of vices that keep them from truly rebuilding!!#AND I CARE ABOUT HALCANDRA BEING POPULATED BECAUSE IT MEANS ITS PEOPLE CAN HEAL#i fucking care about the ancients and their descendants and their being a dynamic cultural group and not a source of random mcguffins!!!#I CARED ABOUT HALCANDRA WHEN NO ONE ELSE DId.#(im really sleep deprived rn)#(i should get back to those rtdl streams)#tag talking#also thats my sona hi.#(edit: this is completely undirected i dont even have actual beef with kumazaki as a director i actually love him to bits (measuredly))
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I hope its ok to ask this: ive seen some people defend non-natives using sacred native spirits in their work by saying that fairies, the Baba yaga and greek gods and other beings from european folklore have been appropriated as well. Can you tell me your thoughts on this?
There's two parts to this.
The first is the Greek/Hellenic gods. Using these figures in media, worshipping them, etc is not appropriation because the people they're from do not exist anymore. Greece still exists but in an entirely different form and ancient Greece, the culture and nation that worshipped those gods, is gone and has been for quite some time. It's a dead culture.
The other thing about the Greek gods is that the Hellenic pantheon, when it did exist in its original form, was NOT a closed religion. Anyone, including and especially foreigners, was welcome to worship the gods and the Hellenic pantheon was both influenced by other cultures (having "imported" deities such as the from Egypt) and was a major influence in growing cultures itself (see the Roman pantheon).
In my experience, claims of appropriation when it comes to the Hellenic pantheon are coming from racists, often white supremacists. And I've been involved in pagan and polytheistic communities for a long time, so I have a lot of experience lmao
The second part of this is the spirits from European cultures. This is. . . more complicated but also not the same as appropriation of indigenous cultures because of the power dynamics.
The faerie/fairy thing would give me pause if I thought the criticisms of it were sincere and coming from people actually from those cultures, who have been victims of English colonialism and cultural genocide. But in my experience, actual Irish, Scottish, and Welsh people just. Don't care and those claims are, again, almost entirely being made by white supremacists who don't want "their" cultures being "tainted" by outside influence.
The vast majority of European spirits though are NOT from cultures that are closed or have been the victims of genocide. Comparing them to the appropriation of indigenous cultures is not possible because they are NOT equivalent. In many cases, these cultures were forced onto the victims of genocide and colonialism. Britain is far from the only colonialist power in Europe and there's a reason why so many indigenous people in the West know more about European cultures than our own.
Our cultures were destroyed, anon.
Our spiritual leaders, storytellers, the people who pass on our traditions were murdered. Our records, including physical homes, were destroyed or stolen. Traditional artifacts were stolen to sit in museums or in private collections for decades. Our languages were beaten out of us. Our spiritual traditions were criminalized. Our DANCES were criminalized. Our children were stolen and sold to white Christian families (often European immigrants or their close descendants). Our lands were taken from us, in a very real way, and we lost the knowledge and traditions that were part of them.
When we shared our stories and traditions with outsiders, they broke our trust by STEALING those things and spreading them around without our consent and without the context necessary.
We have fragments of what we used to be, for those of us who even have that at all. For many Natives, there is no culture for them to reconnect to because it's just completely gone and all they have left are guesses.
Many Natives don't even know the truth of our own cultures because the vast majority of what we know comes from white sources, highly biased historical records and bastardized spirits in media. That has a very real and direct impact on our communities, our cultures, and our relationships with ourselves and our traditions. Our cultures don't dominate ANYWHERE anymore, even in our own communities, unlike the majority of European cultures in Europe. What your see of our traditions in media is a good 90% of what exists in general, which fucking sucks because absolutely none of it is accurate.
Imagine if all the bastardized and comedic depictions of Christianity in media were primary sources people had for Christianity. THAT is what it's like to be Native in the West, everything about us removed from us and twisted around until it's basically unrecognizable, turned into half-assed aesthetics, and the only real exposure most people will ever have to our cultures.
This was a long rant that I'm gonna end here because I really need to feed my pets. If any other Natives (and ONLY Natives) have input, feel free to share.
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Red, White, and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston
Rating: Great Read
Genre: Romance, Coming Out
Representation:
-Bi main character
-Gay love interest
-Mexican American/Mixed race main character
-Other LGBTQ side characters
Note: Characters have explicit sex; this is not YA and definitely not appropriate for younger teens
Trigger warnings: Sex under the influence of alcohol (not in a predatory context, but still), forced outing, attempted rape (talked about, not in scene), drug abuse (not in scene), parent death, rare instances of homophobia, racism, xenophobia.
Red, White, and Royal Blue is the story of Alex Claremont-Diaz, a 21 year old student with political dreams: to climb the rungs as intern, staffer, and finally Senator by 30. And his mother just happens to be the President of the United States. Alex likes politics, but he can’t stand the fakeness of it all - and his frustrations come to be centralized around one man, Prince Henry of Wales. Henry is only two years older than Alex, but while they play similar roles in life, and occasionally collide at international events, Henry is cold and aloof, never stooping to befriend his American counterpart.
This is where the novel begins: a rivalry come to a head at the royal wedding of Henry’s older brother, Phillip. After a PR nightmare, Alex and Henry are forced by their respective handlers to play nice, or else. And so a romance begins.
I really enjoyed Red, White, and Royal Blue. Underneath its fun trope-y beginning, it becomes a drama that addresses queer sexuality on a more thoughtful level. It deals with coming out in an interesting way, since the stakes are global. If Alex comes out, what does that mean for his mom’s bid for re-election? And for Henry, who doesn’t have the luxury of disappearing from the public eye after another four years, is coming out too costly? This isn’t your average coming out story, but one of celebrity (especially unasked-for celebrity). And, in fact, it isn’t entirely a coming out story at all. “Coming out” is hardly the most pressing issue when Alex and Henry struggle to have a private relationship in the first place, both of them plagued by paparazzi and all their movements tracked. Henry needs a political excuse to be in the same country as Alex at all, and vice versa. This was such an interesting, high stakes spin, that Red, White, and Royal Blue really felt like a new, fresh story.
McQuiston’s writing definitely does her story justice - the characters feel like real 20-somethings, despite the display of artifice they give the cameras. The writing is timely, too - Alex’s speech patterns are very 2019 Gen Z. This book will age well, not because it could be imagined as taking place at some future point (the 2020 presidential campaign features strongly, after all), but because it is so unapologetically of its time. McQuiston may be writing an alternate reality where Alex’s mom, Ellen Claremont (not Hilary Clinton), made the bid for president in 2016 - and won - but McQuiston still addresses the issues we are dealing with today, just in different ways. A Trump-like character is Claremont’s challenger for 2020, for example, and an email leak winkingly brings to mind the nightmare of 2016. But apart from these nods to root us in a familiar world, this is an alternate presidency where nothing seems to be happening at all - perhaps the greatest fantasy of LGBTQ readers today. No war, no oil pipelines, no mention of policy whatsoever.
That isn’t to say that McQuiston entirely turns a blind eye. As a fuck-you to current administration, McQuiston has Alex notice, almost with wonder, how he, a Mexican-American, can put his feet up on a White House railing where racist presidents have stood. He’s aware of how plenty of White Americans today would be frothing at the mouth at the thought. In this great escapist fantasy, all is calm, though the tempest is beating at the door.
I thought that Alex’s Mexican identity was handled gracefully in the novel - he’s half White, parents divorced, with his White mother the President, his Mexican American father a Senator. His race isn’t something that’s mentioned once and never again, or worse, a “romantic” descriptor to sexualize and exotify. It’s something Alex has to think about and mediate as a public figure - he has learned that he doesn’t necessarily poll well with White “family values” America. His White mom being divorced, having non-White children living in the White House, this is all part of her “image.” Alex has worked overtime to become popular anyway - he charms the camera as easily as he charms congressional representatives. He manipulates his image purposefully, playing up his friendship with his ex-girlfriend Nora in order to tease the press that they might be back together. America eats it up.
But McQuiston makes sure that being Mexican-American isn’t something that Alex is working past, or overcoming. While racism is something he thinks about and must navigate, Alex loves himself. He loves getting together with “Los Bastardos,” his dad and family friend/congressman Rafael Luna, to have a couple beers and talk shit in Spanish and English. He loves making Mexican food with his dad. He is especially passionate about Texas, his home state, and fixing harmful policy there.
This is only the stage on which the romance stands, but suffice it to say that McQuiston has spared no detail to make Alex’s life real outside of his relationship with Prince Henry. When the reader is so invested in the reality of the characters’s lives, it only makes the romance more cutting, more true. The emotional climax of their relationship was so heartbreaking I cried through a good ten pages. McQuiston knows how to write emotion with lightning strike power and accuracy (which serves her well when writing sex scenes, too), and it is through emotion that McQuiston accomplishes her most crucial goal as a novelist: Red, White, and Royal Blue is a page-turner, at once cathartic, steamy, star-crossed, honest, and dramatic. Reading this novel just feels good. Red, White, and Royal Blue is a step above the rest, and should be a staple for LGBTQ romance fans.
Despite McQuiston’s resounding success with this novel, the arc of Alex and Henry’s romance did ring a little odd. Not bad, just odd. McQuiston starts off holding the railing, so to speak. The romance begins with Alex hating Henry, so much so that he tells him to his face, despite being charged, as the President’s son, with grace and diplomacy. The characters themselves compare their dynamic to Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter, a comparison that was perhaps more a window into the author’s taste than strictly in-character. Then, after a brief weekend of faking being friends for the camera… they become friends for real, texting each other about their lives. Their supposed “hatred” becomes teasing ribbing and name-calling, which you can’t read as anything else but flirting. This is a 400 page book, and already in the first 70 pages the blurb is out of date. Red, White, and Royal Blue isn’t really about a couple who start out hating each other and gradually come to realize each other’s qualities, though it starts off on that path. McQuiston could have packed a lot more character development into that “fake friends” weekend and a lot less in the texts and emails that came later, for a smoother transition from the narrative as advertised to the story she ends up telling - an even better romance, in my mind.
The better romance happens after the rather rushed arc of the first romance - McQuiston lets go of the railing, so to speak. And though I won’t spoil it, this later arc deals with themes of sex versus love, the unique quandary of the forbiddenness of their relationship, and the fact that neither Henry nor Alex want to be in love with each other, because the consequences of taking their relationship seriously are global, public, and terrifying. Where McQuiston starts in slapstick, trope-y romance, she ends up in something heart-wrenching and real. The tonal dissonance between the two is a little awkward, and the former is less developed than the latter, leading to an imbalanced feeling to the novel as a whole. However, where the novel ends up going is such good writing that I can’t fault the book - I think it’s an excellent read, beginning to end, its imbalances only visible once you reach the other side and look back.
There is so much to talk about in this 400-page book, a book I stayed up until 3 in the morning to finish, that it won’t all fit into one review. It’s tempting to derail for another three paragraphs so I can talk about the explicit discussion of colonialism, a powerful metaphor behind both Alex and Henry’s identities. I could go on about how Alex’s safe place is his father’s lake house, where he can be explicitly Mexican and connected to culture, food, and family. In contrast, Henry’s safe place is a British museum of stolen statues, cold and nonliving, but still the only tie between himself, a royal descended from the royals who stole them, and the distant artists and ancient cultural figures depicted, whom Henry identifies as explicitly gay, even if that knowledge is purposefully forgotten. It is a biting comment on the cultural black holes that are White imperialist nations, attempting to fill the emptiness themselves with culture pillaged elsewhere. Henry is aware of it, and critical of it, but he is still a descendant of it.
Red, White, and Royal Blue will leave you with a lot to pick apart. It earns some criticism, perhaps, from its overly sunny faith in definitely-not-Hilary President Claremont. And, if you care about such things, there is the occasional moment of tonal dissonance where McQuiston’s realistic style butts heads with cartoon tropes (characters throwing food at one another to punctuate a point, for example) versus styles of speech recognizable from The West Wing (which come off as rather uncalled for and startling when no one else in the room is threatening over the top bodily harm). But as much as one with an overactive mind might give pause over just how realistic it is for the sheltered Prince of Wales to have leftist ideas about dismantling British imperialism (now THAT is a dreamy fantasy), McQuiston also delivers a depth and breadth of material that is resoundingly good, and will have you walking away not only feeling good, but recommending Red, White, and Royal Blue to anyone who will listen. This is a book to take a chance on.
For more from Casey McQuiston, check out her website here.
#red white and royal blue#casey mcquiston#bi#great read#romance#coming out#protagonist of color#reviews only#not ya
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Aquaman (2018) is a fucking GEM and here’s why
Buckle up, get your popcorn, get a drink, because my squawking about this film--
--is gonna be long!
Okay, so as anyone who knows me reasonably well or has followed me for my DC stuff can tell you I am a MASSIVE nerd about DC’s Atlantis (thanks in large part to my wonderful and adorable fishy son La’gaan).
(Obligatory shot of this kid’s happy smiling face because I love him and he deserves at least a moment of attention.)
SO--
The Big Things
This film freaking delivered with showing us Atlantis in full lit-up glory, not to mention showing a clear delineation between the lower levels and the upper levels. We didn’t get to see much of the lower levels unfortunately, but the fact that what we did see of it was an old shipwreck says some things. (Which I’ll probably extrapolate on under Social Things.)
I was never left in doubt for even a moment that Arthur and Mera were capable of what they were doing. Both of them are badass beyond words, are goddamn tanks who should NOT be trifled with, and have genuine complexity and chemistry that makes me heavily invested in their relationship. I can understand why they would be drawn together and how their dynamic would work out, and even as that’s going on I am never once left in doubt that both of them are a force of nature who are just as capable of flattening their enemies individually as they would be if they joined forces and fought side by side. Get on their goddamn level, because they are a power couple who can and will destroy you (or make you wish they had) if they deem it necessary.
BLACK. FUCKING. MANTA. I was not prepared for the sheer level of genius badassery from this man. It was one thing finding out that he got his tech from atlanteans (fuck you Orm), but it was something else watching him break it down and rework it to suit his needs while making his own helmet for-- oh yes-- the goddamn eye-lasers. We are very clearly shown that with his first attempt if he’d been wearing the helmet he would have died, but this brilliant badass pretty much just, “Guess I need a bigger helmet,” and then just went ahead and made a second one with everything figured out and sorted so it wouldn’t blow his damn head off any time he used his main weapon! Just HOLY SHIT BLACK MANTA! On only the second try?! What the shit dude?! Granted, you started out as a pirate and then stepped it up to being a supervillain, but HOLY SHIT. I’m surprised he stuck with being just a pirate for as long as he did!
Also, Black Manta’s motivation makes perfect sense. It took one of the more dick-ish moves Arthur’s done (which was also in character for him at that point in the movie), but that act of not saving Black Manta’s dad (especially since with their interactions I’d argue it’s fair to assume that his dad was a good dad to him) feels exactly like it was all that was needed for him to decide he wanted Arthur dead.
(And RIP me, when I first saw Black Manta’s dad my first thought was ‘Is that Coffeepot Guy from Young Justice?’)
Orm. Hoooolllllllyyyyyy SHIT Orm. Full props to that actor, because he completely sold Purist McDouche-Face Orm for everything he was worth. Even down to the subtle nuances of how easily he let Atlantean slurs fall, the casual arrogance and unnoticed contempt for anyone who wasn’t ‘pure’ (though that specific word didn’t come up) or who he viewed as ‘traitors’, and the fact that this son of a ba’athu-kest had his brother dragged to him unconscious and in chains in his throne room. There was a fucking COLLAR around Arthur’s neck! And then he has the fucking gall later on to essentially say, ‘If you leave now I’ll let you live and we never have to be at odds again, just ignore the fact that I’m going to be committing genocide that’ll probably include your Dad since he’s close to the shore. No hard feelings. ‘Kay?’ and act like it was an act of goddamn mercy or benevolence. Just... OMG. Seriously, just... fuck you Orm. Fuck you so much for engineering a goddamn war. JFC.
And speaking of Arthur’s Dad-- Arthur’s Mom and Dad are PERFECTION. Yeah, we don’t get to see as much of their relationship development as we do with Arthur and Mera, but Tom Curry and Queen Atlanna are the kind of partners you would expect to see epics written about in the old and ancient days. If we’re talking The Odyssey, then they are Odysseus and Penelope with their roughly 20-year absence from each other-- except Atlanna’s Odysseus and Tom’s Penelope. And when they came back together? I was almost crying in the theater. Holy crap. It was just SO MANY FEELS. Not even a moment of doubt that the two of them loved each other, that they loved each other deeply, that they loved each other intensely, and that they loved each other so much that they were willing to wait until the end of time if that’s what it took for them to be reunited. And if I’m not careful I’m going to get misty-eyed over them again.
And can we just appreciate the fact that Tom and Arthur are indigenous? I mean actually? Because dear gods when Tom greeted Arthur and they pressed their foreheads together and breathed I started fucking crying in the theater. I needed that. I needed to see an indigenous superhero with his culture woven in in subtle ways and for it to play out through affection between him and his dad WHO HE ACTUALLY HAS A WONDERFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH-- and fuck I’m crying again. (I’m assuming because Jason Momoa is Maori that that means they’re Maori? I’m not sure though. I hope the specific culture gets mentioned on the bluray whenever it gets released, because I’m forever after this film going with indigenous Arthur and I want to know I’m referring to his people correctly. Indigenous Arthur is in, all other versions of Arthur can go home.) Gods I have so many feels. If Atlanna had showed that she’d adopted small parts of Tom’s culture by doing the forehead thing with Arthur that would have ended me. On the spot. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, 404: Fira not found due to breaking down over all the feels.
Shifting a little (because otherwise I’m grinding to a halt and I have SO much more to get into) let’s talk about the kisegra, the Trench, and the various beasties! Of the kisegra we only really get to see two types-- the Fishermen (merpeople essentially) and the Brine (lobster/crab-centaur-ish people). I’m not going to fault the people working on the movie for showing us only those two types because they busted their asses on this movie and it shows-- hell, even among those kisegra there’s a diversity of coloration and body-build!-- but I was a tiny smidge disappointed not to see more diversity. Maybe something for a later movie.
And then there’s the Trench. THE GODDAMN TRENCH.
THESE NIGHTMARE FUEL BA’ATHU-KEGEST.
The La’gaan muse in my mind may as well have been screaming bloody murder. The scene with them is THAT MUCH NIGHTMARE FUEL. It’d be one thing if only a couple of them had been on the boat and the ones on the boat were all there were.
AHAHAHAHAHA-- NO. I do not have words for the SWARM of them that we end up seeing on screen. JFC. (Though there is the vague indication that the Trench may???? be some type of kisegra???? in this reality??? Don’t like that implication one bit, especially with how it gets tied to bigoted purist comments. Might just be a thing purists were saying because fucking sea-nazi purists though.)
And can I also say that the Karathen is a damned Queen? Yes, Julie Andrews voiced her. Yes, she was voiced by Mary-goddamn-Poppins. Yes, she is “practically perfect in every way” and will flatten (or eat) a bitch as needed. Lava doesn’t affect her, she is fucking impervious. It’s no wonder why King Atlan wanted her to go with him when he fucked off into permanent self-imposed exile for his GIANT ASS mistake-- because who wouldn’t want to have their bestie to spend the rest of their life hanging out with when said bestie is the ORIGINAL ‘Deep Beast’ and will cheerfully destroy any of your upstart descendants if they try to be as stupid as you were by attempting to repeat your mistakes? (Real talk though, the fact that King Atlan made friends with her in the first place implies that he learned how to let go of almost all the excess pride that got him in trouble in the first place. Congrats for having some character growth and having stuck with what you felt was right my dude.)
SEA. HORSES. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
They were SO DAMN COOL.
And armored sharks. Fucking armored great whites.
For when you absolutely, positively, have to kill every mother-fucking thing in the ocean around you.
The Differences From Other Realities
So one of the big things that stuck out to me was the “only the high-born can breathe air” thing. While I do agree that the ability to breathe air, or water, or both probably varies due to genetics and whatnot, in most realities and interpretations I’ve seen the ability to breathe air isn’t something only found in ‘high-born’ individuals. (Case in point, La’gaan. I love him to pieces, but as someone from the Outer Provinces there ain’t no way that boy is ‘high-born’, and yet he can breathe air.) I’m not pointing this out as a “screw up” of any sort on the part of the writers, but more to point out that this is a detail that makes the DCCU unique from other DC universes.
Atlantis-- Something that caught my attention was how Atlantis was spoken to in relation to other kingdoms. We have several kingdoms mentioned in the movie-- the Kingdom of the Fishermen, the Kingdom of the Brine, the Kingdom of the Trench (who tf decided they had a kingdom???), the Kingdom of Xebel-- but the way they’re each spoken about implies that they’re not seen as being part of Atlantis. Whiiiiiich is kind of weird, because Atlantis (in most iterations) is implied to have been a small continent/large island and not just a single city-state. On the other hand there have been (mostly older) renditions where it was a single city-state. Going off of what we see though, I’m inclined to think that what may have happened is that what was that world’s Poseidonis at some point during their history got renamed Atlantis (so kind of like a New York, New York situation; New York City in New York State, Atlantis City in Atlantis).
The number of kingdoms-- This is something I’ve seen vary SO DAMN MUCH. Some realities it’s only one, others have implied as many as 12 (before several were lost), and this reality says that there were 7 and that 3 have been lost. Fun details.
And Xebel being one of the kingdoms? Most renditions I’ve seen have it as a place for criminals or sealed off in its own pocket-dimension. So it being one of the kingdoms is pretty unique.
ARTHUR’S. PARENTS. ARE. ALIVE. HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT.
AND NEITHER OF THEM DIE!!!
And thank you SO MUCH to the writers for completely erasing some of the more questionable things that have been done with Mera and Xebel, and with Black Manta. As far as I know none of the recent comics dip into that uncomfortable written history, but I still couldn’t help but be thankful that none of that awful crap got used.
No use of the word ‘pure’ in regards to the purist rhetoric of some of the characters, but it was so heavily implied that I think it’s safe to assume. Still mentioning it because with everything else going on it was almost weird that it wasn’t mentioned even once.
BORDER PATROL AND WALLS AROUND ATLANTIS. What the actual fuck?! What the fucking fuck?! Who the hell in Arthur’s family thought that was a good idea?! ‘Oh, you’re trying to go up and over the wall and not through the only gate into or out of Atlantis-- ‘cause that’s not asking for trouble AT ALL-- how about... No. Instead we’ll just FUCKING ANNIHILATE YOU WITH GIANT ASS LASERS BECAUSE THAT’S REAL PROPORTIONATE TO THE SITUATION.̓ (Seriously. What the fuck.)
The split between upper and lower levels. I’ve seen splits between inner and outer provinces before with various iterations, but this reality is the first one where I’ve seen an upper-versus-lower-level split in Atlantis.
Arthur being the eldest. Some realities he’s older than Orm, and in other realities Orm is older than him. It’s kind of a toss-up.
Atlanna being ‘sacrificed’ to the Trench. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ATLANTIS?! Granted, the Trench are a recent addition to the Aquaman mythos (a la New52), and it could be argued that for other realities they’re almost a myth, a legend of nightmare stories to warn reckless guppies away from going into open and empty areas away from others where it’d be easier for predators to snap them up and swim away; but for a reality where they’re known to factually exist and for people to be completely okay with SACRIFICING THEIR QUEEN TO THEM... What. THE. FUCK.
The Social Things
Technically I could put this point under Differences From Other Realities, but it has to do with a huge social detail for this movie, so it’s going here. ARRANGED MARRIAGE. I think it’s fair to assume that it may have been a thing in the past in most DC realities, but this reality is the first one I know of where it’s a current thing. Obviously this has HUGE repercussions for how things play out (like Queen Atlanna getting ‘sacrificed’ to the Trench for ‘committing treason’ thanks to having fallen in love with Tom and having Arthur-- WTAF Atlantis?), and it implies a lot more heavy restrictions in Atlantis than even I headcanon-- and I’ve headcanoned some really dark shit based on the crumbs and hints DC has given us over various renditions.
This movie did not sugarcoat or simplify the bigotry in Atlantis. They very clearly conveyed that being bigoted isn’t just “deliberately being mean to someone” and that bigotry is pervasive and can affect damn near everything. In fact they did an artful job at subtly and carefully weaving it into interactions that you might not even notice unless you know what to look for. This includes such “tasteful” (NOT) Atlantean slurs and comments rendered in English as:
- Half-breed (canonically an in-world slur)
- Mongrel (implications similar to ‘half-breed’)
- Savage (I hate this word so GODDAMN MUCH, you have NO fucking idea, my kneejerk reaction to hearing this word is the urge to either deck someone or set something on fire)
- “If that half-breed mongrel wields the trident, then that half-breed mongrel is your king.” (May not be word-for-word exact, but it was said by Mera’s father-- which fuck you Nereus, you purist piece of shit, and fuck you for daring to refer to the man you just told your people to follow by using a goddamn slur.)
- There’s more, but goddamn if I went through it all this thing would get even longer and I’d be screaming even more about Orm and Nereus.
- Though I will say with Arthur being indigenous, that insult of ‘half-breed’ carries WAY more weight than it might otherwise. Like WAY MORE.
Oh yeah! And before I forget! Because fuck that hagfish-sucking purist piece of ba’athu-kest shit ORM!
THE ASSHOLE KILLS KING RICOU, KING OF THE FISHERMEN, IN FRONT OF HIS FAMILY BECAUSE HE WAS CALLING ORM ON HIS SHIT AND REFUSING TO GO ALONG WITH HIS WAR.
And then he fucking threatened to kill King Ricou’s partner and daughter if they don’t do what he wants!
Just... FUCK ORM. Fuck his purist bullshit, and fuck his purist bullshit that obviously made him think nothing of killing a kisegra where he actually hesitated over the idea of killing someone ‘pure’. (Think Vulco, to a certain extent, and Nereus when Nereus told him to back down over killing Mera.)
Mera says that people try to get into Atlantis over the wall “all the time.” Um, hi, because that’s not saying anything intense. At all. What it immediately calls to my mind is that it may be a direct hint of kisegra not being seen as citizens in Atlantis and (generally) not allowed in. In fact, in the main crowd scenes during the first fight between Arthur and Orm I only noticed ONE kisegra, and then only because of their tail. I may be wrong, there may have been more that I didn’t notice, but in the brief amount of time there was I tried to scour the shots of the crowd for kisegra and came up empty aside from the one. (Can we say ‘possible hints of that arc in the pre-boot comics where kisegra weren’t citizens until Arthur took the throne’?) It also implies-- if they’re willing to risk getting FUCKING ANNIHILATED BY GIANT ASS LASER-CANNONS to get in-- that things are B A D outside Atlantis.
(Arthur, you poor bastard, you’re walking/swimming into a shit-storm.)
And ‘battles to the death for the throne’???? In a goddamn ARENA?! What kind of fucking hellscape is Atlantis that they’ve had such advanced tech at their disposal for centuries and they’re doing that shit?! (Again, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ATLANTIS?!)
The division between the upper and lower levels. Um... What... the fuck??? Apparently the “low-born” aren’t able to breathe air-- which okay, whatever-- but they apparently have to live with/in wreckage???? Without electricity??? (Obviously the Atlanteans have some form of energy production going. Magic or electricity or both, idek, but that shattered wreck of a ship looked like there wasn’t anything on it or in the area around it that might have cast some light that wasn’t whatever happened to be shining through from higher up.) And apparently without the means to build actual houses???? Great system there for the poor Atlantis. Really.
Arthur, you poor, poor bastard, you’re swimming into a shit-storm.
A gigantic shit-storm.
Arthur, you poor, poor bastard, you’re swimming into SUCH a gigantic shit-storm.
Arthur, you have my deepest sympathies. (Pun not intended.)
I know I said it before, but I’ll say it again: the implications for this world’s Atlantis are way darker than my headcanons have been.
Though this does make me wonder just how much shit Arthur and Mera might get over their relationship and how it came to be (since it obviously wasn’t through “proper traditional procedures”).
Some Other Points I Realized After Getting Some Sleep
Even though we get the sense that everything is headed by kings in Atlantis (HA), we also actually have evidence that Atlantis might not actually go in for surface-world sexist shit.
- Atlanna is clearly Atlan’s descendant, not Orm’s father, otherwise Arthur wouldn’t have been eligible for the throne. Which means the throne was hers (before she was going to be ‘sacrificed’ as a traitor). So that brings up the possibility that things may have played out differently if she’d been found out before Orm was born. (Maybe they wouldn’t have been able to safely ‘get rid of’ her without having someone of her family line available and ready to step in.)
- When Orm kills King Ricou it’s very clearly implied that the throne immediately goes to Ricou’s daughter and not his partner. There is no question or doubt that the princess is immediately in charge of her people’s armies, not even a hint that her gender is a factor in the situation. (It also reinforces the prior thing in the point about Atlanna that family-line seems to be the important factor over everything else for the royal families.)
- Atlanna and Mera both are shown to be highly capable fighters who aren’t to be taken lightly, and though we only really see them being pursued by and fighting against men, there’s not even a moment where any of the atlanteans seem surprised that they’re as capable as they are.
- The Karathen is arguably the biggest badass tank in the entire movie, and yet it’s safe to assume that when King Atlan went into his exile that he cared more about what she was capable of than he cared about the fact that she was the biggest badass woman in the entire ocean. (Assuming the Karathen even has the concept of gender. Pretty sure that’s up for question.)
Chances are high that when Atlanna was ‘sacrificed’ to the Trench, Orm saw his father’s show of harsh and callous ruthlessness and told himself that it was strength, it was admirable, and he wanted to be as much like him as possible. And there’s also the possibility that he had some part of himself deep down somewhere that was absolutely terrified over what his father might do if he ever was or became anything that his father saw fit to ‘destroy’. (Not that it excuses his purist bullshit for even a moment-- purist fucking McDouche-Face Orm can still fucking die in a fire as far as I’m concerned-- but that kind of thing may have added fuel to the fire for his purist bullshit.)
Since it’s very clearly implied that Mera and Orm were raised together, there’s a high chance they were friends as kids. It also means she got to see his increasing asshole-ish-ness, and while she may have missed the friendship they used to have as kids (thank you @tamlins-stories-and-poems for bringing this point up) she also would have known how quickly the switch could be flipped from him caring about her to him deciding she needed to die if he saw her as a ‘traitor’. (Which also explains her deliberate anti-surface comment to him before trying to say that she felt he was going too far.)
I just have to say, in regards to my fishy son La’gaan, he’s the kind of person who doesn’t willingly bow before or submit to anyone unless he feels they’ve earned it. The versions of Mera and Arthur in this movie? They are exactly the sort of people he would be ecstatic to call his Queen and King. They’re the sort of people he would be loyal to and fight with everything he has to defend them-- because they’re both the sort of people to essentially say “fuck you” to social conventions to do the right thing.
With the 7 kingdoms, at least 6 are outright mentioned (unless I’m not remembering the seventh, and even so I’m dubious about the kingdom of the Trench even counting).
- The Remaining 4: The kingdom of Atlantis, The kingdom of Xebel, The kingdom of the Fishermen, and The kingdom of the Brine.
- The ‘lost’ 3: The kingdom of the Deserters (implied to all be dead), The kingdom of the Trench (again, I’m dubious about their claim to the title, but there’s that purist rhetoric about some people having ‘regressed’-- fuck that noise SO much-- but if we put any stock in it then it would imply the kingdom was ‘lost’ because they ‘fell’ so far), and then the third one which may have been mentioned but I don’t recall.
- I just have so many doubts in regard to the Trench having their own kingdom. They’re screwed up nightmare fuel, and claiming they’re one of the Lost Kingdoms feels almost like one of those things that purists thought up as a way to support any claims they have about kisegra being “savage” and all that shit.
And while I’m at it, I fucking love how Orm’s spouting bullshit about how ‘savage’ and ‘barbaric’ kisegra are, and meanwhile the King of the Brine and King Ricou both tell him in no uncertain terms that he’s the one who’s being a violent asshole who needs to back the fuck off.
Really fucking pissed about how Orm killed Ricou and was going to kill the King of the Brine (after he’d already ripped his arm off, fucking asshole Orm).
- Also not thrilled about how after Orm gets ripped away from the King of the Brine, we don’t get to see that king again. I would have liked a moment of him making his way to Arthur to talk. (Maybe something to hope for in a sequel. And hopefully they’ll give him an actual name.)
Also, I appreciate that the one group of kisegra were called fishermen and not fish-men. It’s only something I’ve seen come up in a couple iterations (the animated Young Justice being the main one), but ‘fish head’ is yet another Atlantean slur. Presumably going off of that, things like ‘fish face’, ‘fish lips’, etc.-- while possibly not outright slurs-- could be similar enough to the actual slur to (justifiably) make any kisegra bristle. By going with ‘fishermen’ for that group, it’s pushing away the negative connotations of a possible slur by invoking a term and imagery that implies they are hunters, and therefore shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s a nice little touch that I’m not sure if the writers intended or not, but I appreciate it all the same.
That said, for all my screaming, I LOVE THIS MOVIE.
#Aquaman#Atlanteans#Arthur Curry#Queen Mera#Black Manta#La'gaan#Lagoon Boy#Orm can die in a fire#long post#meta#updated
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