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unwhitewashthebadbatch · 3 years

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We the undersigned are Star Wars fans reaching out due to our deep concerns with the new series, Star Wars: The Bad Batch. We feel that elements of the show, including many character models and aspects of the writing, are alienating and harmful to fans of color.

When George Lucas first created Star Wars, many fans latched onto the cast of characters with a range of personalities and backgrounds, and they did this because everyone was able to see a little bit of themselves in Luke, Leia, Han, and Lando. The theme that anyone can be great regardless of one’s upbringing, that fighting for what’s right is always ideal over doing what’s comfortable, and that a family can be found in anything is what has drawn so many different people to Star Wars for decades.

These themes were the main driving force behind the writing of the clones in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Fans of the series can easily attest to the message that DNA does not determine value, and that what matters most is who you are, not what you are. The clones’ collective arc did away with the idea that a name, a face, or a particular upbringing determined skills or intrinsic value. This is the message that fans most identify with the clones, and they were excited to see the continuation of that message as far as the series went. Many fans see themselves in the clones in one way or another. Neurodivergent and disabled fans see themselves in characters like Hardcase, Wolffe, and Echo. Many fans of color were excited for the breadth and depth with which the clones were written, and Māori and Polynesian fans were glad to see themselves as heroes.

These valuable lessons and representation were in part why the introduction of Clone Force 99 – also known as the “Bad Batch” – came as a shock to many. Where The Clone Wars had spent over a decade building on the aforementioned themes, it was as if The Bad Batch had come specifically to do away with them. Sergeant Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, Crosshair, Echo, and eventually Omega weren’t intrinsically valuable despite their sameness the way all other clones are. The Clone Wars (and later, Star Wars: The Bad Batch) makes it clear that these clones are intrinsically valuable because they’re different. Where Fives had said on Kamino and on Umbara that they were clones but they were also people, that they shared blood but that they were individuals with opinions worth listening to, who had rights that were being violated and who needed to stand up for themselves, The Bad Batch is almost the total opposite. The Bad Batch clones are special because their blood is special; their DNA is so different from Jango’s that they have an edge over the “regs” that they refuse to acknowledge as their battlefield and familial equals. This message already unsettled many fans, but what added salt to the wound was the appearance of the members of the Bad Batch. In The Clone Wars, it is made clear that they have genetic enhancements that give them skills and advantages regular clones do not have, like Tech’s genius and Crosshair’s sniping abilities. Their differences are desirable mutations. Their desirable mutations also made them white.

The term “whitewashing” began to take hold with the release of the story reels in 2015, but since The Clone Wars had been canceled, many fans did not say much because they did not expect the Bad Batch to ever be fully animated. When Disney revived The Clone Wars for one final season, these same fans were dismayed to see that not only had nothing changed, it was as though the whitewashing became worse with the full render. Tech looked and sounded like a British man. Many people likened Hunter to Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo (or to the actor himself). There was a lot of confusion over Echo’s complete lack of melanin and Crosshair’s dramatically narrowed features and yellow undertone. Fans were also disturbed to see that Wrecker, the clone who arguably most resembles Jango, is characterized by a number of negative racial stereotypes, including being violent / short-tempered, intellectually inferior, and to quote voice actor Dee Bradley Baker, “childlike”.

The release of the trailer for Star Wars: The Bad Batch only solidified fans’ feelings of disgust, dismay, and hurt. It looked like the creators of The Bad Batch had lost interest in telling a story about underdogs and people without special upbringings or innate abilities, instead choosing to base the premise of the show off the idea that being genetically superior is what makes a hero. Additionally, since the series began airing we have seen other characters altered, including Saw Gerrera (lightened skin tone, straight brown hair, and the return of light-colored eyes) and Caleb Dume/Kanan Jarrus (lightened skin tone, lightened hair, lightened eyes). To fans of color, the message of The Bad Batch was clear: to be special, to be the hero – to be genetically enhanced and desirable – one must be white, or near it.

On March 30th, 2021, the social media campaign using the hashtag #UnwhitewashTBB was started by Twitter user @Clonehub7567. It began simultaneously on Tumblr under the same hashtag. Other fans quickly joined the movement, as the stated message was simple and clear: undo the whitewashing in The Bad Batch and commit to accurate representation for people of color in both art and in writing.

Since that day, #UnwhitewashTBB has expanded to include more than just racism, colorism, and featurism. As the series continued, members of #UnwhitewashTBB became aware of various other issues with the series, the two largest being ableism and antisemitism. The ableism was made apparent in Tech’s coding as “on the spectrum”, according to voice actor Dee Bradley Baker; Echo’s treatment as an amputee (being sold and otherwise ignored); and the potential issue with Wrecker’s large facial scar, single eye, and his behavior and personality. More details can be found here: https://unwhitewashthebadbatch.carrd.co/#abttbb The antisemitism is in Cid, the broker that the team works with. She is a Trandoshan woman, a lizard species popular in Star Wars. She’s greedy, and she has an accent associated with New York Jews. On top of this, she is being played by a Jewish voice actress, Rhea Perlman.

Fan Responses

On July 26, 2021, the #UnwhitewashTBB movement released a survey to gauge the general audience’s feelings about the series. Within days, we received hundreds of responses, and the numbers continue to climb.

When asked what their favorite element of the series was, most (38.1%) said “Cameos”, followed by “Main Characters” (25%), “Art / Animation” (19.8%), “Other” (13.1%) and “Writing” (4.9%).

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When asked about their least favorite element of the series, the order was “Writing” (33.8%), “Main Characters” (22.5%), “Other” (19.7%), “Art / Animation” (19.2%), and “Cameo Appearances” (4.8%).

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Respondents were asked to read various pages in the carrd, and were then asked again about their opinion on the series.

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Upon reading the carrd, respondents were given the opportunity to explain their final feelings on Star Wars: The Bad Batch.

“...their skin is a little too pale. As someone who is part Māori, this is very important to me.” - Respondent 581

“...The show has failed greatly in many aspects but especially in their whitewashing and it's appalling that we can look at earlier seasons of TCW and see the clones' skin gradually becoming lighter and lighter. There are no excuses for it. I know that since I already had strong opinions on this my response might not adequately reflect the "average" viewer, but I'm glad that this is being talked about. Particularly in the field of animation this is very avoidable, the fact no one on their team throughout the very lengthy and grueling production process said nothing tells me that their team has severe issues and a lack of diverse representation in positions of power that needs addressing asap. I love Star Wars and it is has always had these issues but it is high time they start actually changing especially as the fanbase has never been as diverse as it is now. Apologies if I strayed from the main question here!” - Respondent 735

“I can't watch without noticing the whitewashing.” - Respondent 679

“I would just like to elaborate on the ableism aspect. As a amputee myself, I don’t like how Echo’s trauma has been ignored. The whole reason he is with the BB is because of what he went through. Losing one limb, never mind multiple, it’s extremely difficult. They made it seem like just because his prosthetic can be of use on missions, that means he isn’t grieving the loss of his actual hand. There is no healing or evolution. It also feels wrong to only address the fact that echo uses prosthetics for the sake of hacking into machinery. Prosthetics are so personal and become a real part of who you are as a person.” - Respondent 130

“Overall feelings about the series: It's disturbing that this misrepresentation is so pervasive in the project.” - Respondent 616

“...I can't believe Star Wars is still doing this, and that an entire team of animators with a huge budget can't get skin tone right. I didn't even know the clones were supposed to have a NZ Māori accent until a friend told me. That's a big deal, since I live in NZ and hear it every day. Also, casting a white man to voice a Māori accent, and then having him do an awful job at it? Shame on you, Disney.” - Respondent 209

“As someone who is neurodivergent myself, Tech and Wrecker just. sting, you know? in a “is that really what you think of us” kind of way.

“As a fan of color, its irritating and painful to watch and be brushed off as "lighting issues" and see justifications made by white fans and producers...It also feels very bad to me that TCW spent 7 seasons with several arcs emphasizing that the clones were all as individual as a 'normal' person, but then undo all that with TBB, which centers a group of "special" clones (who are suspiciously white) and have them treat the "regs" as a homogeneous group who are lesser than them, and then expect us to find it within ourselves to put that aside to enjoy the MCs. The way the treat "regs" is very offputting and it made me dislike them since their introduction...Star Wars is no stranger to racist and antisemitic media, but I must say, the blantancy of Sid, a greedy lizard who essentially financially enslaves the protaganists, being Jewish-coded and being protrayed by a Jewish voice actress is really next-level even for Star Wars. As a Jewish fan, it really grates on me.” - Respondent 40

“I’m disabled and autistic, and the ableism is appalling to watch. Watching Echo be treated as subhuman for needing machinery to survive makes me feel like having implants to keep my spine from breaking itself would have me be the pitied member of any group. I am disgusted by the blatant antisemitism, as a fair number of my friends are Jewish and it hurts me to think that people can so easily hate others based on internalized stereotypes. Me and my friends have also critically analyzed the fact that, despite being clones of a character portrayed by Temuera Morrison, for some reason the bad batch look nothing like him in any way. No resemblance in any way: just a bunch of someone’s badly worked characters fraught with disgusting writing decisions and design choices that make no sense. It makes me angry to think that the writers for this show, and to an extent any modern writer, would believe that using harmful tropes to make a story is acceptable and someone brings in profit. I tried to watch it out of fact that my family likes Star Wars and we all grew up watching it, but all of these unhealthy assumptions and terrible choices in terms of writing and design leave a bitter and nauseating feeling.” - Respondent 605

From the start, there was a striking pattern from respondents: regardless of one’s initial feelings surrounding the series, its characters, and the writing, not only did most people’s opinions decrease upon reading the #UnwhitewashTBB carrd, the vast majority of respondents (ratings 1-3, 77.1%) were not excited for a prospective Season 2 of The Bad Batch. The most commonly cited reason for this the racism/whitewashing, antisemitism, and ableism.

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Resolution

Supporters of #UnwhitewashTBB are as diverse as the viewers themselves. We all have differing understandings of what a solution to the offenses in the series may entail, but we are all joined under these four goals, stated in our carrd:

1. An end to the racism, whitewashing, and colorism/featurism. We all want to see a group of clones who share the skin tone of the man they are copies of. While some of us want complete model rehauls that make the Bad Batch look Māori in general, others of us would prefer it if the clones all shared the standard clone model. Regardless of the specificities, we are demanding an end to the racism in Star Wars: The Bad Batch that has prevented so many of us from fully enjoying this series. We want to be able to see ourselves, our features, and our racial and ethnic identities on screen without them being lightened, narrowed, straightened, or villainized once we hit the screen.

Fixing these means not placing the only representation fans of color have on screen in the Empire, and having people who look like us be heroes rather than supporters of a metaphor for a Nazi regime.

2. An end to the ableism in Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Disabled and neurodivergent fans have expressed continued dismay at the treatment of Echo in the series, from his being sold as a droid to his near nonexistence within the plot. Lots of autistic fans see themselves in Tech and enjoy his character for that reason, but they feel his representation is leaning heavily into stereotypes. Echo must be a full member of the team, and Tech must stop being a stereotype.

3. An end to the antisemitism. Cid is a gross stereotype of Jewish people, who have suffered enough over the centuries and to this day without having to see themselves dehumanized as a mean, greedy lizard person on screen. The antisemitic traits in Cid--whether they be the voice/accent, the personality, the species, or all three--must go.

4. An acknowledgement and apology from Disney and the Star Wars: The Bad Batch team. Fans of color, Jewish fans, disabled fans, and neurodivergent fans have been hurt and alienated by the actions of Disney and the writing/design team for The Bad Batch. Disney has made posts standing up for Black and other marginalized people before. They can do it again.

Fans across religions, cultures, abilities, and various racial and ethnic identities have been hurt by the portrayal of The Bad Batch, from their physical appearances to their writing. This letter is a plea from those fans to Disney, Lucasfilm, and the creative leaders of Star Wars: The Bad Batch. For decades, Star Wars was meant to be for everyone, regardless of the traits that make us different from one another. We are asking that that tradition continue, that our voices are heard, and that you unwhitewash The Bad Batch.

#petition #unwhitewashtbb #the bad batch #star wars #swtbb #tbb #unwhitewash the bad batch #uwwtbb

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justmenoworries · 3 years

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Not Up For Interpretation - An Essay On Nonbinary - Erasure

(Trigger Warning: Misgendering, Transphobia, Nonbinary-phobia)

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know this was a long time coming. I’ve made several posts about my frustrations concerning this topic and how much it hurt me just how socially accepted erasing an entire identity still is. While representation marches on and things have become better for nonbinary people as a whole, we still battle with a lot of prejudice - both intentional and unintentional.

In this essay, I want to discuss just how our identities are being erased almost daily, why that is harmful and hurtful and what we all can do to change that.

Chapters:

What does Non-binary mean?

Nonbinary- representation in media

So what’s the problem?

How do we fix it?

1. What Does Non-binary Mean?

Non-binary is actually an umbrella term. It includes pretty much every gender-identity that’s neither one or the other so to speak, for example, agender.

Agender means feeling detachment from the gender spectrum in general. If you’re agender, you most likely feel a distance to the concept of gender as a whole, that it doesn’t define you as a person.

There are many identities that classify under non-binary: There’s gender-fluid (you feel you have a gender, but it’s not one gender specifically and can change), demi-gender (identifying as a gender partially, but not completely) and many others.

Sometimes, multiple non-binary identities can mix and match.

Most non-binary people use they/them pronouns, but like with so many things, it varies.

Some nonbinary-people (like me) go by two pairs of pronouns. I go by both she/her and they/them, because it’s what feels most comfortable at the moment. But who knows, maybe in the future I’ll switch to they/them exclusively or expand to he/him.

There is no one defining non-binary experience. Nb-people are just as varied and different as binary people, who go by one specific gender.

There are non-binary people who choose to go solely by she/her or he/him and that’s okay too. It doesn’t make them any more or less non-binary and their identity is still valid.

If your head’s buzzing a bit by now: That’s okay. It’s a complicated topic and no one expects you to understand all of it in one chapter of one essay.

Just know this: If a person identifies as non-binary, you should respect their decision and use the pronouns they go with.

It’s extremely hurtful to refer to someone who already told you that they use they/them pronouns with she/her or he/him, or use they/them to refer to a person who uses she/her.

Think about it like using a trans-person’s deadname: It’s rude, it’s harmful and it shows complete disrespect for the person.

Non-binary people have existed for a very long time. The concept isn’t new. The idea that there are only two genders, with every other identity being an aberration to the norm, is largely a western idea, spread through colonialism.

The Native American people use “Two-Spirit” to describe someone who identifies neither as a man nor a woman. The term itself is relatively new, but the concept of a third gender is deeply rooted in many Native American cultures.

(Author’s Note: If you are not Native American, please do not use it. That’s cultural appropriation.)

In India, the existence of a third gender has always been acknowledged and there are many terms specifically for people who don’t identify with the gender that was assigned to them at birth.

If you’re interested in learning more about non-binary history and non-binary identities around the world, I’d recommend visiting these websites:

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/History_of_nonbinary_gender

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Gender-variant_identities_worldwide

https://thetempest.co/2020/02/01/history/the-history-of-nonbinary-genders-is-longer-than-you-think/

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/gender-variance-around-the-world

Also, maybe consider giving this book a try:

Nonbinary Gender Identities: History, Culture, Resources by Charlie Mcnabb

2. Non-binary Representation In Media

The representation of non-binary people in mainstream media hasn’t been... great, to put it mildly.

Representation, as we all know, is important.

Not only does it give minorities a chance to see themselves in media and feel heard and acknowledged. It also normalizes them.

For example, seeing a black Disney-princess was a huge deal for many black little girls, because they could finally say there was someone there who looked like them. They could see that being white wasn’t a necessity to be a Disney princess.

Seeing a canonically LGBT+ character in a children’s show teaches kids that love is love, no matter what gender you’re attracted to. At the same time, older LGBT+ viewers will see themselves validated and heard in a movie that features on-screen LGBT+ heroes.

There’s been some huge steps in the right direction in the last few years representation-wise.

Not only do we have more LGBT+ protagonists and characters in general, we’ve also begun to question and call out harmful or bigoted portrayals of the community in media, such as “Bury Your Gays” or the “Depraved Homosexual”.

With that being said: Let’s take a look at how Non-binary representation holds up in comparison, shall we?

This is Double Trouble, from the children’s show “She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power”.

They identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns. They’re also a slimy, duplicitous lizard-person who can change their shape at will.

Um, yeah.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Did I mention they’re also the only non-binary character in the entire show? And that they’re working with a genocidal dictator in most of the episodes they’re in?

Yikes.

Let’s look at another example.

These three (in order of appearance) are Stevonnie, Smoky Quartz and Shep. Three characters appearing in the kid’s show “Steven Universe” and it’s epilogue series “Steven Universe: Future”.

All of them identify as non-binary and use they/them as pronouns.

Stevonnie and Smoky Quartz are the result of a boy and a girl being fused together through weird alien magic.

Shep is a regular human, but they only appeared in one episode. In an epilogue series that only hardcore fans actually watched.

Well, I mean...

One out of three isn’t that bad, right?

Maybe we should pick an example from a series for older viewers.

Say hello to Doppelganger, a non-binary superhuman who goes by they/them, from the Amazon-series “The Boys”.

They’re working for a corrupt superhero-agency and use their power of shape-shifting to trick people who pose a threat to said agency into having sex with them. And then blackmail those people with footage of said sex.

....

Do I even need to say it?

If you’ve paid attention during the listing of these examples, you might have noticed a theme.

Namely that characters canonically identifying as non-binary are either

supernatural in some way, shape or form,

barely have a presence in the piece of media they’re in,

both.

Blink-and-you-miss-it-manner of representation aside, the majority of these characters fall squarely under what we call “Othering”.

“Othering” describes the practice of portraying minorities as supernatural creatures or otherwise inhuman. Or to say it bluntly: As “The Other”.

“Othering” is a pretty heinous method. Not only does it portray minorities as inherently abnormal and “different in a bad way”. It also goes directly against what representation is actually for: Normalizing.

As a general rule of thumb: If your piece of media has humans in it, but the only representation of non-white, non-straight people are explicitly inhuman... yeah, that’s bad.

So is there absolutely no positive representation for us out there?

Not quite.

As rare as human non-binary characters in media are to find, they do exist.

Here we have Bloodhound! A non-binary human hunter who uses they/them pronouns, from the game “Apex Legends”.

It’s been confirmed by the devs and the voice actress that they’re non-binary.

Nice!

These are Frisk (bottom) and Chara (top) from the game “Undertale”. While their exact gender identity hasn’t been disclosed, they both canonically use they/them pronouns, so it’s somewhere on the non-binary spectrum.

Two human children who act as the protagonist (Frisk) and antagonist (Chara), depending on how you play the game. (Interpretations vary on the antagonist/protagonist-thing, to say the least.)

Cool!

......

And, yep, that’s it.

As my little demonstration here showed, non-binary representation in media is rare. Good non-binary representation is even rarer.

Which is why those small examples of genuinely good representation are so important to the Non-binary community!

It’s hard enough to have to prove you exist. It’s even harder to prove your existence is not abnormal or unnatural.

If you’d like to further educate yourself on representation, it’s impact on society and why it matters, perhaps take a second to read through these articles:

https://www.criticalhit.net/opinion/representation-media-matters/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/why-on-screen-representation-matters-according-to-these-teens

https://jperkel.github.io/sciwridiversity2020/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/05/22/why-is-equal-representation-in-media-important/?sh=25f2ccc92a84

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-representation-the-media-matters

3. So What’s The Problem?

The problem, as is the case with so many things in the world, is prejudice.

Actually, that’s not true.

There’s not a problem, there are multiple problems. And their names are prejudice, ignorance and bigotry.

Remember how I said human non-binary representation is rare?

Yeah, very often media-fans don’t help.

Let’s take for example, the aforementioned Frisk and Chara from “Undertale”.

Despite the game explicitly using they/them to refer to both characters multiple times, the majority of players somehow got it into their heads that Frisk’s and Chara’s gender was “up for interpretation”.

There is a huge amount of fan art straight-up misgendering both characters and portraying them as binary and using only he/him or she/her pronouns.

The most egregious examples are two massively popular fan-animated web shows: “Glitchtale”, by Camila Cuevas and “Underverse” by Jael Peñaloza.

Both series are very beloved by the Undertale-fanbase and even outside of it. Meaning for many people, those two shows might be their first introduction to “Undertale” and it’s two non-binary human characters.

Take a wild guess what both Camila and Jael did with Frisk and Chara.

Underverse, X-Tale IV:

(Transcript: “Frisk lied to me in the worst possible way... I... I will never forgive him.”)

Underverse, X-Tale V:

(Transcript: “I-It’s Chara... and it’s a BOY.”)

Glitchtale, My Promise:

(Transcript: (Referring to Frisk) “I’m not scared of an angry boy anymore.”)

Glitchtale, Game Over Part 1:

(Transcript: (Referring to Chara) “It’s ok little boy.”)

This... this isn’t okay.

Not only do both of these pieces of fan-art misgender two non-binary characters, the creators knew beforehand that Frisk and Chara use they/them-pronouns, but made the conscious choice to ignore that.

To be fair, in a video discussing “Underverse”, Jael said that only X-Tale Frisk and Chara, the characters you see in the Underverse-examples above, are male, while the characters Frisk and Chara from the main game remained non-binary and used they/them (time-stamp 10:34).

Still, that doesn’t erase the fact that Jael made up alternate versions of two non-binary characters specifically to turn them male. Or that, while addressing the issue, Jael was incredibly dismissive and even mocked the people who felt hurt by her turning two non-binary characters male. Jael also went on to make a fairly non-binary-phobic joke in the video, in which she equated gender identities beyond male and female to identifying as an object.

Jael (translated): “I don’t care if people say the original Frisk and Chara are male, female, helicopters, chairs, dogs or cats, buildings, clouds...”

That’s actually a very common joke among transphobes, if not to say the transphobe-joke:

“Oh, you identify as X? Well then I identify as an attack helicopter!”

If you’re trans, chances are you’ve heard this one, or a variation of it, a million times before.

I certainly have.

I didn’t laugh then and I’m not laughing now.

(Author’s note: I might be angry at both of them for what they did, but I do not, under any circumstances, support the harassment of creators. If you’re thinking about sending either Jael or Camila hate-mail - don’t. It won’t help.)

Jael’s reaction is sadly common in the Undertale fandom. Anyone speaking up against Chara’s and Frisk’s identity being erased is immediately bludgeoned with the “up for interpretation”-argument, despite that not once being the case in the game.

And even with people who do it right and portray Frisk and Chara as they/them, you’ll have dozens of commenters swarming the work with sentences among the lines of “Oh but I think Frisk is a boy/girl! And Chara is a girl/boy!”

By the way, this kind of thing only happens to Frisk and Chara.

Every other character in “Undertale” is referred to and portrayed with their proper pronouns of she/her or he/him.

But not the characters who go by they/them.

Their gender is “up for interpretation”.

Because obviously, their identity couldn’t possibly be canonically non-binary.

Sadly, Frisk and Chara are not alone in this.

Remember Bloodhound?

And how I said they’d been confirmed as non-binary and using they/them pronouns by both the creators and the voice actress?

It seems for many players, that too translated to “up for interpretation”.

(Transcript: “does it matter what they call him? He, her, it, they toaster oven, it doesn’t matter”)

(Transcript: “I’m like 90 % sure Bloodhound is a dude because he could just sound like a girl and by their age that I’m assuming looks around 10-12 because I’ve known many males who have sounded like a female when they were younger”)

(Transcript: “I don’t care it will always be a He. F*ck that non-binary bullsh*t.”)

(Transcript: “Bloodhound is clearly female.”)

(Transcript: “I’m not calling a video game character they/them”)

(Transcript: “exactly. The face was never fully shown neither was the gender so I’d say it means that the player is Bloodhound. So it’s your gender and you refer to “him” as yourself. It’s like a self insertion in my eyes.”)

So, let me get this straight:

If a character, even a player character, uses she/her or he/him, you can accept it, no questions asked.

But when a character uses they/them, suddenly their identity and gender are “up for interpretation”?

This attitude is also widely prevalent in real life.

Many languages only include pronouns for men and women, with no third option available. Non-binary people are often forced to make up their own terms, because their language doesn’t provide one.

Non-binary people often don’t fit within other people’s ideas of gender, so they get excluded altogether. Worse, non-binary people are often the victims of misgendering, denial of their identity or even straight-up violence when coming out.

People will often tell us that we look like a certain gender, so we should only use one set of gendered pronouns. Never mind that that’s not what we want. Never mind that that’s not who we are.

Non-binary people are also largely omitted from legal documentation and studies. We cannot identify as non-binary at our workplace, because using they/them pronouns is considered “unprofessional”. We don’t have our own bathrooms like men and women do. Our gender is seen as less valid than male and female, so even that basic thing is denied to us. I’ve had to use the women’s restroom my entire life, because if I go into a male restroom, I’ll be yelled at or made fun off or simply get told I took the wrong door. It’s extremely uncomfortable for me and I wish I didn’t have to do it.

And since non-binary people aren’t seen as “real transgender-people”, we often don’t receive the medical care we need. This often renders us unable to feel good within our bodies, because the treatment and help we get is wildly inadequate.

It’s especially horrible for intersex people (people who are born with sex characteristics that don’t fit solely into the male/female category) who are often forced to change their bodies to fit within the male/female gender binary.

And you better believe each of those problems is increased ten-fold for non-binary people of color.

We are ignored and dismissed as “confused”, because of who we are.

Representation is a way for Non-binary people to show the world they exist, that they’re here and that they too have stories to tell.

But how can we, when every character that represents us is either othered, barely there or gets taken away from us?

We are not “up for interpretation”.

Neither are the characters in media who share our identity.

And it’s time to stop pretending we ever were.

For more information about Non-Binary Erasure and how harmful it is, you can check out these articles:

https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/common-non-binary-erasure/

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/nonbinary-people-racism/

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Nonbinary_erasure

https://traj.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/traj.422/

https://medium.com/an-injustice/everyday-acts-of-non-binary-erasure-49ee970654fb

https://medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/the-invisible-labor-of-liberating-non-binary-identities-in-higher-education-3f75315870ec

https://musingsofanacademicasexual.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/dear-sirmadam-a-commentary-on-non-binary-erasure/

4. How Do We Fix It?

Well, first things first: Stop acting like we don’t exist.

And kindly stop other people from doing it too.

We are a part of the LGBT+ community and we deserve to be acknowledged, no matter what our pronouns are.

Address non-binary people with the right pronouns. Don’t argue with them about their identity, don’t comment on how much you think they look like a boy or a girl. Just accept them and be respectful.

If a non-binary person tells you they have two sets of pronouns, for example he/him and they/them, don’t just use one set of pronouns. That can come off as disingenuous. Alternate between the pronouns, don’t leave one or the other out. It’ll probably be hard at first, but if you keep it up, you’ll get used to it pretty quickly.

If you’re witnessing someone harass a non-binary person over their identity, step in and help them.

And please, don’t partake in non-binary erasure in media fandoms.

Don’t misgender non-binary characters, don’t “speculate” on what you think their gender might be. You already know their gender and it’s non-binary. It costs exactly 0 $ to be a decent human being and accept that.

Support Non-Binary people by educating yourself about them and helping to normalize and integrate their identity.

In fact, here’s a list of petitions, organizations and articles who will help you do just that:

https://www.change.org/p/collegeboard-let-students-use-their-preferred-name-on-collegeboard-9abad81a-0fdf-435c-8fca-fe24a5df6cc7?source_location=topic_page

6 Ways to Support Your Non-Binary Child

7 Non-Negotiables for Supporting Trans & Non-Binary Students in Your Classroom

If Your Partner Just Came Out As Non-Binary, Here’s How To Support Them

How to Support Your Non-Binary Employees, Colleagues and Friends

Ko-fi page for the Nonbinary Wiki

The Sylvia Rivera Project, an organization who aims to give low-income and non-white transgender, intersex and non-binary people a voice

The Anti Violence Project “empowers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected communities and allies to end all forms of violence through organizing and education, and supports survivors through counseling and advocacy."

The Trans Lifeline, a hotline for transgender people by transgender people

Tl:DR: Non-Binary representation is important. Non-Binary people still suffer from society at large not acknowledging our existence and forcing us to conform. Don’t be part of that problem by taking away what little representation we have. Educate yourself and do better instead. We deserve to be seen and heard.

#non-binary #agender #demigender #gender identity #essay #erasure #lgbt representation #misgendering #undertale #she ra spop #apex bloodhound #doppelganger #steven universe

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writings-of-a-british-fangirl · 3 years

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DAY 11: POPPY [CAPTAIN REX X READER]

february writing prompt masterlist // february prompt challenge list

Pairing: Captain Rex x Reader Prompt: Poppy Warnings: None, just fluff

A/N: I know in the West the poppy is more for remembrance day but according to google "Japanese and Chinese cultures view the poppy as a representation of passionate love in a couple" so I'm running with that instead!

A/N 2: I also write for Clone Wars characters now! This is my first time writing for Captain Rex so please be gentle <3

You'd woken up later than you'd originally planned, but the sun was still shinning and that was a good enough excuse as any to get out of bed and begin the day. Part of you didn't want to get your hopes up that he, your secret boyfriend, would be coming home- but another part of you wanted to plan a fancy dinner for him, and put on an outfit that would blow him away. You couldn't blame Rex for occasionally (okay, periodically) missing these dinners, and the date nights you had planned.

He was a clone trooper, a clone Captain: war was his way of life, what he had been created for. You hated it, hated how that's all he thought he was good for. You knew he was capable of so much more, destined for so much greater than dying on an alien planet in a war that was seeming increasingly pointless and futile with each passing month. At this point, all you wanted was him home, and currently, you had no idea when that would be. His schedule was unpredictable at best, and at worst left you with no communication and sometimes weeks with no contact from him.

A few days ago, he had contacted you through a secret channel on your com links, and he had promised you he'd be home soon. Rex promised he'd be back for the weekend, back to go to the market with you and help you prepare dinner. Sure, he was an awful cook, but it was the thought that counts, and you appreciate him trying to help. The moments you have with him doing normal, boring things, those are the ones you cherish the most. For a second, you can forget the war, you can forget he is a soldier and forget your lives are being controlled like puppets on a string. 'The Republic doesn't deserve Rex,' you think, 'But I do...'

You sigh, and make your bed, before heading to the kitchen.

Wistfully, you begin to imagine your life with Rex after the war. You imagine a cute little house on a quiet planet, maybe a farm, maybe some animals. They'd be lots of trees, and plants: an ocean of green. You'd truly grown sick of how fast and unforgiving Coruscant was, especially the grey smoke of its underbelly that never seemed to clear. Maybe you'd have children, maybe his brothers would be there, maybe his Jedi friends too-

Your thought is cut off by the sound of something by your door- someone at your door. They appeared to be fiddling with the lock. You prayed it wasn't someone trying to break in; sure, you didn't live in the greatest area, but still... You didn't expect this. Using the frying pan you were just about to make pancakes in as an impromptu weapon, you edged closer to the door.

The door finally gave way and opened and-

"Rex?" you ask, before your face lights up, "Rex!"

You run at him (frying pan still in hand) and throw your arms around him, being careful not to hit him with the pan. He holds you there for a second, and you relish in his embrace. For a second, you don't want it to end.

"You're home!" you exclaim, letting go of him and looking at his eyes.

"And, you're holding a frying pan?" Rex laughs, "Do I need to ask?"

"I heard a strange noise at my door and thought I was about to get robbed! Not my fault you sounded shifty," you exclaim, "Besides, why were you having so much trouble? You sounded like you were trying to pick the kriffing lock. I gave you a key for a reason."

"I was trying to balance all my stuff," he quips back, "And, find your key in this big duffle bag was a struggle-"

He's got his things with him- that could only mean one thing!

"-Wait! They gave you leave?" you interrupt him.

"A whole week," Rex beams, "Providing Commander Skywalker doesn't need me for an emergency."

"That Jedi is going to have to fight me to get to you," you promise, "This whole week is now officially dedicated to us... Starting with breakfast!"

"What did I do to deserve to get you?" Rex compliments, bringing his bag into your apartment and shutting the door behind him, "I'm guessing that frying pan or weapon is going to be making us pancakes."

"It certainly is," you twirl it in your hand, before placing a small kiss on his cheek.

He is about to follow you into the kitchen before Rex suddenly remembers something. Rex dives into his backpack, and begins searching like a mad man. You turn on your heels slightly to see why you can no longer hear the sound of your boyfriend behind you.

"I almost forgot," Rex announces, "I got you a gift. Now, I know what you're going to say: I'm not meant to bring things home from other planets, it'll get me in trouble, but I saw this and thought of you. I had to save it."

Rex hands you a book, and you look confused before he opens it out in your hands and it reveals two brightly coloured flowers, pressed neatly in the book. They curled in towards each other, and they almost looked like they were dancing. You'd never been one to need gifts in relationships, but this was warming your heart.

"The locals call them poppies," Rex explains, "They said they symbolised love. I understand if-"

"-Rex, I love it. Thank you," you smile.

Rex almost blushes, and you step closer to him. You bring him in for a proper kiss, and are almost certain you definitely won't let him go back this time.

"I love you, Rex."

"I love you too."

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blackjack-15 · 3 years

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Dead Weight — Thoughts on: Tomb of the Lost Queen (TMB)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. For this meta and the next (DED), there will be a section entitled The Theme between The Mystery and The Suspects.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: TMB, DED, massive spoilers for SPY; quick spoilers for the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Supermystery Secrets of the Nile.

The Intro:

Here we are already (finally?) at TMB! This one’s gonna be a bit different, lads.

The next two metas in this series — this one for TMB and the next for DED are gonna be a little bit of a two-part sort of endeavor, mostly because the two games are thematically juxtaposed against each other. They should be uploaded within a week of each other (fingers crossed!) to make the comparison a little easier between the two games (and two metas), so if you haven’t played one or the other, you might want to do that before jumping in.

Obligatory heads-up out of the way, let’s get our mummy on.

TMB is a game that, if you were a kid like me obsessed with ancient Egypt (and an adult like me obsessed with ancient Egypt), was one of the most hotly anticipated Nancy Drew titles to hit store shelves. Fortunately, unlike a lot of the “anticipated” games in the series, this one actually delivers – and delivers in spades.

Heh. Spades. Archaeology. You get it. Moving on!

TMB is an interesting game that plays double duty with its literary significance; in other words, it’s one of the few games to have both a definite theme and a definite mission statement, and to have the two be entirely separate from each other. We’ll discuss the theme below, so this introduction is mostly going to be talking about the game’s mission statement — in other words, the main topic of the game, versus the theme it revolves around.

If it sounds like I’m splitting analytic hairs there, it’s because I am. But hey, ‘splitting analytic hairs’ could be the mission statement of this meta series.

Both this game and the title of the meta are about the dead — and more specifically, the weight that the dead have on the events of the game and people in the game themselves. Abdullah (archaeologist and artifact smuggler), Nancy (death of her mother; interest in ancient civilizations), and Jamila (mother; her lineage) are the big, obvious ones who are living under the weight of the dead, but they’re not the only ones.

Lily’s future is “dead” in a number of ways: her academic dishonesty, her position as an archaeology student, and her interest in dinosaurs. Jon’s position as the head of the dig isn’t his only tie to the dead — he also spends most of the game in a hospital after a brush with death itself. Dylan even gets in on it with his false IDs; not only could those be referred to as “dead” identities — they were never alive to begin with — but someone with that many identities could easily have their original said to be dead, buried under the weight of compounding lies.

The weight of the dead extends beyond even our characters and their backstory and motivations, however. The game takes place in what can easily be called a “dead zone”. Nancy’s odd ability to have perfect cell service aside, the camp for the vast majority of the game is in a secret place where neither people nor supplies can get to them, and they even run out of water, which will kill you quicker than anything in the desert.

The most concrete representation of the weight of the dead in TMB is the curse. Thought to be lethal for a lifetime after entering an ancient tomb, curses are little more than superstitions backed up by ‘mysterious’ deaths (usually due to ingesting bacteria within the tomb), but the curse in the first chamber that Nancy opens does press down on the game, with accidents and unfortunate or suspicious things happening one after another after the seal is broken.

Of course, it’s not the unquiet spirit of a dead queen causing the mischief and mayhem, but she is the reason that our cast is gathered in Egypt, and Nefertari’s presence — or lack thereof, due to the erasure of her by history and by those who followed after her — is, in effect, the curse itself. If it wasn’t for her presence, the mystery surrounding her, and the disappeared team of archaeologists decades prior, no one would be at the tomb in the modern day.

But she is there, like a magnet for those with ulterior motives, and she’s there to pull our cast tighter and tighter into her own personal land of the dead. “She’ll never let you leave”, indeed.

The last thing I want to touch on is the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Supermystery that very, very loosely forms the basis of this game: Secrets of the Nile. A well-known Supermystery for the fake marriage plot (the Hardy Boys and Nancy and Bess) and for the Frank/Nancy kiss on the balcony before they are like “oh yeah we’re dating different people huh”. The game doesn’t take much from the book other than the location and a financial motive for crime, but it’s interesting that they chose this book when very little was kept at all.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the pieces that make up this game, shall we?

The Title:

Tomb of the Lost Queen is a classic-feeling title for a Nancy Drew mystery, and accomplishes a few obvious things right off the bat. It first establishes that this is a game about the dead — as said above — and the presence that the dead have in the world of the living. Second, it gives us our location — “Tomb of the Lost Queen” immediately brings Egypt and its many royal tombs to mind — and the focus of the mystery that we’ll be solving.

And if that were all the title could mean, I’d say it’s a solid title – better than Secrets of the Nile, by any metric — but the title’s work isn’t quite done with that.

The last question that the title asks is who is the Lost Queen? We learn about Nefertari fairly quickly in the game and her history definitely qualifies her as a lost queen, but, in my opinion, there’s another candidate that the game title references: Jamila’s mother.

She was a woman of a royal bloodline, disappearing under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind only a trace that her presence ever existed in a tomb buried in the sand — if ever there was a story that would qualify you as a lost queen, it would be hers.

The Mystery:

Job shadowing archaeologist Jon Boyle (and once again showing off her interest in archaeology and ancient civilizations), Nancy is just settling in to the Kingston University dig site when a massive sandstorm hits camp — and someone attacks Jon, sending him to the hospital, whipping up talk of a curse that ended this expedition 60 years earlier, and scaring off much of the excavation crew.

Left behind when the dust finally settles are archaeologist Abdullah Bakhoum, PhD student Lily Crewe, and Nancy herself — and none of our three characters are interested in leaving, despite the shadow of a curse hanging over their work, and the ever-present feeling that the desert does not want them there.

They aren’t alone for too long, however; after Nancy discovers a secret room and hidden sarcophagus, the friendly yet secretive tour guide Dylan Carter and the alien aficionado Jamila El-Dine both show up (despite the dig being a closed and secret location), and it becomes clear that, whatever their own personal agendas might be, no one is at this location for scientific discovery.

The hunt is on to find out why everyone has congregated at this site, who hurt Jon and is causing incidents all over camp, and — most importantly — what exactly the tomb of the lost queen is truly hiding…

As a mystery, TMB holds plenty of turns and side plots worthy of a much longer game than it is, and as a result feels quite packed with story. Not only do you have the story of Ramses II and his Queen, but you have the story of Jamila and the Daughters of Nefertari, the black market scheme, Dylan’s past, and the storyline revolving around who hurt Jon.

Add to all of that Hotchkiss and Bess’ asides that give new meaning and perspective to the events in the mystery, and you have a solid, character-driven mystery that drives its suspense not from being a whodunnit — that’s not really a question through the whole game, as we know from the beginning that Abdullah is up to some shady crap — but from putting characters in a stressful situation and seeing what they’ll do.

The Theme:

TMB is interesting for many, many reasons — most of which will be detailed in this meta — but I think the most interesting thing about it is its theme. At its core, TMB is a game about fear — fear of death, fear of failure, fear of obscurity, fear of abandonment, fear of ignorance — and how this fear preys on people, but also how fear is a pathway to knowledge. As is nearly always the case with Nancy Drew games, it’s our villain who gives us the theme:

“For thousands of years, the lion spoke and no one understood. But understand the fear and you understand the man.”

This sentiment is added to a little further on in the game:

“When people feel like they can get away with anything, they change.”

In other words, it’s fear that defines who people are and what they do. Understand that fear, and you’ll understand the person. Remove that fear, and a person necessarily changes, because they’re not defined by that fear anymore.

This theme plays out through our main characters. Dylan’s fear is a fear of discovery — of being discovered by Nancy that he’s there to try to join the black market. When that fear is removed — or rather, superseded — by the fear of death after being a human paddle in a boulder pinball game, he’s able to be understood for who he really is — a bit of a con man, but not there to hurt or kill anyone.

Lily’s fear at first seems to be of the curse, but the curse really is just a stand-in for her true fear: the fear of repercussions for her actions. Once the fear is understood, it’s easy to see that she’s helping Abdullah in his black-market scheme by trying to injure — sometimes fatally — those who would stand in their way.

Jamila is a character tightly wrapped up — in every way — which illustrates her fear of exposure. When that fear is understood, it’s obvious that she’s hiding things about herself, which leads us to the Daughters of Nefertari plotline, and the discovery of just how bloody the tomb’s — and the queen’s — history is.

Last of the suspects is Abdullah, who fears a lack of notoriety — obscurity, basically — which parallels him to Nefertari nicely, who became obscure due to the actions of others and the passage of time. Once that fear is understood, it’s easy to understand who Abdullah is and why he does what he does — fakes finding artifacts, sells things on the black market, and constantly puffs himself up in conversation.

Because this game is centered around fear, let’s look quickly at how that fear affects Nancy. Sure, the fear of others causes them to try to damage her in one way or another, but Nancy tends to be somewhat fearless in her mystery solving. Her talk with Bess — more on that below — does expose one fear: ignorance.

When you’re in a situation where knowledge keeps you alive, which Nancy often is, it’s easy to say that fear of ignorance is simply the fear of bad things happening to you. But Nancy’s is a bit deeper than that; she defines herself as a curious person, and gets frustrated when things are purposely hidden from her. Nancy fears not knowing things, pure and simple, and it’s due to that fear that she puts herself in danger again and again to ferret out the truth.

The Suspects:

Our first suspect is the venerable and totally guilty Abdullah Bakhoum himself, preeminent archaeologist, egotist, and black market crook. A sort of dark shadow of Alejandro in SSH, Abdullah doesn’t think much about the taking of Egypt’s treasures to different countries’ museums, and is determined that if anyone is going to make money off of history, it’s going to be him.

As our preeminent Bad Guy, Abdullah is the rather obvious choice — which would be a problem if this mystery was concerned with hiding his presence in it, rather than building off of it. As it is, however, his presence strengthens the mystery, allowing for not only a focus for Nancy’s suspicions, but also a source of tension in the tomb, making it feel dangerous even when Nancy is simply exploring.

Of note is Abdullah’s decision when arrested at the end of the game to take the blame for everything that happened, eschewing Lily’s involvement completely. I’m of the opinion that it had to be Lily that attacked Jon — she was already above ground, he wouldn’t have been on his guard being around her, there were plenty of heavy things in the tent to hit him with — but Abdullah doesn’t try to reduce his sentence by offering information or implicating her in anything.

It’s a wonderful character moment that shows us what these later games really are capable of — villains with complex and consistent characterization. Abdullah is an egotist, a narcissist, and a smuggler, yes, but he has his own personal code of conduct, and ends the game not on the note of having tried to kill everyone, but on a singular note of mercy to a fellow student of history.

Next on the docket is Lily Crewe. Originally a paleontology student, she switched majors and ended up on the site by Abdullah’s request — a strange happenstance, considering the strong allegations of cheating on her record. Of course, that record is exactly the reason that Abdullah asked for her to be on the dig, as he needed help smuggling artifacts off-site.

As one half (possibly one third, depending on how culpable you think she truly is) of our Bad Guy Team, Lily is at once more sympathetic and less laudable than Abdullah. Having cheated — and been caught — she obviously was Abdullah’s best bet for a partner that wouldn’t betray him, as he was her chance at shoring up her rocky academic record.

However, a person of stronger moral fiber — or who appreciated her second chance — would have exposed Abdullah as soon as she had evidence in order to show her commitment going forward to honesty, so one can’t be too sympathetic. It’s worth noting that after Abdullah’s arrest (and sacrifice on her behalf), Lily goes back into paleontology. One can only hope dinosaurs have fewer opportunities for graft, and that she’s learned something from the tomb.

The next to show up is Dylan Carter, a man of many names (though only one handsome face) who moonlights as a tour guide. He also would really, really like to be part of Abdullah’s smuggling operation, but other than that, he’s really here for a good time.

And to be crushed by rocks.

As a culprit, Dylan would have been a little bit of a cheat, seeing as he wasn’t there from the beginning — though a reveal of him being the culprit would have necessitated showing that Dylan had been there the whole time, hiding in plain sight as part of the dig crew or something. While that would have been a cool reveal, it ultimately wouldn’t have accomplished the thematic goals of the game, and so is better left undone.

Last on our list of suspects is Jamila El-Dine, visiting the tomb under the guise of being a bat-crap-crazy Follower of the Annunaki — the alien race that supposedly built the pyramids, among other things — but who is actually a member of a secret society called the Daughters of Nefertari, dedicated to finding Nefertari (as they are her direct descendants); each daughter must search for her until she is found.

I will point out, reservedly, that Jamila definitely should not have been searching until she had a daughter of her own, in case she died the way her mother did, but I digress. It does point to Jamila being more of a firebrand (and more doggedly determined to end the search) than those before her, so kudos for that.

Like Dylan, Jamila as the culprit would have been a cheat, given her entrance into the game a good portion of the way through the mystery, but it also would have defeated the purpose of having Jamila in the story, which is to be a foil to Nancy.

Jamila is bound by the fate of her mother (and her mother’s mother, and on and on), who died under mysterious circumstances thought to be a car accident, but later revealed to be due to her performing dangerous work. Jamila thus journeys out to the world to find out exactly what happened and is tasked with doing what her mother had been doing at the time of her death, feeling the responsibility to prevent further deaths by completing her mother’s work. In order to do this, she pretends to be someone she’s not, uses those around her, and ultimately has to trust in a shady man with facial hair and a girl who frequently goes undercover for her job, fighting against a skinny man involved in a larger scheme with a heightened sense of his own importance.

Oops, should I have warned for SPY spoilers there?

Yeah, Jamila is basically playing out a future of Nancy’s (and one that happens, albeit with important differences, in SPY), and foils her in her sense of responsibility and curiosity about what happened to her mother, and in finishing the job she set out to do. While Nancy doesn’t immediately understand this, Bess does, and calls her out on it:

“That’s sort of like you…after your mom…I mean, I always thought it was your mom — the way she died — that made you so interested in mysteries.”

Nancy responds with “I guess I never thought of it that way,” and it’s clear the idea has knocked her off balance, because, importantly, Jamila exposes a characteristic of that becomes important in this and the next game: she’s not what we’d call self-aware.

And that leads into us talking about Nancy Drew as a character in this game. Pursuing one of her interests by job shadowing a professional, Nancy is thrown into a world that she’s far more comfortable in — that of solving mysteries without direct supervision — when Jon is attacked and sent to the hospital. From there, she goes on a rapid pace to figure out who the other people at the dig really are, and in so doing discovers a bit about herself.

Like a Lifetime movie, except without the Big Misunderstanding and the secret lost will of a dead parent.

Like I stated above, what this game really does to show us who Nancy is (besides showing us her reaction to someone exactly like her) is to show us her lack of self-awareness. Nancy spends so much time trying to figure out the motives and secrets of others that she doesn’t really spend any time soul-searching or figuring out how she, in particular, reacts to the world around her

Well, prior to the beginning of the Nancy games, she doesn’t. But she’s in for a whole lot more of that in the next few games as we unwrap (heh) more of her foils. As it is, Nancy herself tells us who she thinks she is in this game:

“I’m a curious person. I find that tact often gets in the way of truly getting to know someone.”

Joining us on the “Nancy Side” of characters are one new character and two familiar faces.

Jon Boyle is the leader of Kingston University’s dig site, and definitely the person that you want to get out of the way if you’re up to shenanigans. He’s basically in the game to give some dirt on Lily and Abdullah, and to save the day at the very end by (as is his job) taking care of those he’s in charge of.

Just, you know, more physically than academically.

While she was a playable, seen character in the last game, it’s here in TMB that Bess Marvin gets a little more characterization and becomes more fully fleshed out. As Nancy’s lifeline to River Heights and normalcy, Bess is here to watch pulpy Egyptian horror movies and to drop some stone-cold truths onto Nancy.

Bess is wonderful in this game, full stop. Not only does she expose a few of Nancy’s character traits to the clueless girl detective – the whole mom thing, Nancy’s tendency to keep everyone in the dark but to get frustrated when she’s kept in the dark herself — but she also helps to show the difference between what the River Heights crew finds fulfilling — relaxing, internships, etc. — and what Nancy finds fulfilling — dangerous tombs hiding mysteries in the desert.

Last of all is Professor Beatrice Hotchkiss, academic extraordinaire and expert on lost and maligned queens — and heaven knows, Nefertari fits both qualifications. Hotchkiss is here for more reason than just to light up my life, however; she’s here to help Nancy understand the traps within the tomb and figure out exactly what — and who — she’s dealing with in the ancient past.

Hotchkiss is a proper choice here, and I probably would have been disappointed had she not shown up. She’s the perfect mix of spacey academic and, well, brilliant academic, and though Nancy isn’t too fond of her, she’s probably my favorite reoccurring phone friend outside of the Hardy Boys.

The Favorite:

There’s a lot to love with TMB, so let’s jump right in.

First off, my favorite puzzle(s) have got to be the word puzzles for unscrambling the special hieroglyphics. Longtime followers of this meta series (or those who read my ASH meta) know that my favorite thing in a Nancy Drew game is always the word puzzle, and these are so much fun that it’d be impossible for them not to be my favorite puzzle.

My favorite moment in the game is probably the finding of Jamila’s mom’s journal pages, culminating in the line “she’ll never let you leave”. Like I’ve said above, so much of this game is about the weight of the dead and the effect they have on the living, and Jamila’s mom weighs heaviest of all as our intensely personal, recent stake in finding Nefertari.

I’ve said before (in a previous meta about my favorite surprising moments in the ND games) that there’s shades of Kate’s last correspondences in Jamila’s mother’s journal, and those shades are never so present as they are here.

There’s not really another place to put it, so I’m gonna put a shout-out to the cover of the DVD case here. It’s really well-designed and captures the feeling of the game without being overly spoilery, so massive kudos to the developers and designers for it.

The last thing I note here (though I could go on and on about the small details in this game that make it great) is the feeling of continued exploration. In a lot — I’d say most, honestly — of Nancy Drew games, once you explore everywhere, there’s really nowhere left to go other than sometimes a new location at the end of the game while chasing down the villain. Here, the game is continually expanding through the new tunnels and passages in the tomb. It makes it really feel like this a real location you could explore, and not just a few screens limited for time, space, and design restrictions, and it’s wonderful.

On the less wonderful side, however…

The Un-Favorite:

The biggest problem I have with TMB is that the first fourth of it — pretty much until Nancy finds the first sarcophagus — is fairly unintuitive. Even replaying it multiple times doesn’t make it any easier to remember what I have to do and when I can do it, and playing it through the first time results in not a few times where you stare at the screen, wondering what it is you’re supposed to be doing. This is a rare problem in Nancy Drew games, but it’s fairly present through the first part of the game here, and that is a problem.

My least favorite puzzle is probably the lifting-the-rocks-off-Dylan puzzle, if only because it always takes me five or six tries to do it. It always feels like a sort of trial-and-error sort of thing, which (excepting its place in logic puzzles) isn’t really my personal favorite. It’s not that I think it’s a bad puzzle, it’s just my least favorite in the game.

My least favorite moment in the game is more of a meta moment, but it’s when Nancy asks for “a few tips” for translating hieroglyphics, and Abdullah mocks her a bit, saying that oh, yes, at first he was also confused, but then he learned a few tips. It would be a great moment in the game — and in the story itself, it is — if it wasn’t, well, immediately contradicted by the nature of the hieroglyphics puzzles. Like I said above, the unscrambling of the hieroglyphics puzzles are my favorite in the whole game, and I love them to death, but in a meta sense, this moment does stick out in a “you can’t say it’s stupid and then include it as if just saying it’s stupid makes it okay for you to do” sort of way.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Tomb of the Lost Queen?

The big thing that needs help in TMB is to make the beginning more intuitive. Whether this should be done by Jon giving Nancy a set of tasks to complete, having a checklist of what needs to be done that day (even if it’s vague), or some other method, there definitely needs to be a little more direction in the first part of the game.

I’m not saying that the game should hold the player’s hand — especially considering that the average age of the fanbase is well above the age 10+ marker — but a Nancy Drew game should always have something to do at the start, rather than wandering around to explore a place that Nancy has ostensibly already been for a bit.

With that change in mind, there’s really honestly nothing else that I would fix. TMB is a game devoted to the idea that the dead are ever present in life, especially for those who have lost people, and it really accomplishes delivering that idea through a myriad of characters, scenes, and clues that Nancy finds along the way. It also goes a long way in developing Nancy more as a character, and — perhaps most importantly — begins the task of setting the groundwork for a truly Nancy-centric story in SPY.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #clue crew #tomb of the lost queen #nancy drew meta #video games #my meta #TMB

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pochapal · 3 years

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I hate doctor 11 but ive never been able to explain why in like words lmao. He feels like such a mary sue character imo and like theres something about his characterisation that was always just really ineffective (like the stuff about fishfingers and custard or whatever it was). Imo i'd love to hear you give top 5 worst things about the 11 era because i rlly just love when it gets torn apart

i hold nothing but a seething contempt and loathing for that man. every time he appeared on screen i felt ready to snap like a riled up chimpanzee in my enclosure. i am frothing at the mouth and overcome with a desire to start flinging heavy objects. this might be incoherent and inconsistent but i started this rewatch in feb 2020 and only finished this week so i got through 11′s episodes last august/september time and i refuse to revisit it to jog my memory or fact check anything i’m saying here because this man does not deserve the space in my mind for that.

the first thing is i can’t fucking STAND the quirky whimsy timey wimey bit he has going on all of the time. i can’t even say this is because this is a kids show and i was a teen and then adult when i first properly watched him but actually!! when i was eleven years old i’d sleep over at a friend’s house most weekends and it always coincided with the airing of a new season 5 episode and i remember we watched the finale with the dumb time hopping to get out of the box prison that was never explained and didn’t make sense and i thought at the time “this is really stupid”. and before that my only other doctor who exposure was watching the david tennant christmas specials with another friend and throughout childhood my only opinion on doctor who was “this is a tv show that is not for me but is one that all the boys i am friends with like so i will put up with it to maintain our friendships” but at least those episodes were both suspenseful and engaging enough to keep me watching all the way through. like who the fuck does an end of the world sci fi plot and approaches it with an “oopsy woopsy i am a funny little alien man who is going to stop you all by making you do a hecking silly” like it’s unneeded and self-parodies an already cheesy show to the point where it becomes unwatchable and makes it impossible to ever take this man seriously.

next thing that downright sucks ass so badly is the stupid fucking overwritten constantly escalating plotlines. like everything from season 5 up until his regeneration at the end of season 7 is meant to be this grand interconnected cosmic plot about how...the doctor trying to bring back his planet will end the universe or something so all the top powers across all of reality tried again and again to stop him from doing that except he doesn’t know what’s going on so he keeps thwarting these people who supposedly mean good?? i mean i sure don’t fucking know what they were trying to say!! like for some reason we never get the doctor suddenly becomes this superdemon that threatens everything so these people (whoever they are) decide to, in sequence: suck him through a time rift to erase him from existence, trap him in a prison and remake a universe without him, take his companion’s baby and turn her into a perfectly trained doctor killer, form two(!!) secret societies to hunt him throughout history that are only stopped by his companion splintering herself across his personal timeline to protect him, and repeatedly cause reality collapsing events because it’s a kinder outcome for the universe than what he will do. this grand and terrible event turns out to be...he spends a few hundred years chilling by a rift that leads to his home planet and protects a few generations of children from monsters which convinces them to give him infinite regeneration power then fuck off back to their pocket universe. and it’s like!! what is the point of anything that happens in this man’s era when everything is always “the darkest moment” or whatever the fuck!! i don’t care!! we never get a compelling reason to believe this bumbling clown of a man could ever be a universal threat!! the whole thing is so dumb i hate it!!!

thing number three i hate is how the eleventh doctor is ALSO characterised as this abrasive egotistic male supergenius to the point where he becomes genuinely indistinguishable from bbc sherlock. genuinely who enjoyed seeing this guy constantly tell people their tiny human minds can’t comprehend what he’s doing and then basically just wave his magic wand to solve whatever problem each episode is facing. 2012 is the year of human sin because this fucking shitsmear character archetype somehow became both a redditor role model AND a tumblr sexyman and it’s like!! nobody is enjoying this stop making this seem cool! him saying timey wimey thing any time he does anything is frustrating and dumb and locks the viewer out of giving a fuck about anything that is happening! smartest man in the room syndrome is a disease and the eleventh doctor is terminal with it. like remember how they established river as an accomplished scientist (when she wasn’t being a child soldier or a time paradox or whatever the fuck) and every time that came up mr doctor eleven man was like “oh this thing is obvious because i’m a genius and you didn’t realise because your brain is tiny so get out of the way and let the grownups think” or that time it turned out amy had been replaced with a slime clone for half the season and the doctor chewed rory (audience surrogate) out for somehow not realising this fact we didn’t know right from the start and like. this served no purpose other than to draw into severe question why the doctor is also this super beloved magical figure implicitly trusted by all children everywhere like. mr steven moffat is totally allergic to writing and solving mysteries in his tv show and fuck you for wanting to figure things out as you go along based on the new evidence you uncover at strategic plot intervals just let this asshole man use magical thinking to reveal he knew the answer all along and you’re a fucking idiot for not also realising this thing which had no basis or precedent anywhere else in the show.

speaking of dumb things let us not forget the absolute shitshow that was minority representation in this era. i’m not even talking about the low hanging fruit of how genuinely unironically sexist amy and clara were written where each episode moffat either seemed to loathe them or was incredibly horny over them and they had no character growth or arc or fucking anything. i’m talking about how fucking shit terrible the incidental representation was. god remember how every single fucking gay person who appeared in this era was written as one incredibly fucking stupid joke and how the women were all either sexy dominatrix, feeble girl in love, or Mother (or all three in some really terrible cases) and i’m not qualified to talk about this but also how incredibly white this era was and how on two separate occasions we had monarchs reimagined as sexy girlbosses with a gun played by black women who the doctor leched over. nothing about any of this was good ESPECIALLY coming off the back of rtd who was surprisingly forward thinking for 2005 and did a really good job of positing travel with the doctor as queer allegory. in comparison moffat gave us THE MOST heterosexual shlock i’ve ever had to endure. amy and rory could have been interesting characters were they not hemmed into this domestic bickering young straight married couple bullshit that was in no way changed or altered by traveling with the doctor except for the quasi incestuous river song reveal that was dumb and bad and stupid.

the last major mega gripe i have with the series is moffat’s fucking jingoistic boner for british military aesthetics. this carried over throughout his entire tenure as showrunner but was super terrible vomit inducing in eleven’s era. the unironic admiration for ww2 britain and winston churchill is downright wretched. are you incapable of telling a second world war story outside of churchill’s london and plucky blitz fighters. shit gives me hives so badly. and then!!! that weird church owned army that features in the future that end up being bad not for the concept of what basically amounts to an imperialistic intergalactic rendition of the fucking crusades but because they’re part of the nonsense go nowhere puzzlebox narrative that says the doctor is a not good man who will do bad things to the universe :(. remember how rtd’s doctor was a freshly traumatised man hot off the war criminal press who time and time again vehemently refuses to engage in military violence, but who tragically inadvertently turns every one of his companions into soldiers in his own personal army, and he has this moment of complete horror at the realisation and it is this which causes the downward spiral that ends in 10′s regeneration. and then how there’s this cringe line about how there’s a force of people who are “the doctor’s army, always ready to fight his battles when he’s not around” or some shit and then it turns out this is actually massive literal military operation and we’re meant to celebrate this. fuck off.

bonus round because this needs to be said but i have never hated anything like i hated that fucking human tardis episode. everything about it induced violent anger in me from the sickening overindulgence of that softgoth dark whimsy helena bonham carter tim burton aesthetic to the bafflingly terrible evil carny stereotype of those junk scavengers to the overblown sudden tragic shipbait romance of human tardis and the doctor. every word out of her mouth was trite shit and the fact that the death of her body was presented as this super emotional dramatic scene despite there being no buy in or incentive to care and the fact that every single person on tumblr in 2012 ate that shit up like it was fucking gourmet. i loathe every single thing about that episode so much.

#Anonymous #hi bestie here's 1500 words of me getting mad about the worst television experience i had in my life #why the FUCK was this man tumblr's favourite back in the day. what the fuck did anyone see in any of this shit #i never want to think about dr whom ever again

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ayankun · 3 years

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WandaVision episode 6

FIRST OFF

Whenever I go back to pause things for clues, and find exactly what I’m looking for, I don’t feel justified, I feel that much more insane:

It’s really hard to make out, but I had an alright look at it on my folks’ QLED, and it’s definitely a flying saucer doing an alien abduction on what looks to be a person inside an old CRT TV (with some kind of robot head/boombox on top???) There are secret aliens in this show, you guys, the facts don’t lie.

HmmmMMMM I wonder if Agnes is as innocent as she looks:

Also, I didn’t see that she was wearing the brooch in this ep, and I was majorly disappointed in that.

Two things here:

No, that’s not a twins joke.

Another Moonmen Confirmed

I know green is his color or whatever, but that hat is literally 10 years ahead of its time

Also, I took the playing-DDR-at-home scenario at face value, and only on the first rewatch did I realize it was a very pointed turn-of-the-century reference. I am an Old.

There’s a good, subtle Rule of Threes in this ep. The Setup:

The Sokovian Halloween flashback works on so many levels. It’s so funny:

The fact that they went trick-or-treating at all

The “speaking Sokovian”

The treat being a fish

They have to share the fish

The concept that this event gave them an infectious disease

“You probably suppressed a lot of the trauma” -- it’s a good sitcom joke but. the trauma is the joke. The joke IS THE TRAUMA!!!

Elizabeth Olson is a dream with all her wonderful faces she has this ep.

Vision’s unsettling passive-aggression-sitcom-cooperation whiplash is WOW, consider me unsettled!!!!!! “Be. Good.” UGH.

(Just noticed one here, but there are a number of continuity errors in this episode, enough to be distracting later on, and is this a deliberate choice? Please let it be deliberate. I didn’t watch a whole lot of Malcolm in the Middle, is it known for its continuity errors?

)

“It’s their first Halloween.” LOLOLOL they are TEN YEARS OLD and this is their FIRST halloween I LOVE IT

DOUBLE RED HERRING CONFIRRRRRRRRMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Agent Jimmy Woo accidentally identifying himself as the sassy best friend added 20 years to my life.

Found. FOUND. Not “created,” “manifested,” “willed into being using my insane witch powers.” Third Party Confirmed.

I like that it’s the 90s and we can swear on TV now. “Hell” “kick-ass” “damn it” “fu---dge”

I think the most biting part of Vision finding the whacked out folks is that the soundtrack just kind of ... ignores that anything’s wrong. Yeah, it’s kinda-spooky Halloween music, but it’s still 100% in-world kinda-spooky-sitcom-Halloween-episode music.

OKAY LET’S TALK ABOUT THE AD:

As a 90s child, let me tell you, this is a blisteringly accurate representation of children’s marketing from the period. The shark is wearing sunglasses AND he has a surfboard!!! And he’s selling you yogurt of all things!!!!! This is the supreme distillation of what being a child in the 90s was like.

How disappointed I am that they went with crab instead of lobster.

Heard it through the grapevine that this is a representative of Wanda’s imprisonment on the Raft. That happened in Civil War, right? So the next ad is The Snap? We’re running out of iconic decades, too. so, hold on, new thought.

90s: Civil War

00s: Infinity War

10s?????: Endgame???? or?????????

??: Whatever happened between Endgame and WandaVision, given that the ads are stepping forward through Wanda’s IRL life events!!

I don’t want to know how many episodes are planned/announced, but I don’t know what to expect from the format after they run out of decades from which to draw. Maybe there are only one or possibly two “sitcom” episodes left. Maybe after that it just breaks down and they can pick and choose from the worlds/styles we’ve already established. That’d be p neat. A very unique kind of chaos.

god she’s so cute

Okay, somebody explain to me Pietro. I honestly walked away from last week thinking he was just some townsperson chump, but then I was reminded that this is the Quicksilver actor from all those X-Mans movies I never watched, soooo people are saying Multiverse Confirmed? But, if this is X-Mans’ Pietro, then why did he die the same as MCU Pietro? Or is he literally MCU!Pietro’s corpse, given that he looked all dead same as when she saw Vision’s corpse? If MCU!Pietro, then why different face???

????????????????

Also I found him highly suspicious, what with all the questions he was asking. But the only sort of person who would truly want to know the answers to those questions would be someone who already had them ... so I think he was just asking on behalf of the audience, and the delivery was all wonked out.

Rule of Threes - The Reference:

Ok, real talk, whenever computers/networks/data/encryption/servers/mainframes et al come up in mainstream media, I just look away. I don’t need the kind of psychic damage that comes with such egregious mishandling of the topic.

That being said, does Hayward having eyes through the barrier mean that he could possibly be involved in getting it set up? Because look. If Hayward-after-Hayward’s-Villianous-Ends is one antagonizing force, then is there really room for the Third Party (Confirmed) antagonizing force that’s lurking in the negative space silhouette of the Inciting Incident? With Wanda as the Red Herring antagonizing force, that’s just. There’s just too many villains, alright? We gotta start merging these plotlines.

(then again, when I just said “eyes” I realize probably understanding the true nature of his new secret “CATARACT” project will clear a lot of things up. I’ll wait for enlightenment)

Agnes’ license plate in this episode is 0A1-B2C, which I think is a reference to the way reality is getting pared down to bare bones at the edge of town. Note that this is not the same license plate number as seen last ep.

ALSO, I drove home behind a NJ plate just an hour ago, and was staring at it for a long time, trying to fit it into the puzzle before A) realizing that this was Real Life and not part of the show and B) WTF is a NJ plate doing in front of me in California. In any case, I can confirm that NJ plates do not appear to have this number-letter repeating format.

So let’s talk Agnes.

Demonstrated knowledge of the situation in ways others haven’t (”There’s the star of the show” “kids, you can’t control ‘em”)

Shows up when needed most (explained as being Wanda’s doing, but is it)

When Wanda was having her babies, though, who was trustworthy enough to be summoned? Was it Agnes?

Wanted to babysit REAL BAD

Was in the opening credits framed possessively with the twins

Doesn’t appear to have an IRL identity according to Jimmy’s crime board

Keeps talking about her husband but we’ve never seen him. Highly unlikely that he’s real

Was the one to find Sparky “dead” - internet thinks she was lying to Wanda about how or possibly if he was dead (I’m trying not to read the theories, so idk exactly what the angle is there)

In an episode where everyone is wearing their original comic outfits, Agnes is dressed as (and laughs like!) a witch

She name-drops Wanda as the one controlling everyone; Norm (or the guy playing Norm) only said “she” and “her” -- meaning Agnes?

Naughty

So we’re 99% sure Agnes is Agatha Harkness, right? I never read no comics, so I’m taking the internet’s word for it, but from what I can tell, I think we must be right. If that’s the case, then I’m thinking it’s not impossible for her to be pulling some strings around here (giving Wanda a justification for her “that wasn’t me” doorbell ring, for example, and pulling a double red herring on the fact that she shows up whenever the narrative Wanda her nefarious scheme calls for it).

To devil’s advocate myself, though, we also have Monica’s word that it was Wanda in her mind, lessening the impact of Agnes falsely confirming what Norm only implied. Also she’d have to be acting for Vision’s sake (and ours) and, if so, then what did Vision’s brain-touch really do, and how did she know he’d find her there, and what did she intend as the result of that interaction etc etc.

If Wanda’s (or Wanda + Third Party Confirmed (Agnes??)’s) powers aren’t enough to sustain the simulation of life on the edges of town, how much worse is it going to be now that there is even more area to try to control???

I don’t know if this is strictly an intended read, but the idea of Halloween as a fun, scares-for-entertainment’s sake type holiday, the rounding off the edges of concepts like “skeletons and ghosts are what people are after they die, let’s decorate the town with them and have a good time” kind of is a haunting parallel to the nature of Wanda (et al) covering up the horrible truth of the situation with this happy-go-lucky sitcom glamour.

How much does one hate seeing Vision giving his life for the greater good (the greater good) for the second time? In other news, I think I’m seeing some specifically Mind Stone type energy-colors coming off of him, and very little Wanda type energy-colors. Third Party Confirmed.

Also, I was thinking from last week that perhaps Hayward’s Villainous Ends included capturing the reanimated Vision to be one of those Sentient Weapons his organization is all about, but I Do Not Think his reaction to seeing that sought-after prize disintegrate in front of his eyes really matches up with that theory. Again, will be patiently waiting for Jimmy to check his email to see what CATARACT is all about!

Rule of Threes - The Payoff:

Also, anyone ID the movie playing in the background?

Ok, final thought. I watched this about four times today, and on the big-ass TV at my parents’ house finally paused and got up close to see what that white shape is in the reflection. Thought it might be a skull, but, it’s worse.

These caps do not contain enough data to verify my claim, but I PROMISE YOU it’s a TV

A square old thing with a round screen and antenna on top.

I SWEAR to you, when I looked into the TV, into Wanda’s eyes, only to see the reflection of a TV, of her looking at me looking at her I had a visceral fear reaction. Like. LEGIT nauseous skin crawl.

(All the other episodes have ended with our POV as the fourth wall, from the general (or exact!!!) position their household TV is known to be.)

This is my favorite show Of All Time.

#WandaVision #1x06 #All-New Halloween Spooktacular!

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dgcatanisiri · 4 years

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This is too long for me to be comfortable to put out without a cut, but dear god, did I need to rant and ramble on this subject...

I always feel awkward when I want to complain about how video games portray and fandom reacts to queer men, because I feel like the conversation (at least here on Tumblr) gets focused on the female protagonists - you know, the Commander Shepard or Alexios/Kassandra debates and that sort. The things where there’s valid comments to make about how important these female protagonists are, especially in an industry that is deeply misogynistic, and, in the case of the Assassin’s Creed protagonists, keep being developed with an eye towards the female-only protagonists, only to have a male protagonist shoved alongside them, if not upstaging entirely (such as Jacob being the center of Syndicate’s marketing, or how Bayek was originally going to die and Aya be the central protagonist of Origins, or the creation of Alexios and probably male Eivor on the basis of “women protagonists don’t sell.”)...

BUT, when I want to talk about my perspective as a gay man, as wanting to play these games for that empowerment, get to enjoy these games for representing me as a gay man, because Shepard, Ryder, Alexios, etc. get to be played as such, that having these male characters who are able to be played as attracted to other men means something to me, and that leads me to not just play the male characters, but prefer them to the female characters, or even to talk about the subject of homophobia in both the games themselves and the fandoms surrounding them... I do feel like there’s this pressure to just effectively shut up and stay quiet and let the women have their empowerment, that the moment needs to be theirs, not mine, that “fandom” (meaning the monolithic entity that is ‘the fandom’ and not necessarily any singular individual who I’m referring to or anything) is pressuring for anyone who enjoys the male protagonists for whatever reason to be silent and let the women enjoy their win, even if there’s a win for underrepresented men in there as well, or even a need to address the problems of homophobia by not representing queer men. That in its way, it’s effectively saying that a win against the sexism against the industry is outweighing or more important than any win against the homophobia. (Or, since I brought up Shepard, racism, considering that Shepard, Ryder, any game with the character creator, can be different skin tones as well, but that’s outside my lane.)

Like, this isn’t a callout post or any kind of directed screed against anyone, just... I suppose it’s a cumulative effect, based on the fact that I remember what the internet in the corners I frequent was like when Odyssey dropped, focused very much (and understandably - let me be clear that I have no desire to step on anyone’s victory or enjoyment of these games here) on Kassandra, and it felt like the fact that I got to play a character I could portray as gay (don’t start me on the bloody DLC though...) was a victory celebration at a table set for one, while (to really stretch my metaphor) seeing this massive party happening across the dining room at the same time, and that (and again, I’m really straining my metaphor, I’m aware), if I wanted to join that party, they would not combine our celebrations, I would have to join in theirs, and, in my wanting to pay attention to my victory, getting laughed at for it. It’s one of those things that makes fandom feel a little alienating, because I don’t particularly have much of a place that feels like it’s a space for me to celebrate my victories, rare as they are, and on occasion, even end up with the impression that, so far as fandom at large cares, that victory I want to celebrate is somehow less important. That the importance of Alexios, playable as a gay man, meant less than Kassandra, period. And, with Valhalla and Cyberpunk’s release on the horizon, along with (maaaaaaybe?) a Mass Effect Trilogy remaster, I find myself bracing myself for this to start up all over again.

And I know some of this is based in the fact that Tumblr and the transformative elements of fandom in general are more of a space that is dominated by women in fandom, who are going to celebrate the wins for them. That’s just how things shake out, I understand that it’s as much the place I’m going for involvement and interaction with fandom at large as it is anything else. Just... I obviously don’t fit in to the areas of “straight male” fandom, and then getting to the places in the “marginalized” segments of the fandom, it still feels like I need to find my way over to the margins of the margins to feel like I have a place in fandom more generally.

Like, I understand that I have male privilege and that is a factor in things - the male characters are probably more likely to be the ones in the marketing, so I get to see that idealized image of myself individually all over the covers and posters and trailers. BUT that doesn’t remove the straight privilege of the people who are shutting down conversations about the importance of the male PCs being portrayed in M/M relationships, even starts going into the realm of casual homophobia - because no acknowledgement of how important it is for the portrayal of gay men, or bi men, IS homophobic. I mean, how often do these companies have their official accounts post images of the M/M pairings? I’ve seen BioWare account retweet FemShep/Garrus and FemShep/Kaidan things, on top of the MaleShep/Female LI pairings. I’ve even seen FemShep/Liara content, which... We could go into the way that F/F pairings get fetishized and tend to be there as either fodder for cishet male titillation or just because the female PC gets swapped in for the male PC (in the way of Peebee riding a non-existent dick in the FemRyder romance scene in Mass Effect Andromeda), I don’t mean to discount that being a thing, so queer women are getting a short stick too. But where’s the M/M relationships? Hell, remember the whole #MakeJaalBi thing? After we got that notice about the patch for his romance would come... Has any official Mass Effect account actually SHOWN content of BroRyder and Jaal?

I mean, remember the Citadel DLC? The appearances of Kaidan’s romance material included FemShep, and Cortez’s content included a split second shot of just him and Shepard holding hands, and since it was blink and you’ll miss it, that means that it doesn’t even make any effort to portray the M/M relationships. And since I brought up Jaal already, BioWare had to be publicly shamed into offering M/M relationships in equal amounts to the other pairings in Mass Effect Andromeda. Like, it’s bad that Peebee’s romance for FemRyder just had the model swapped in for BroRyder, sure. But at least that content was THERE, at release. For gay/bi men who wanted to romance male characters, we have to make sure that we get that patch downloaded (meaning if you play the game without an internet connection, you can’t get access to his romance) - and only because the outrage actually GOT a response, which is not necessarily the norm in this industry.

Hell, the disparity there actually GOT noticed - if you include Scout Harding as a romance, M/M romances are the lowest numerical romances in Dragon Age Inquisition as well, with only Dorian and Bull as options. And I didn’t even realize this until this past year, despite being disappointed in those two options. Even recognizing that Harding is more of a fling than a full romance, it’s still more than M/M romances had. The closest we got was being able to flirt with Cullen twice before he shuts it down (and the rants I’ve had on THAT subject...).

And that’s just the focus with BioWare - I saw it all through the initial release of Odyssey, while I know that the official metrics are all saying that Alexios saw more play than Kassandra, Kassandra got a lot of positive response in the fandom that was often framed in opposition to Alexios, that she was the “better” protagonist.

Like, I’m bolding this for emphasis, and so if anyone is TL;DRing this it’s eye-catching enough: My issue is the dismissal and denigration of the male PCs when building up the female PCs. It is not being against celebrating the female PCs. It’s just the way that people will, in their positivity towards a female PC, dismiss the audience who relates to and connects with the male PC. The way that I’ve seen since day one the common “joke” that male Shepard is unnecessary, condemning the voice acting, even asking why he’s there when female Shepard is “the real Shepard”.

It makes fandom a hostile place to be when you’re looking to that character as your representation, your inspiration. Yeah, it’s a joke, but when it is coming from all corners, or at least feels like it, all the time, the humor dies, and you’re left with just the words. The words telling you that this mirror for yourself is something that people don’t care about.

Again, it’s that feeling of already being on the margins and then being pushed further. You are the freak among the freaks.

But it feels like saying any of this, like I have, is opening the door to be dismissed as being sexist, or misogynistic, or lesbophobic, or anything like that, because people want to boil down what I’m saying to no more than “but what about MEN? Why aren’t you talking about MEN?” in that dismissive way that so many MRA trolls attempt to derail the conversation - except, no, I am TRYING to have a genuine conversation, about men who aren’t represented, men who need these male characters as much as women need the female ones - queer men get the short stick in a lot of cases, like this goes back to the representational matters in a lot of kids TV shows - while we can absolutely talk about the bad representation it was broadly, I remember when Voltron concluded, having Shiro, having arguably the lead male character of the show, end the show marrying and kissing another man... That was heavily ignored by Tumblr. Meanwhile Tumblr EXPLODED for Korra and Asami or Bubblegum and Marceline.

It’s seeing what is representation for me as a queer man being played down or ignored while the queer women are praised. And, again, I’m not trying to take anything away from queer women, or women in general, but... Where, exactly, am I supposed to look for that same empowerment? And, more importantly, when the same media offers the empowerment for both groups, like video games do, why does it seem almost expected that I as a queer man back off and allow this to just be for the women in general, when the whole point of a variable protagonist is that it allows that empowerment for EVERYONE?

I mean, I say it feels like “opening the door” to these comments because it has happened before, and likely will again. Because saying “this joke feels hostile to me, as a member of an underrepresented group, can we please not?” or speaking about my individual experiences and feelings - often even just in my own space, on my blog, frequently only tagged with my individual tags for organization in my space, rather than publicly shouting it through a megaphone by putting it in public tags, and somehow STILL getting attacked for these comments - is apparently all those things... That’s been the response I’ve gotten to saying things like this in the past.

And, in case I haven’t been clear with the repeated comments and the bolded statement above, it’s not about me, a man, trying to take away this thing for women. Rather, it’s me, a queer person - and fine, yes, a queer man - who wants to celebrate being seen, wants to celebrate what is still not a common thing of seeing myself in my media, and then feeling like I’m being shoved out of the way because other people celebrating their representation is considered more important, to hell with me and my mirrors.

Like, I’m not saying any of this is anything actively conscious or even intentionally malicious. It does seem like a reflexive defensive position - “men have tried to take this from us, so we’re not letting ANY man through.” I don’t want to come across as flippant or not aware of the fact that this isn’t a walk in the park for women. I get it, I really do. I’m just... It does feel like my struggles are something that I’m being told to downplay in the name of allowing others to have their celebration.

Thing is, my own experiences as a queer person already leave me feeling like I’m getting that as well - I mentioned before (and have elsewhere) that Dragon Age Inquisition’s M/M romances didn’t work for me. But I have often felt like I need to downplay the fact that I don’t emotionally connect to Dorian as a character - in the immediate aftermath of the game’s release, you could not say ANYTHING negative about him without getting shouted down as either a homophobe or dealing with internalized homophobia. Meanwhile, I’m here, pointing out that, hey, the previous games did not really have any direct homophobia, and the little bits that did lean in that direction felt more like the writers living in a homophobic society and not able to wholly divorce that in their writing than anything in-universe. To me, Thedas was a place where being gay was a difference that made no difference. And then Inquisition tore away that escape from homophobia so bluntly.

So, Dorian doesn’t empower me, you ask, so what about Bull? Yeah, I identify with “queer man” because while I’m a man romantically attracted to other men, I’m also asexual - just regular vanilla sex is in the fringes of my comfort zone. Bondage is an outright catapult out of there. At mach three. So I’m left uncomfortable by both of my “options” in Inquisition. And the response I have always braced myself for when I bring this up, when I do add my voice to the conversation about the M/M options, is “well, they can’t please everyone, and this was good for some people, so you should be content with that.” Being told I can’t have everything, so feeling uncomfortable at best is just something I have to live with, because hey, THOSE OTHER PEOPLE got satisfied, and so you should just be happy for them.

It’s that pained metaphor I offered earlier - the victory celebration isn’t for me, I’m on the outside looking in EVEN STILL. I am the freak among freaks.

Where is my place to belong, in all of this? Because it’s honestly hard to find, when all the spaces deemed “for me” still feel like an exclusionary party?

#dg rants #another angry queer rant

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novantinuum · 4 years

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i was rewatching some older su eps,(also like stevens voice??? wtf man) and i was watching “serious steven” and the mural came up. Even with all the context we have now i still cant understand it? youre my fav su theorist haha so i was wondering if you know what was going on there

Okay, so from what I can tell, I think this mural is a prime exhibition of how early (S1A) Steven Universe kinda follows a different rule book than everything that came after. Rebecca Sugar had already planned the story beats about Rose being Pink Diamond, of course- we know this because of the snippet of the SU bible we saw from Ian, which existed circa 2013 I think? The broad strokes of that storyline was hashed out in the show’s greenlit development phase.

But, I think it took a little while for the Crewniverse to fully nail down the story’s details and the tone.

Throughout S1A specifically, we see a far more mystical, magical bent to all of the locations and artifacts that the Crystal Gems visit and handle. The Moon Goddess Statue. The Heaven and Earth beetles. The corrupted Gem that just builds spires of sand. The replicator wand. The time thing. Lots of shrines, and temples, and other such places. It all leans far more into the “fantasy” genre than the rest of SU as a whole does, in my opinion.

In early S1A, the show conceivably could have told me that the Gems were magical entities (rather than aliens) and I would’ve wholly believed it. It’s not until the Lapis episodes, and Space Race specifically, that they begin to really push the fact that they’re all aliens from another world. From then on, SU is far more “sci-fi fantasy” rather than straight out fantasy.

And thus when it comes to the plot beats, I also get the sense that… for the most part… many of the early “lore teasing” episodes aren’t meant to 1:1 relate to later events like other foreshadowing moments later in the show clearly do. Serious Steven in particular, I think is more a case of “let’s make a cool looking mural,” than “let’s hint towards some specific event that is going to happen in 4-5 seasons’ time.”

The bottom of the mural, though? The segments on the walls? They’re actually showing exactly what the booby traps that Steven and Garnet go through are like. So there is that! Some cool hints to what happens later in the episode.

The upper portion of the mural? I get the sense that it’s far more war propaganda, than anything.

We still don’t know much of anything about this location, and why it was made- but my personal hc is that it’s Homeworld made and was intended to catch and lock away rebellion fighters. Thus, the death trap.

If it’s Homeworld made, then the mural is very clear as propaganda. That figure is likely White Diamond- an early representation of her, before Crewniverse nailed her design- who is singlehandedly fighting against Rose, with her army of rebel followers behind her. Rose Quartz holds a pink diamond, which represents how she “shattered” Pink. (Made after the fake shattering, then?) White Diamond is very much in the position of power in this mural, with the white moon and stars in the sky at the top. And then additionally, on the other slice of the mural we see, White is in the center with many hands reaching out almost in worship.

#jen rambles #su #su meta #chickenuggetbb

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thiswasinevitableid · 4 years

Note

any chance you could write some sternclay hannukah fic? as wholesome or naughty as you like

I certainly can! I went with fluffy, and I hope it turned out okay.

Joseph Stern does his best not to take personal offense at the existence of inanimate objects.

But the “Merry Christmas” signs hanging down the entire main street of Kepler are on thin fucking ice.

He knows small towns tend to lean towards homogeneity. He knows that many municipal agencies treat Christmas as a non-denominational day celebrated by everyone.

The sign simply reminds him of being scolded by a grade school teacher for telling the other students that his family wasn’t visited by Santa, which suggested an inherent flaw in the idea of Santa’s existence.

Or not being able to get the holidays he needed off of work during college, because those weren’t “real” holidays according to his boss.

Or not being allowed to have his mini T-rex menorah on his desk at the UP because it was a religious symbol and he worked in a government agency.

He can’t shake the bad mood as he finishes his errands and heads back towards the lodge. Snow falls in clumps on his windshield as he pulls up in front, just in time to see Bigfoot and Mothman carrying a large pine tree into the lobby.

Home sweet home.

“Kay just, uh, hold it steady for a sec there ‘Drid.” Duck’s legs stick out from beneath the tree as he twists it into a stand, Indrid holding it upright while he does. Barclay sees Stern just as he slips on his bracelet, and by the time he’s kissing him he’s human again.

“Hey, babe.”

“Hi. Getting prepared for the season, I see.”

“Yep” Barclay grins excitedly, “finally found the perfect C-”

“Christmas tree, yes, I know, I’m Jewish, not oblivious.” Stern hears the bitterness, takes a breath and shuts his eyes, prepared to apologize for once again harshing others holiday cheer by reminding them that Jewish people exist.

“No…” Barclay is making his worried-about-Stern face, “It’s the Candlenights tree.”

“Come again?”

“Did that plenty this morning.” Barclay bounces his eyebrows, and Stern rolls his eyes.

“Candlenights is a winter holiday on Sylvain. It’s supposed to be a time of rest and warmth, of remembering that it’s alright to take time to focus on love and peace and comfort.”

“But that’s obviously a Christmas tree.”

Barclay shrugs, “You’re supposed to have a big piece of greenery as one of the decorations, a representation of the beauty of the land around you. Some families decorate a tree in their yard, or grow a flower bush specifically to use, stuff like that.”

“Mine had a blue mallow tree. It smelled like sugar. And the blossoms were delicious.” Indrid chimes in as he puts on his glasses.

“Is that why you put marshmallows on the tree in the apartment?” Duck brushes pine needles off himself.”

“Maybe.”

Barclay continues, “You decorate it with lights and flowers. And, well, the Christmas tree is a great way of having that tradition in the lodge without people wondering what the fuck we’re doing and asking too many questions.”

“So...Candlenights is tonight?”

“It starts tomorrow. It’s kinda like Hanukah, but it lasts five days rather than eight nights. Each day centers around a concept: light, warmth, comfort, growth, love. Er, that’s the translation from Sylph, at least.”

“That sounds pleasant.” Stern smiles a bit, watches Hollis and Jake untangling strings of lights with varying degrees of success, “I’m, I’m glad you all are able to celebrate the way you did back home.”

“Me too. Uh, you know you can celebrate with us right? The lodge is your home too.”

“Thank you.” He kisses Barclays cheek and heads towards his room while the cook heads off towards the kitchen.

It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the offer. And he’s actually curious about what’s essentially an alien cultural ceremony.

But he wishes he had what he needed to observe Hanukkah. So that he could feel connected to his past, and his home, the way the Sylphs will tomorrow.

-------------------------------------------------

He’s up early the next morning, wanders out into the lobby with his coffee mug. It’s quiet save for the crackling fire and distant sounds of Mama in her office and Barclay in the kitchen.

The tree is lit with orange and white lights, and does look rather festive.

But it’s something on the window near the tree catches his attention.

It’s clearly supposed to be a serpent version of the Loch Ness Monster (Stern’s preferred version, given that the more popular pleisiosaur is the least likely of all explanations for the creature).

And it has nine candle holders on it.

“Happy Hanukah, handsome.” Barclay’s voice is a soft rumble in his ear as the taller man hugs him from behind, “Know it doesn’t officially start until tonight, but seemed like I oughta give you this ahead of time. Plus, it matches nicely with the first day of Candlenights.”

“True.” Stern murmurs, “Barclay this, this is wonderful.”

“Glad you like it. Had it made special.”

Stern turns in his arms, kissing him long and slow, not caring that the flour on his apron is now on Sterns shirt. He’s grown used to floury hugs and sugared kisses, Barclay stealing them from him in between moments at work. He wouldn’t trade them for the world.

-------------------------------------------

The next day, Stern nearly has a heart attack when he opens his bedroom door.

“BUNNY SWEATER TIME!”

“GAH!oh, hello Aubrey. Doctor.”

Aubrey grins at him, while Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD, attempts to chew his way out of his small, black sweater, emblazoned with flames. It matches Aubrey’s own.

“I didn’t realize you two, or, ah, three” he waves to Dani, “were vising from Sylvain.”

“Just for today and tomorrow. Dani needs to give Barclay his gift.”

Dani proudly hoists a thick, knitted sweater that reads “Kiss the cook.”

Stern pads into the lobby, finds it more active than the previous morning. Sitting by his menorah is a flat box, wrapped in silver paper. When he opens it, he finds a thick sweater, and braces himself. More than once has he been given a holiday sweater that was blatantly Christmas themed.

This one, however, is a tasteful, dark blue with silver snowflakes and UFOs patterned across it. Stern pulls it on, finds it fits perfectly.

“Looking good dude!” Jake calls from his position teaching Dr. Harris Bonkers how to play on a Nintendo DS. Stern settles on the couch, picks up his paperback from where he set it yesterday.

“Ah good, Barclay took my suggestion.”

“JEsus.” Stern’s unprepared for the red glasses poking out of a nearby pile of fabric.

Indrid answers the question before he asks it, “Electric blanket, a gift from Duck. Barclay was torn between that sweater and a Bigfoot themed one. I foresaw you liking that option slightly better. It suits you well.”

“Thank you.” Stern rubs the soft fabric, feeling deeply cozy, and settles in to read.

That evening, he’s getting ready to light the menorah when he spots Barclays reflection beside his own in the window.

“Can, uh, is it okay if I join you?”

“Of course.”

Barclay watches intently, listens as Stern recites the blessing. When Stern is done he joins his boyfriend in a large easy chair.

“There anything else you miss from, like, celebrating Hanukkah as a kid?”

“How do you mean?” Stern rests his head on his shoulder with a sleepy sigh,

“Well, back on Sylvain, there are these almost scone-like things, made out of honeyberries. They don’t taste like anything you get on earth. I smuggled preserved honeyberries through the gate every year around this time just so I could make some. Vincent never could turn down a Twinkie bribe to look the other way.”

“Sufganiyot. My mom always got them from a place called Greenbush back home.”

“Jelly doughnuts, right?”

“Yes. How did you-”

“Babe, do you have any idea how many cookbooks I’ve read? At this point I’m not sure there’s a pastry I haven’t heard of.”

“That...never occurred to me.” He yawns, unsure how a day of lazing by the fire can make him so exhausted (maybe it was having to prevent a talking rabbit and a seal disguised as a skater from lighting the tree on fire. Twice).

“Bedtime. C’mon, my little Sufganiyot”

“In what sense am I little-ah, hey!” Stern laughs as Barclay scoops him up in his arms.

“You’re ridiculous” He grumbles against Barclays chest.

“You love me for it.”

Stern nestles closer, “Very true”

----------------------------------------

The next morning, he steps out his door, only for the scent of sugar to draw him towards the restaurant. He can hear Barclay speaking from within the kitchen.

“No, you can’t have any yet.”

“But, Uncle Barclay, look at how cute I am.” Dr. Harris Bonkers’ voice, if he had to guess.

“Joseph gets the first batch.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s even cuter.”

Barclay steps out the kitchen door, plate in hand, and turns bright red.

“Oops, didn’t know you were up.”

“Dear, my alarm goes off at five every morning.”

Then he sees what Barclay is holding.

“Happy Hanukkah, babe.”

Stern grabs a doughnut from the plate and devours it in three bites.

“Please tell me you made more than two.”

“Aww, babe, glad you like ‘em.”

“I do. But, uh, that’s not why I said it.”

He points to the restaurant door, where many more faces are peeking in, several licking their lips.

Barclay chuckles, “Whelp, better get frying.”

Stern grabs his usual apron from the near the kitchen door.

“I’ll help.”

Day four starts equally pleasantly, with him discovering a small, pleasingly round moss ball floating in a small aquarium sitting on his desk. The aquarium is decorated with a mini bigfoot figure and a mini FBI figure.

“Dani suggested that for you. I know you like having plants on your desk, but don’t always have the best luck keeping them alive.” Barclay rubs his shoulders, kissing the top of his head as he sits at the desk.

“I love it. Oh! Today is growth, right?”

“Yep.” Another kiss.

“Stay right here.” Stern rummages through the closet, pulling out the large, wrapped package he’s had for the last two weeks.

“Merry? Candlenights, Barclay. I wasn’t quite sure when to give it to you, but today seems like the best choice.”

Barclay unwraps the package on the bed, laughs delightedly when he sees what’s inside.

“Counter-top herb garden. Nice thinking, handsome.”

“You’re always saying how you miss not having fresh herbs to work with in the winter, so it seemed riiiight, oh lord, I, I have a phone call with Hayes in ten minutes, big guy, don’t start anything you can’t finish in that time.”

“Don’t worry,” Barclay rumbles from his new position kneeling on the floor, undoing Sterns pants as he kisses his stomach, “I’ll make real fucking sure you finish.”

------------------------------------------------------------

It’s day five, and for the first time there’s nothing greeting Stern when he wakes up. He’s not terribly worried, and anyway he has to finish the briefing instructions for the new agents being sent to guard the inactive gate (his notes make no mention of the new, active gate a mile away).

Barclay joins him, as he has the last three nights, to light the menorah before heading back into the restaurant to feed residents and winter tourists. He busies himself with chores and crossword puzzles until Barclay is done with the night shift.

When his boyfriend finally joins him for the night, he has his hands behind his back and a smile on his face that puts Indrid Cold’s to shame. Wordlessly, he hands Stern a box covered in gold paper.

“That’s certainly a hefty package” Stern smirks as he opens it, then gapes at the contents.

“It’s, how, where did, did you make this?”

“I had it cast so, uh, yeah? It’s for times when you get lonely, or like, have to go on business trips.”

“Lord, Barclay, they even got the color right. Do they even know that they were making a toy from the real Bigfoot’s co-”

“No, and I intend to keep that way. Now…” Barclay crawls on top of him, fingers working his pajamas off, “how about we break in your new toy?”

----------------------------------------------

Stern rolls over in bed the next morning to see Barclay stepping out of the shower, towel around his waist. The Sylph notices him, comes to the bed to give him a kiss.

“Oh, here, wanted to give this to you before I go to work.” He holds out a small package, unmistakably the shape of a DVD box. Stern smiles excitedly to discover the entire X-Files series contained within it. Then he frowns.

“Wait, Candlenights ended yesterday.”

“Yeah. But it’s still hanukkah, right?”

“Yes…”

“Babe, what did you think I was getting you those presents for.”

“I, well, I assumed you were trying to mesh my holiday with yours, so you’d only get me things during Candlenights-”

“You only give someone a gift on one day of that.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I just thought it would be fun to kinda tie my first five for you to Candlenights. Give you a taste of it without, like, pressuring you to be a part of it or making you give up something important to you. But I’ve had Hanukah stuff picked out for you since, like, September. And, uh, if there’s other stuff around it you wanna do or share with me, just say the word.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do that for me, it would have been easier just to do Candlenights. Lord knows it wouldn't be the first time my practices were overlooked, I could have handled it.”

“Because I love you, Joseph. I want you to be happy. When I told you the lodge was your home, and I meant it. And being home means having the space to celebrate things that are important to you.”

“You, I-” Stern shifts under the covers, feeling suddenly very vulnerable.

“Is my special agent speechless? Because that’d be a first.”

“Yes, though the exact reason for it escapes me. Thank you, Barclay. For doing all this for me.”

Barclay nuzzles his cheek with a smile, “Any time, babe. And hey,” he tilts Sterns chin up so their eyes meet, “I love you.”

Stern’s smile is like a warm flame spreading across his face, “I love you too.”

#TAZ Amnesty #Sternclay #fluff #agent stern/barclay #reader requests

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mellicose · 4 years

Text

Doctor ... WTF?

An impassioned rant about the steady decline of Doctor Who, the trajectory of the Thirteenth Doctor, and the righteous indignation after The Timeless Children, not only as a Whovian, but as a woman-

I love how certain people are spinning The Timeless Children as being good, yet the BBC has released (2)TWO statements basically telling fans the following:

“Doctor Who is a beloved long-running series and we understand that some people will feel attached to a particular idea they have of the Doctor, or that they enjoy certain aspects of the programme more than others. Opinions are strong and this is indicative of the imaginative hold that Doctor Who has – that so many people engage with it on so many different levels.

We wholeheartedly support the creative freedom of the writers and we feel that creating an origin story is a staple of science fiction writing. What was written does not alter the flow of stories from William Hartnell’s brilliant Doctor onwards – it just adds new layers and possibilities to this ongoing saga.”

Creative freedom, huh? Ask Joe Hill about it. Or Gaiman. The writers, including Chibnall, are only free to do what the Beeb and the other show investors tell them.

They go on:

“We have also received many positive reactions to the episode’s cliff-hanger. There are still a lot of questions to be answered, and we hope that you will come back to join us and see what happens, but we appreciate that it’s impossible to please all of our viewers all of the time and your feedback has been raised with the programme’s Executive Producer."

Uglylaughing.gif

There is a huge, monumental difference between 'not being able to please everyone all at the same time' and basically making a whole fandom, New and Classic, young and old, come together with the same level of disgust and disappointment.

I also find the people arguing "Canon? What canon?" about the Doctor now being the Lord and Savior of the Shining World of the Seven Systems to be foolish at best, and disingenuous at worst.

No canon?? So what have I been steeping myself in for years - a vague approximation of a tale? Please. Of course, writers have embellished and alluded, but tampering with the unspoken but well-known 'no touch' rule about the Doctor's origin is ... well, it's canon, in and of itself...

...which Chibnall completely wrecked, and I can't imagine why. Hubris? By all accounts, he was a fan. I thought Moffat was a dick for bringing back Gallifrey, but now, to me, my disappointment then vs now is like comparing a fart to a shitstorm.

Please excuse the scatological references, but I'm using it deliberately. It is a swirling turd, which I and many others wish we could flush down and forget forever.

In another RadioTimes article - which basically is the BBC - amongst the usual apologetics, Huw Fullerton drops this little gem:

“The glory days of David Tennant et al were in a different TV landscape, and if the Tenth Doctor touched down now it seems unlikely he’d command anything close to the ratings he did over a decade ago.”

Yeah, you can all take a break to have a hearty laugh. Or throw up. Whichever. Did they just hint that, basically, the incarnation of the Doctor who continues to get as much love (if not more) than Four, who still consistently gets thousands of butts in seats in conventions worldwide, and has made the BBC hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling in merchandising “wouldn’t command the ratings he did in 2008?”

As Gary Buechler of Nerdrotic said in his response to this article: “Actually, if David Tennant had been given as many chances as Jodie Whittaker, it would’ve had Game of Thrones-level ratings.”

And I agree. Not because I’m a Tenth Doctor stan, but because it’s just ... categorically true. His seasons consistently got average rating of 7.5 to 8 million viewers - and this in a time before BBCiPlayer, so 7-day catch up ratings meant nothing. It was butts on sofas then, which, to me, speaks of a massive, sustained interest.

But Huw goes on to say that such things mean nothing. And that the huge, telling sink in both overnight and 7-day ratings between the 11th and 12th seasons, and the dismal 4.69m 7 day ratings for The Timeless Children - the lowest for a NewWho finale since its reboot - shouldn’t be taken as a loss of interest from the fandom.

Then, pray tell goodman, what does it mean? Does it mean that fans are following the Thirteenth Doctor’s adventures in spirit? Ratings are tanking. Outside of the precious few who blindly tweet and write articles about the show solely based on its now female protagonist, people are notoriously furious, especially after the execrable season finale.

Yet BBC’s Piers Wenger, who once produced the show, says “I don’t think it’s been in better health, editorially. I think it’s fantastic and I think that, the production values obviously have never been better.”

Right. Okay. So, putting Tom Ford makeup on a pig makes it haute couture, huh? The writing is appalling, and after two excruciatingly painful to watch seasons, the Doctor has failed to appear - all I’ve seen is borderline sociopathic navel gazing from an ‘alien’ wearing a pastel duster.

How dare you besmirch the unfailingly cool reputation of the long coat, Chibnall? Jodie? How??

I will not let someone piss on my head and call it rain ... ‘because it’s a woman.’ Assuming I’ll accept it just adds insult to injury. Who do they think we are, as female fans? I will not cosign garbage to further an agenda that is ultimately damaging one of my favorite things ever, Doctor Who. I agree that politics, and a positive moral, have always been a part of DW, but at it’s best the writing was so good that it only added to the entertainment. Now, the BBC is feeding us all the bitter pill, without the kindness to hide it in a piece of tasty cheese. It gives the impression that they believe we are already so indoctrinated that we no longer need artifice!

Well, not only am I not indoctrinated, but I refuse to ingest.

I refuse to allow people to silence me because the Doctor is now a woman, and so am I. That, I shouldn’t say anything, or complain, because it’s an act of rebellion on womankind, not only in entertainment, but in general. Well, to that I say ... er ... I disavow.

Disavow. Disavow.

And this from a woman who once criticized Peter Davison for saying that casting a woman was “a vital loss of a role model for boys,” taking it as a sexist comment when in truth, it was just a relevant narrative concern about gender-swapping the traditionally male-presenting Time Lord. Just changing a character from male to female doesn’t do anything but demonstrate a tone-deafness about the emotional and physical differences between men and women, which exist whether we want to address them or not. This is why genderswap reboots are terrible. They are trying to further the feminist agenda, while surreptitiously painting traditional, every day femininity as weakness, and something to be avoided at all costs. I reject the modern Hollywood representation of what a ‘strong woman’ is meant to be. I can be clever, yet sensitive enough to comfort a friend when they confide their fears about a cancer relapse. I can be funny, and not at the expense of the man in the room. I can be brave, but not at the expense of my friends. The mind boggles as to why they thought their current tack with the Doctor was going to be any good. The Doctor is a woman, but more importantly, she’s a Timelord. Where are they? Is the alien that we’ve known and loved for the last 60 years truly gone away, and Thirteen is from a whole different timeline? If so, I don’t want to know her.

And it breaks my heart.

Why continue to support a corporation who thinks of me, the fan, as no more than a heartless, thoughtless consumer? A drone? A sheep who has no conscious idea of what I like or need?

I’m done. It’s been two seasons of absolute dreck, with absolutely no sign of a course-correction due to the overwhelmingly negative response. I may be many things, but I’m no masochist - even in the name of love. And Chibnall, knowing that many fans would go back to the classic stories to cleanse ourselves, went back to the beginning and took a giant shit there too.

Oh, the cleverness! the absolute schadenfreude of not only tampering, but rewriting the Doctor’s origins! I suppose that tells me he truly was once a fan. But no longer. Even if it turns out that the Master is as full of crap as Chibnall and it’s all an orchestrated lie, I don’t care anymore. Every inexplicable, terrible thing that happened before has already exhausted my patience with the narrative.

As veteral DW writer and script editor Terrance Dicks said:

If you’re concentrating on putting forth a political message, rather than on doing a really good show, I think there is a danger, maybe, you can do both but it would be hellish difficult, and I think that there’s maybe a danger that the show wouldn’t as be as good as it could or should be, because you’re not looking at the right aims.”

It seems like all that has been lost in time. Big corporations are buying up beloved science fiction properties, and systematically destroying them by trying to mix their politics into the mythos. [see ‘the fandom menace’]

I say, don’t support things that make you unhappy, in the name of nostalgia. That’s how they continue to upset us, while lining their pockets with our hard earned money. Complaining amongst ourselves, writing emails, or making angry Youtube videos no longer works anyway. Now is the time to just ... let it go. No more special edition DVDs, novelizations, or pretty action figures. Hit them in the pocketbook. We will still have fond memories of better times. I will not let them hijack, retcon, and retool them too.

There is a telling paragraph hidden in the depths of the article, which makes my DW fangirl sink:

It’s not as simple as “the ratings are down so Doctor Who will be cancelled,” as for the publicly-funded BBC there’s an interesting question about exactly what ratings are for beyond bragging rights. Obviously they need to make TV that people want to watch – but which people?

Not us, Huw. That’s who.

#dw #doctor who #doctor who season 12 #doctor who season finale #tenth doctor #dw negativity #the timeless children #or as I call it:#the timeless sham #issa no from me dawg #that little comment about dt really made me snort #i really hope he heard about it and had a long knee-slapping laugh #oh dear #the bbc really are deluded #they are truly drinking a koolaid whose potency boggles the mind #like can they see how off the mark they are?#do they have friends?

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13gatonegro13-blog · 4 years

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Final Fantasy VII: "Ideal" vs "Real"

First of all, English is not my mother language, any suggestions or corrections are welcome, I want to learn.

Second, this is just for entertainment purposes. I have a little free time and I want to distract myself from work. This it is merely theoretical

Third, if you disagree with something here, you can approach me in a kind way/ or feel free to ignore me.

Now… I don't know much about Body language so I won’t relate actual scenes here, but what I do know is about writing, I have a degree in Literature that includes, Audiovisual Media Script and Discursive Analysis. With that said, I want to proceed to develop certain aspects of FF7 story using a symbolic approach.

Let’s begging in the fact that one of the most common resources to convey real feelings in a story, for readers/viewers, is to take reference in personal feelings or seek inspiration in other people. Without this, representing a feeling successfully would be extremely difficult and possibly the same result will be superficial. FF7 not only takes inspiration in real emotions but also gives them preference over other feelings. With that clear, let’s start off the assumption that the entire plot of FF7 pushes us to meet and cherish reality. This is mostly represented in the REAL being hidden in the protagonist, but also in the events around him, including dreams and aspirations of other characters, to obtain one of the most basic emotional conflicts: "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans”.

The story is about finding ourselves and what we want. This is why the concept of "Reunion" becomes a pivotal element throughout the entire plot. The path we walk shapes us and shows us the truth, finding parts of ourselves, and losing others. Yes, is about what happens when we lose someone we love, but not only in a tragic way but in the aftermath: How these losses are also part of us and help us to discover and reconnect with our true selves and with people around us at the moment we live, is about forgiveness, second chances and to appreciate what we have, while we still have it.

The story shows us different examples of how sometimes in the constant search for this “IDEAL”, we forget to live the present and value who we are and what we have: Sephiroth, was this great soldier loved and respected by everyone, but he abandoned all this, in his ambition to become a god, while Shinra, is this company with a dream, of bringing the promised land to earth, even though in search of that dream, they were destroying the world that will become this Paradise; even Avalanche tried to save people from living in a land without future, in their path affecting the people they wanted to save. Although their actions seems to be justified, but that's another subject. There are more examples of this kind of behavior, but now we will focus on Cloud:

Cloud left his hometown to become worthy in the eyes of others and the girl he always wanted, but more importantly to become worthy in his own eyes. Tifa didn't believe he wasn’t good enough; it was he who didn't feel good enough for her. Cloud didn't appreciate himself enough to see what he already had, and in his quest to become this IDEAL man, he ended up losing everything, including himself. This is one of the reasons why Sephiroth is the main antagonist of the plot, he represents the ideal Cloud wanted to pursue, his dream was to be like him, and that’s the reason why Sephiroth moves in those instances around him, as something effusive and deceptive, that drags him away from that he loves, and from himself. He represents something unreal.

The meteor is one of the strongest symbols in the game. Everything that descends from the sky has a sacred implication, however in the simplest way; a meteor is a shooting star. The “shooting star” is the "idealization" the “illusion”, but in fact, a meteor is a visible passage of an incandescent rock breaking into pieces at the moment it contacts with Earth's atmosphere, that's all it is. So Sephiroth summoning a meteor to destroy the earth makes perfect sense. He is the representation of those false "ideals", what is "wrong" and false. This shooting star that holds dreams and aspirations, and was so beautiful and striking from afar, can be transformed into something violent, and a force capable of destroying everything we have and cherish. A wish is a driving force, for better or worse.

In another hand, shooting stars also represent change and spiritual destination, a reminder of connection with the universe. In one symbolic approach, stars are the representation of the union between soul and matter; so it's not weird that one of the strongest meanings of a shooting star besides luck and dreams is the rise and fall of a human soul. In certain cultures, the shooting stars represent a human soul that left the physical world, but is still connected to earth through the spiritual world, and seeing a shooting star is a sign that that person is still around looking for a way to land. So yes, it's also about landing and destination. Cloud being deceived and trap for his dreams, and later reuniting with his former being, mind, and body, and accepting himself, is the point of the whole story. He becoming REAL.

And of course, the reality is different from dreams. In the real world, not everything is easy, not everything is happiness, he will feel pain, sorrow, and grief, love would be complicated, but it will be real. By this time he will know to value this reality the way it is, not the way he wanted it to be. This will not only lead him to face his fears, and realize his own worth. But also will lead him to face the pain of what he lost and eventually to heal.

I have read many people saying that Nojima's words: "Perhaps things would have gone well with Aerith" (comparing the relationship with Tifa) it's proof that if Aerith lived, Cloud would choose her instead of Tifa. But I must disagree with that, and to justify this, I want to leave any visual facts or personal toughs aside, and focus on what it works for the plot only and concerning the aforementioned. Although the author wanted to imply a kind of "ideal" in the relationship between Aerith and Cloud that doesn't mean she is the person for him for purposes of the story. Yes, perhaps with Aerith everything would be easier —but that's the tricky part here— in the REAL world, not always the person who is the "ideal" for us, is the one we want. Real love is not "easy", it's complicated and we must do our part to forge it, it doesn't come night to morning. Cloud choosing Aerith over Tifa would destroy all this wonderful work in the plot, it would be Cloud throwing the real love of a girl who always wanted him, and was his link between reality and his true self. And it's telling us, not only that the person he was before was not worthy of love, but also, that if you want to get "the good stuff" you have to give up to yourself and despise everything you already have, because “isn’t good enough”.

Nojima's complimentary words "But Aerith's responsibility is big" also could/seem to imply something about Aerith’s character, not as Cloud's love interest. Meaning that her "responsibility" is not the reason why she and Cloud cannot be together. Even if she and Cloud relation would be ideal, the role of Aerith in the story is more important.

In the plot, Aerith not only fulfills the role of being the last Cetra of the world, but she also has the function of showing other characters to appreciate what they have, at the moment they have it. In the end, Aerith is the protector of the real world, a flower that although fragile and perish is beautiful and attached to the earth, she saves the life in the world from the meteor, which symbolically represents something hard and alienated from ourselves, these desires Sephiroth transformed into something grotesque and harmful.

But Aerith also represents herself something utopian, which although beautiful is not compatible with the real world completely. She represents hope, and eternal reunion in the Promised Land with those we lost, those we will lose, and love. And that’s the reason why she can’t stay in the real world either.

Even if Aerith lived, Cloud would still choose Tifa, for the simple reason that Tifa is the person he always wanted, the person he loves. Tifa is his redemption. It will be ups and downs because this time will be real; but it will be better, something intense and tangible, not something that only sleeps in his mind. He will get that by being himself, and by appreciating the person he really is. This will be his second chance and his TRUE opportunity of REAL happiness.

#final fantasy 7 #cloti #cloud x tifa #theory #final fantasy 7 remake #not english speaker #just for fun #free time

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whatelsecanwedonow · 4 years

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I’m picking out parts of this conversation I found especially interesting. Italics are mine:

You know, I’ve been trying to think of some precise, encapsulating question to ask you about what we’ve been witnessing over the last few weeks, and everything I was coming up with felt forced or phony. Maybe it’s better, because you’ve been eloquent during times of crisis in the past, just to ask what you’ve been thinking about and seeing in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing? I’d like to say I’m surprised by what happened to him, but I’m not. This is a cycle, and I feel that in some ways, the issue is that we’re addressing the wrong problem. We continue to make this about the police — the how of it. How can they police? Is it about sensitivity and de-escalation training and community policing? All that can make for a less-egregious relationship between the police and people of color. But the how isn’t as important as the why, which we never address. The police are a reflection of a society. They’re not a rogue alien organization that came down to torment the black community. They’re enforcing segregation. Segregation is legally over, but it never ended. The police are, in some respects, a border patrol, and they patrol the border between the two Americas. We have that so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with it. Then that situation erupts, and we express our shock and indignation. But if we don’t address the anguish of a people, the pain of being a people who built this country through forced labor — people say, ‘‘I’m tired of everything being about race.’’ Well, imagine how [expletive] exhausting it is to live that.

Does the scale and intensity of the protests suggest some positive strides toward accountability? Maybe. Look, every advancement toward equality has come with the spilling of blood. Then, when that’s over, a defensiveness from the group that had been doing the oppressing. There’s always this begrudging sense that black people are being granted something, when it’s white people’s lack of being able to live up to the defining words of the birth of the country that is the problem. There’s a lack of recognition of the difference in our system. Chris Rock used to do a great bit: ‘‘No white person wants to change places with a black person. They don’t even want to exchange places with me, and I’m rich.’’ It’s true. There’s not a white person out there who would want to be treated like even a successful black person in this country. And if we don’t address the why of that treatment, the how is just window dressing. You know, we’re in a bizarre time of quarantine. White people lasted six weeks and then stormed a state building with rifles, shouting: ‘‘Give me liberty! This is causing economic distress! I’m not going to wear a mask, because that’s tyranny!’’ That’s six weeks versus 400 years of quarantining a race of people. The policing is an issue, but it’s the least of it. We use the police as surrogates to quarantine these racial and economic inequalities so that we don’t have to deal with them.

...we’ve got a [expletive]-up permanent campaign system with too much money in it. Don’t people know that already? The politicians don’t even know how [expletive] up their system is. Nancy Pelosi was on ‘‘The Daily Show,’’ and we were talking about how money has a corrupting influence in politics. I said, ‘‘You raised $30 million. How does that money corrupt you?’’ She said it doesn’t. So money corrupts, but not you? That’s someone within the system. And when I went down to Washington for the 9/11 victim-compensation bill, I learned something that shocked me. We had a program that was working. Bureaucratically, it wasn’t broken. What is broken about Washington isn’t the bureaucracy. It’s legislators’ ability to address the issues inherent in any society — and the reason they can’t address them is that when you have a duopoly, there is no incentive to work together to create something better. Plus, you have one party whose premise is that government is bad and whose goal is to prove that, which makes them, in essence, a double agent. All these things coalesce to make problem-solving the antithesis of what we’ve created. We’re incentivized for more extreme candidates, for more extreme partisanship, for more conflict and permanent campaigning, for corporate interests to have more influence on the process, not less. The tax code isn’t complicated because poor people have demanded that it be that way.

What do you think of the news media’s handle on this political moment more generally? I don’t think it has ever had a good handle on a political moment. It’s not designed for that. It’s designed for engagement. It’s like YouTube and Facebook: an information-laundering perpetual-radicalization machine. It’s like porn. I don’t mean that to be flip. When you were pubescent, the mere hint of a bra strap could send you into ecstasy. I’m 57 now. If it’s not two nuns and a mule, I can’t even watch it. Do you understand my point? The algorithm is not designed for thoughtful engagement and clarity. It’s designed to make you look at it longer.

Have there been any positive changes, though? Let me give you an example of what might be one: When you were doing ‘‘The Daily Show,’’ part of what made you unique was your last-sane-man-in-Crazytown quality. You would actually say that someone in power was telling a lie when the nightly newscasters wouldn’t. Now they will say that. Is that a step in the right direction? The media’s job is to deconstruct the manipulation, not to just call it a lie. It’s about informing on how something works so that you understand the lie’s purpose. What are the structural issues underneath the lie? The media shouldn’t take the political system personally, or allow its own narcissism to rise to the narcissism of the politicians, or become offended that the politicians are lying — their job is to manipulate.

How much might his administration’s response to Covid-19 hurt him in November? That’s the question the media asks. What they should be focused on is, here’s what happens when you hollow out the pandemic-response team. You have to go after the case of competence and anticorruption. The media wants to prosecute the case of offensiveness. That doesn’t matter. But there were decisions about P.P.E. and the states that were made without any federal response, and that does matter. It’s really about, what is government? Are we the Articles of Confederation? Are we the Constitution? Are we the United States? What are we? If we’re just 50 states, and if New York can push Delaware out of the way and get masks, and now Delaware has got to pay 10 times what it was going to pay — are we being led or not? It’s the wildest thing. I’ve never seen anybody who can say in the same breath, as the president does, ‘‘I am in charge, only I can fix this, and I take no responsibility.’’ You cannot process that. So what you have to process is the actual process: How do masks help? Do they help? You have to really explain it to people, but we allow the mask-wearing to be reduced to its symbolic meaning. Things like masks can’t just become another avatar of political representation. That’s where we go wrong.

This might be a little Civics 101, but I hope you’ll indulge me: A lot of your work has fundamentally been about interrogating certain truths or ideas about America and the American experiment. Things like: What does this country mean? What are its ideals and values? What’s its character? Over the last few years those questions have only become harder to contemplate in any coherent way, let alone answer. Do those questions still hold for you? Every society lies to itself to some extent. Every person does. And sometimes you have to face the truth. The truth of the American experiment is that government is messy. It’s hard to manage. We are melding cultures and religions in a way that most countries don’t. But we have an exceptionalism that we have taken for granted, and we get lost in the symbolism of who we are rather than the reality. The reality of who we are is still remarkable. You can’t take the anecdotal and pretend it’s universal. You can’t take a picture of the Lake of the Ozarks and people on top of each other drinking and say, ‘‘That’s how America responded to the pandemic.’’ Because it’s not. The boots-on-the-ground response has been phenomenally resilient and responsible and courageous. The sense that this could all turn into ‘‘Mad Max’’ tomorrow always hangs over everything — but it hasn’t. There are issues, but again, we point a spotlight on the anecdotal and pretend that it’s universal. What that does is feed the narrative for people who want to use it for their own purposes. That’s what drives me bananas. We’re basically having giant public fights about symbolism, while the reality of our situation goes unexamined.

Are you hopeful about what lies ahead? Always. Because the view we get of the country is not accurate. We get the artifice of it, the conflict of it. I’m not naïve. I don’t think that true divisions and animosities and bigotry and prejudices don’t exist. We see that every day. But fundamentally, we are a resilient and strong and resourceful nation that has oftentimes overcome our worst tendencies — ‘‘overcome’’ is probably too strong a word. But our biggest problem as humans is ignorance, not malevolence. Ignorance is an entirely curable disease.

How? Information and work. You need to talk to people. Ignorance is often cured by experience, by spending time with what you don’t understand. But I honestly don’t know. Well, you know what? I do know: In the same way that Trump’s recklessness is born out of experience, so is my optimism, because good people outweigh [expletive] people. By a long shot.

#the good people have to be in control tho to speak to the last two sentences #the weight of the good must be felt #but 'you can't take the anecdotal and pretend it's universal' is!!!#'we're basically having giant public fights about symbolism'#yes #b/c it's listless insanity there's no one at any wheel #being able to succinctly discuss topics like this is a hell of a thing #i don't rly care to tag this and have randos interact #'an information-laundering perpetual-radicalization machine' is also twitter dot com #and like... all of social media #anyway #long post

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drabbleitout · 4 years

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The Last Line Excerpt: The Deathbed

Taglist: @abalonetea, @for-fuchs-sake, @idreamonpaper, @simplelinesunfashiond, @starlitesymphony and @wheres-the-eszett As always, let me know if you’d like to be added or removed

It wasn't uncommon for a member of the Council to come into the office and have everyone leave. They were paranoid old men, and when they met with Møller, they wanted to meet him alone.

Becker abandoned the half finished report, locking up and throwing on his coat to leave. Interruptions, he hated them. He glanced to Møller's office where a Drycræft officer stood watch. Sharp eyes, stern frown, hand easing to their sidearm. Becker scoffed, turning to leave.

"Becker, sir!"

He barely made it down the assembly steps when the call startled him. Anyone in the yard turned to look. Vitale hurried from the bridge, nearly falling on his face in the snow. Becker pulled on his cap with a scowl. "I meant to catch you before you left, sir."

"Is it important?" Becker stepped past the Roman who fumbled into a salute.

"Not exactly–"

"Then don't bother me."

"I don't mean to bother you, sir. But I've been thinking," Vitale followed, breathlessly trying to speak. "being your assistant, and new to Anglia, perhaps it would be best if I could spend time with you outside the office."

"No." Becker scowled at the idea, noticing everyone was still staring.

"I don't know anything at all about Königsberg besides it being a fortress, and I'd like to get to know more about you and your men." Becker stopped and Vitale scrambled not to trip into him. Looking him over, Becker thought about Møller's words. Vitale was an agent of Rome, an informant, and whatever Vitale thought of him, as did Rome.

"Very well," Becker admitted stiffly, nodding him along. "This is something you should see, after all."

As he feared, Vitale spoke the entire way out of Königsberg. He talked mostly of his home on a southern island in the Mediterranean, an alien sounding place with sun, gardens, and fruiting trees. His words were a mile a minute, like a chisel to Becker's skull. Yet, as soon as they left the fortress walls, he went silent.

"Are we allowed to be out here, sir?" A whisper, glancing back for the gate.

"As an Earl, once my work is complete, I am permitted to go wherever I please. Once you have reached this rank, there are few restrictions." Vitale kept quiet, a sign he was listening. "We are trusted and expected to act responsibly. Other Earls have smaller regiments and venture neither as far nor as long as my men do."

"Is that why you traveled all the way to Romania?"

"Precisely," Becker nodded, pleased with the ease of explaining something. "I was trusted by Grandmaster Møller to protect your Roman recruits from the Brogalda." They followed the road of shallow snow, down the field past the spiked barriers and across the Vistula Bridge. Vitale scampered to the railing, leaning over to inspect the frozen river below.

"If you fall in, I'm not going in after you." Becker warned and Vitale returned to his side, smiling.

"Why do you call them my Roman recruits?"

"What else should I call them? You appeared to take charge of them when traveling from Romania. I assumed you were their leader."

"Riccardo is our detachment leader. Well, at least after we were dropped off to cross the river." It was hard to concentrate on what Vitale was saying, his hands moving more that his mouth, distracting from his words.

"Riccardo?"

"He's the shortest, with curly hair." At once Becker sneered. He remember the snarky Roman who detested everything the Anglians did, complaining the entire route north. It gave Becker some peace of mind that Riccardo hadn't become his assistant. Maybe it could be worse. "Our Legionaries liked him because he was skeptical of Anglia. He thinks the alliance is worthless."

"The Romans sent someone who dislikes us?"

"They wanted someone who wasn't bias to something new and exciting. Don't be angry with Riccardo, though. He has reasons to be skeptical. Mostly all we know of Anglia are stories. Any who visit Rome are serious and quiet –much like you are."

"I see no wrong in being serious or quiet." Something caught Vitale's attention, widening his eyes and elongating his face.

"Meus deus… what is that?" it was barely a whisper. As the land sloped downwards from the hills and cliffs, the field of white was littered with countless black stones. Neatly lined in rows and columns, they looked like little soldiers waiting at attention.

"This is called the Deathbed." Becker lowered his voice as they approached the pillars which marked the entrance. He removed his cap, tucking it beneath an arm. "This is a place very special to the Angle. Here, soldiers are remembered and the women are buried."

Vitale gaped across the field, mouth fallen open, the first time Becker had seen a frown on him.

"The onyx markers represent soldiers, white stones for the women are farther back, over the hill." Becker looked over the sea of stones as well, looking like a scorched forest with so many against the snow. "You are welcome to stay here."

He stepped through the gate, into deep, undisturbed snow. The Deathbed wasn't completely full. There was still empty space to be filled, a few meters from the gate, inwards. From there they covered the field to the cliffs and all the way over to the dark woods of Holz.

"Are all of these dead soldiers?" Startled by Vitale's whisper, he jumped. The Roman scurried up beside him, much closer than he had followed from the walls.

"Each represents a hundred men."

"A hundred?"

"Lower your voice," Becker hissed, glancing around. As far as he could see, the Deathbed was empty. "Fyrds, Thegns, and Earls are not buried in Königsberg. Only the Gedrihts, Althing and females have that honor. Where lower soldiers fall are their graves."

"A hundred men for each stone? That's millions of soldiers." Vitale peeped.

"This bed was started at the beginning of the Postem Apocalypsi, when man first emerged from the ground after the Nuclear Era. This is a very old cemetery." Again, Vitale was speechless. "The closer you move to the cliffs, the older the graves are. At first, the Council worried we would run out of room, but, as you can guess, there are so many men left in the world. I'm sure the rest of them could fit… if there's anyone left to place a marker."

"You shouldn't talk that way," Vitale whispered, glancing around. "These represent Human lives." Becker rolled his eyes with a huff, turning from the path down a row of stones. Vitale didn't follow.

If anything, the Deathbed was a visual representation of how much time they had left. Fifty years at best, and all human life would be gone. Becker would either be a casualty or live to see it happen. It had to be a chosen generation at some time or another. It was something he had already accepted.

He slowed to a stop among the knee-high markers, singling one out. This one was different. It seemed taller, heavier, darker. He knew it by sight, among the countless others. As if it had its own energy.

"What are the animals for?"

"Would you go back to the gate?" Becker snarled, turning to find Vitale crouched at another stone in the row. He brushed his fingers across the engraving, removing snow. More of it had begun falling from the clouds, dusting their coats.

"It's a lion." It was that quickly Vitale could go from listening to oblivious to his words. He sat back, looking from one stone to the next, "…all of them are lions."

"I know that they're lions."

"Why lions?" Vitale squinted in the falling flakes as he looked up at Becker. It was clear the Roman was oblivious to any hint to leave. Becker shook his head, stalling for a moment to even his voice.

"There are lions because this is their section." He nodded to their right, "from here to the path are the men from North Command. From this path to the next is Central Command, and from there to the woods is Southern Command."

Vitale stood to survey.

"North Command holds two Earls; Earl Rask and myself. Rask chose the stag to represent his regiment—"

"And you chose the lion." Vitale blurted, as if stumbling across the answer all on his own. "There are a lot of lions."

"Do you not know when to shut your mouth?" Becker growled, turning back to the marker with a shake of the head.

"But, I didn't see any lions while walking from the gate. I saw mostly stags with big antlers, and on the other side, eagles and owls." Vitale's voice softened, "These are old?"

"Yes," Becker crouched down, "these are old." He pulled a small pouch from the pocket of his coat, loosening the cinched string.

"It looks as though you've made your men more skilled, sir." Vitale's words were filled with a smile. "You've done much better than the eagles and stags." He dumped small stones from the bag, stacking them in a palm. He took care to pile them against the marker along with a few others. Satisfied with his work, he stood.

"Flattery may have worked in for favor in Rome, Officer Vitale," Becker replaced his cap to step past him, "But it will do you no good here."

#TLL #The Last Line WIP #TLL excerpts #amwriting #my writing #writeblr #tw: death #OC Becker #OC Rune

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mmmmalo · 5 years

Text

This is a (meandering, non-exhaustive) overview of Homestuck’s use of

by which I do not mean examples of psychological realism in a character’s words and deeds, but rather the various means by which characters’ psyches are expressed outside of themselves. I wish to elaborate on how thoughts, feelings, and desires may find expression in the environment, in the medium of the story itself, and in the form of other characters.

That’s perhaps a little vague, so here’s a ready example of what I mean: brainghost!Dirk. He talks with Jake, but since he is a construct of Jake’s mind, Jake is essentially talking to himself. Brainghost!Dirk is an alienated medium for voicing Jake’s own thoughts, irretrievably distorted through its intermingling with what Jake thinks/wishes Dirk would say (not unlike a puppet). I am claiming that this mode of characterization is not a unique to Jake; the blurring of inner and outer voices is omnipresent throughout the story.

Or, rephrased: what I hope to show is that a great deal of Homestuck is haunted with brain-ghosts, of one kind or other.

An early example of this kind of storytelling in science fiction would be the film Forbidden Planet (1956). The film contains a pair of conflicts which eventually reveal themselves to be one: the scientist Morbius wants some space explorers to get off his planet, and an immense monster (pictured above) appears during the night to attack the explorers. Morbius, it turns out, has been experimenting with a machine capable of turning thought into reality. So when Morbius sleeps, his dream of driving off the trespassers materializes in the form of beast that forcefully enacts the wish.

The beast is declared a “monster from the id”, the “id” being a concept borrowed from Freudian psychology, indicating the part of the mind responsible for the unfiltered generation of impulses, of urges. In the film, this passing mention of psychoanalysis precedes the revelation of Morbius’s link to the beast.

Homestuck hints towards its own mixing of thought and reality with a device similar to Morbius’s dream machine: Sburb.

A snapshot of Dave’s Sburb client (1519) shows that the final subprograms launched during the games installation make reference to terminology associated with Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. The terms suggest that Sburb interacts with the ideas in the kids’ subconscious minds (archetypes) and brings symbolic representations of these ideas into conscious reality (manifests the ideas). The game alters the means by which reality is constructed. As with Forbidden Planet, a major result of this is id monsters.

When John slips on a staircase, he flips out (left, 560). And when he nearly launches himself into the abyss with the Pogo Hammer, he has to take a nap before he has calmed down enough to continue (center, 637). Immediately following both moments of vertigo, massive ogres appear. The eventual fight with the ogres begins after John looks over the edge of the platform above his house, into the abyss (right, 662).

All of this suggests that Sburb is reacting to John’s emotional state (fear) to produce in-game content. The game functions as a waking dream.

It should also be noted that Sburb provokes the reactions it elicits. Karkat once mentioned a nagging feeling that the game was mocking him by giving him a planet covered in the candy red blood he had spent a lifetime attempting to hide (2301). Karkat’s paranoia seems to be correct here, and moreover applicable to the cast in general -- John’s house was likely placed atop an immense spire /in order to/ bring John’s dread of falling into sharp relief. The suspicion can be substantiated with a few related motifs.

The story provides two likely origins for John’s fear of heights: his own fall from the slime pogo as a child (2626) and the death of Nanna, which John believed resulted from her falling from a ladder and being crushed by a book (52). What’s more, Sburb’s invocation of the Fall of Man (Adam and Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden) via biting into an apple hints that there is an allegorical significance to John’s more literal fear of heights.

We can apply these patterns to other characters in an attempt to learn more about them. LOLAR being covered in ocean suggests that Rose is afraid of water, with the likely cause of Rose finding Jaspers dead and washed up on a riverbank (presumed drowned). Dave speaks openly about how his sword fights with Bro left him anxious of metal sounds (7749), meaning the grinding gears of LOHAC were a personalized hell for Dave. Jade’s first imp manifests in response to the sight of a yellow aurora (2998), inviting the reader to investigate why that image invokes a fear response.

But we won’t get to into all of that, not for now at least. Let’s take a step back.

For my reading of the imps as manifestations I’ve been leaning heavily on a piece of film theory devoted to the effects of sequential images. The sequence above constitutes two observations. One, that by this arrangement the viewer will infer the old man sees and reacts to the middle figure. Two, that the viewer’s impression of the old man will change based on the content of the central image, even if his expression is the same. Is he smiling at Nepeta or warm embrace Marvus’s armpit? The answer may influence your interpretation of the little smile.

The neat thing about montage is that the interrupting frame need not bear any obvious relation to what precedes or follows in order to be subject to a causal reading. Moments that occur sequentially can be read as triggering one another, even if what follows any particular moment appears to be a break rather than a continuation.

Example: There’s a moment where Aranea walks into Jake’s dream, and brainghost!Dirk immediately starts razzing Jake about his attraction to the alien girl and threatening to give him a boner. The scene is interrupted by Jack committing a series of gratuitous murders. We then cut back to Jake, and bg!Dirk is now teasing him about his dirty thoughts.

DIRK: You have got to be kidding. Did you seriously just think something THAT dirty? DIRK: You must be doing this on purpose to spite me now. I mean, just wow dude. That was x-rated as fuck.

JAKE: (No no stop. See youre talking about it and now i cant help it!) JAKE: (You are psyching me into having dirty thoughts get fucking lost you interloping brain douche!!!)

DIRK: Don't worry, I'm gone. It's like a goddamn peep show in here and I feel like a sleazy piece of shit watching this from a dark corner of your mind. DIRK: You have a graphic imagination, English. I'm kind of impressed.

JAKE: (Shut up theyre just thoughts its not even like im trying to have them THEY DONT MEAN ANYTHING!)

The ostensible joke is that bg!Dirk is exaggerating or outright fabricating his account of Jake’s thoughts in order to hassle him. But by way of montage, one can infer that we /have/ seen Jake’s dirty thoughts, in the form of Jack’s display of overwhelming bloodlust. Violence is superimposed over the sexually explicit.

Whether the scene literally takes place in Jake’s mind is secondary (though such a reading would explain why Jake’s brain ghost is even aware of Jack) -- the use of montage allows Jack’s actions to function as a /metaphor/ for Jake’s thought.

Another example of Jack functioning as a murderous/libidinous avatar would be the death of Mom and Dad. At their little tea party, Dad spills some wine on Mom’s clothes and declares that she must disrobe immediately (so that Dad might launder the garment). Mom calls the aromas wafting from his pipe sensuous. The two clasp hands and declare that all they need is eachother. Then they die! The joke is that while Bec Noir is ostensibly an interruption to date night, he also functions as its culmination, with murder acting as substitute for the sex act.

The link between violence and sexuality is perhaps a hard sell, but I hope to convince you that the reading holds merit. Let me emphasize that the very act of Mom and Dad holding hands was itself sexually loaded.

I owe to HS liveblogger elfstuck the insight that John’s linear 3 card sylladex is a reflection of his short attention span. Consider how John’s role as a game character means he is thrown all around his room, back and forth, as the player figures out what to make of the situation. If you ignore the fourth wall, you’re left with an extremely distracted person, who attention flows easily from one object to another. Accepting the object-in, object-out nature of John’s sylladex and the resulting shenanigans as a metaphor for this, it would follow that the sylladex in general can offer an abstract representation of thought.

In passing, I can mention how the enormity of Jake’s sylladex (it cannot even fit on the page, and contains an object that exceed most players’ size limits) would imply that despite evidence to the contrary, the boy likely has a big brain (and perhaps its being offscreen suggests Jakes own unawareness of much of his own thought). Dirk’s comment about avoiding items that are difficult to shoehorn into his mnemonic schema (4535) could be read as a difficulty maintaining information that doesn’t fit into his personal mental models. The sylladex becomes a metaphor for the mind that requires interpretation.

Under this mode of thought, the moments when Jade’s pictionary modus fails to correctly interpret her drawing become akin to a mental slip-of-the-tongue. For the Tanglebuddies to be misread as enmeshed hands implies an association, in Jade’s mind, of horny Squiddles and clasped hands. John affirms the association much later by miming Tanglebuddies as he attempts to grapple with the question of whether Jade and Davesprite are sexually compatible (5294):

JOHN: how do things even work if you marry a sprite?

JADE: what do you mean

JOHN: i mean... JOHN: ok, he has a ghost butt, for one thing.

JADE: uh JADE: so

JOHN: a GHOST BUTT, jade!

JADE: SO WHAT IF HE HAS A GHOST BUTT!!!!!

JOHN: i'm just saying...

JADE: WHATEVER YOURE JUST SAYING, JUST STOP SAYING IT! JADE: and whatever youre trying to gesture with your hands there, stop doing that too!

It should also be noted that before launching into her “daring dream”, waxing poetic on the miraculous union of the human and the animal with her hands clasped in wonder, Jade successfully captchalogued the Tanglebuddies (796). And more to the point, Jade’s pose in reproduced during discussions of cherub (5961) and leprechaun (6007) reproduction. Hand-holding becomes representative of an (oft-sexualized) union, underlining the euphemistic nature of Mom and Dad’s post-contact demise.

The next example of using montage to communicate thought requires a little more buildup.

There’s a gag in Rose’s introduction where the reader tells Rose to play with her writing journals, and scoots the journals under the bed and retorts that she would only do that if no one were watching (220). At first glance, the moment scans as a minor meta joke in a story filled with meta jokes -- but the trick is that Rose does not /know/ herself to be a video game character, her every movement controlled and observed. Rather, she /believes/ this to be true -- the joke about being watched establishes that Rose is paranoid, as will become apparent in the hostility she assigns to Mom’s every action.

The command prompt and narration are themselves brain ghosts of a sort: the voice deployed in them is always linked to the present point-of-view character. The insults that precede character introductions ( “Zoosmell Pooplord”, etc) become marks of anxiety, an intrusive proclamation of what the kids at times think of themselves (and/or what they think others think of them). “Nice time management skills, sweetheart!” becomes a bit of self-deprecation Rose as she procrastinates, which Rose experiences as having been voiced by some objective observer who judges her deficiencies.

A blurred line divides characters from the voice at the back of their head, belonging to the (presumed) omniscient, omnipotent author-god. This is why avatar!Hussie is dressed as Calliope when he is killed by Lord English. Both Calliope and Hussie are a voice in Caliborn’s head, and thus both present apparent obstacles to an unmediated self.

The left panel (3219) foreshadows the right (3358). Gamzee is not being declared the objectively most important character in Homestuck. Rather, Gamzee is declaring himself /to have been declared/ the most important character in the story. The line establishes that Gamzee believes himself to be in a story (with an author!) and that this author has declared him paramount. Furthermore, “fondly regarding creation” is an modus operandi of Problem Sleuth’s Godhead Pickle Inspector. Applying that turn of phrase to Gamzee’s actions further establishes that Gamzee believes himself to /be/ the god-author declaring his own importance. So it should come as no surprise that 137 pages later, Gamzee outright proclaims himself to be the god(s) he worships.

Going back to montage, it becomes interesting that this snapshot of Gamzee’s megalomania is inter-cut with the creation of Jadesprite -- the moment that dead!dream!Jade merges with Bec, forming a unity with a deity not unlike the unity Gamzee claims with his mirthful messiahs. The interweaving would suggest that Jade and/or Jadesprite experienced analogous thoughts of megalomania upon the moment of ascension.

This would be a good point to mention that not only imps and ogres, but trolls also function as manifestations for the people they impose upon. Karkat is not only an interruption here, but also a continuation. He points out that Jade’s self-loathing, that she cannot safely distance herself from the qualities of Jadesprite she finds distasteful. This is precisely why Karkat ends the conversation by telling Jade to turn off the fourth wall (which divides the self!), as well as the reason he imagines Jade making out with herself: Karkat is on every front presenting the prospect of union with oneself.

The notion of trolls as manifestations first emerges clearly when Rose and Dave receive their packages from John. As they finish reading John’s letter, each is suddenly contacted by a troll and greeted with the command “Answer.” Critically, by word alone it is ambiguous as to whether the command refers to answering the troll or the letter. And as it turns out, these answer occur simultaneously: Rose and Dave’s responses to the letters are embedded in the subsequent conversations.

Rose receives a letter poking fun at her pretensions, claiming that her attempts to hide her affections for people are futile. In response we get Kanaya, who imperiously proclaims her disdain for Rose, only to suddenly change tact and explicitly seek Rose’s friendship, an entreaty which the oft paranoid Rose accepts. Dave receives a letter imploring him to let go of his insecurities and express himself. In response we get Tavros, the very picture of insecurity, who is fixated on the idea of making Dave shit himself (as part of an ‘emotional constipation’ motif that follows Dave). And Dave complies, in a sense, by way of the quasi-ironic gay treatise that compels Tavros to block him. Each conversation addresses the issues laid out in John’s letter.

Examples can be found throughout the comic. Equius remarking that he talks to Gamzee every day (2220) establishes that Gamzee is regularly haunted by the thoughts of domination that Equius voices -- both in the literal and metaphorical sense. Erisolsprite referring to Dirk as a rock 2oliid piiece of a22 and then calling himself 2ociiopathiic for even thinking something so callous (5516) expresses a conflict already present in Jake’s own mind, echoing the frustration with his own dirty thoughts expressed by the argument with brainghost!Dirk. Feferi’s pronounced enthusiasm for the imminent apocalypse should cause you to question Kanaya’s seemingly neutral resignation towards the end of the world, since Feferi manifests for Kanaya (2328). And so on.

The person being trolled is always being confronted with thoughts or feelings or memories already present within themself. Alien contact always doubles as a brain ghost haunting.

Another example, with some buildup: Karkat invokes the phrase “PERFORATE MY BONE BULGE WITH A CULLING FORK” to express his contempt for Vriska, and on subsequent pages we see Feferi pointing her culling fork at a cuttlefish (2181), as if to suggest that the creature symbolizes the bone bulge. Fast forward to Kanaya, who has just gotten through a conversation with Vriska and finds herself haunted by Eridan, who keeps going on about his romantic desperations and insisting (correctly) that Kanaya’s crush on Vriska is itself romantic. That his notification erupts from an image of cuttlefish held at Kanaya’s waist adds to the air of yearning, as though her own bulge is rumbling. The scene is capped off with a double entendre: “its hard and nobody understands” is playfully poignant jab at an inability to understand one’s own desires (among other things).

And Homestuck devotes a lot of attention to desire.

It’s long been acknowledged by the fandom at large that Kanaya’s attraction to Light players functions as a joke on the proverbial moth-to-the-flame. As reconciliation with the fire destroys the moth, there’s a morbid tinge to the attraction, as though it doubles as a death wish. And the wish is granted -- when Kanaya dies in Homestuck, she dies to light, either from Eridan’s wand or the laser blasts unleashed by HIC. Even the death of Kanaya’s lusus pertains to light -- the matriorb ripped from her innards is shaped like a miniature sun, as if to establish some loose link between the notion of motherhood and the incandescence Kanaya eventually achieves.

This can be generalized into a principle wherein lusii (and the circumstances of their deaths!) can functions as analogies for the desire of the wards.

Vriska, for example, desires execution. When offering Terezi a flimsy apology for crippling Tavros and proxy-murdering Aradia, Vriska offers to slam her head against her desk in penitence. This moment should be read against Vriska’s addiction to breaking 8 balls, and leaving the broken shards lying around as though she’s inviting the “bad luck” of stepping on them. It /is/ an invitation. Vriska seeks love via violent retribution against herself. This is why in the right panel, Vriska’s blood-spattered head is juxtaposed with a broken 8 ball: the blood came from Spidermom’s execution (which characterizes Vriska’s desire), and motif of 8R8K H34DS connects the moment to Vriska’s idea of apology.

Like Kanaya, Vriska (to a degree) seems to structure her love life along these lines. In the words of @azdoine:

like ppl are actually out here writing Vriska as the top as if her entire Act 5 character arc isn’t about bratting out until Terezi has no choice but to punish her

“oh noo, I, the thief of light, stole all of your luck, and made the coin land on the scratched side! now you have to kill me! but I’m probably going to get away with everything, because you don’t have the guts to stab me with that sword of yours!!!!!!!! if only there was somebody, like you, who could prove me wrong!”

EXTREMELY SUBTLE THERE, VRISKA

Vriska’s approach to wooing Tavros also revolves around baiting execution:

The scene: Tavros leads a horde of imps and ogres into a mystery cave, the top of which is adorned with kissing lizards and an alchemical symbol. Tavros is putting a puzzle of a frog together, but Vriska has already pieced together the puzzle: making a frog universe is, in part, a cipher for personal reproduction. The Ultimate Alchemy is making a baby! And as Vriska says, “real gamers cut to the chase. They power through all the nonsense and go for the gold.” So she brings Tavros to LOMAT and makes the moves on him.

Tavros is equated to a treasure chest by the repeated use of framing and Vriska is GOING FOR THE GOLD, like a WINNER. Tavros later reaches into the same chest for his lance before heading off to attempt to kill Vriska -- affirming that the treasure Vriska seeks here is Tavros’s “lance”.

This setup was suggested by the conversation accompanying the kissing salamanders: Vriska gives Tavros a map with a big red X, saying he should take his legion of imps through the gate and go defeat his denizen. The gate actually leads to Vriska, but she isn’t lying. She is positioning herself to be Tavros’s final boss. The imps are manifestations of Tavros’s pent up rage (much of which was generated by Vriska’s harassment), and Vriska wants Tavros to take that anger out on her. Hence the later panel which uses Vriska’s boots to place a big red X directly over her groin, making explicit the implicit goal of Tavros’s trip to the windmill X-gate.

This pursuit of love through violent comeuppance may have something to do with Vriska’s bitter disappointment that ghost!Aradia did not seem to hate her.

An intermission/introduction of sorts, as we bridge from one discussion of desire to another: did you know that Michael Bay’s Armageddon (1998) structures itself in part around Freud’s Oedipus complex? I say this in total sincerity.

The plot: a meteor the size of Texas bears down upon the Earth, threatening armageddon. Luckily, a crew of rough-and-tumble oil drillers are ready to fly into space and split that mother in two. Oh HELL yeah.

Except, wait, the movie’s actually about family drama: Bruce Willis finds Ben Affleck sleeping with his daughter Liv Tyler; Willis proceeds to chase Affleck around the oil rig with a shotgun, bang bang bang. Not Allowed. The Protective-Father-Hates-Your-Boyfriend dynamic is presented as an Oedipal triad of sorts: although Tyler is not literally Affleck’s mother, she performs the mom-function of “forbidden object of desire” -- and Willis opening fire is equivalent to the castration said to await trespassers onto maternal soil.

The above reading is buttressed by jokes: Armageddon appears to function within an implicit dream machine, such that the characters’ thoughts and fears can become manifest in their environment. So when it comes to pass that whenever Affleck climbs into a hole (heehee), a pipe breaks (hoohoo), and suddenly everything goes boom, I read that as Affleck reliving the consequences of boning Tyler, packaged in such a way that the Freudian fear of castration is more explicit. (The relevance of Oedipus to the proceedings adds some humor to Steve Buscemi declaring the entire disastrous situation a “Greek tragedy”)

At any rate, after some shenanigans, Willis comes to accept Affleck’s claim to his daughter and confers the deed, as it were. Willis gives the young couple his blessing and they get married. Hooray!

Except, wait, the movie’s actually about the perpetuation of the oil industry: the dream machine was declared at the beginning of the movie when a petty street-side argument triggered the first barrage of meteors. The meteor the size of Texas (aka Dotty) is triggered by conflicts that haunt the central cast -- namely Willis, who enters the film hitting golf balls at a Green Peace boat. On a metaphorical level, Dotty is a golf ball the size of Texas, striking directly at the Earth instead its self-declared representatives. There’s a certain irony here: the film lampshades that the men who are destroying the world have been tasked with saving it.

The family drama folds into the environmentalist angle: Liv Tyler is a symbol of the earth (which gets drilled). This is the joke when Affleck is bouncing animal crackers around on her belly like she’s host to the Savannah: she kind of is! It’s no coincidence that Willis confers ownership of the oil rig at the same moment that he offers his daughter’s hand in marriage: the motifs are being discussed simultaneously.

But enough of all of that: back to Homestuck.

Armageddon’s simultaneous casting of Liv Tyler into the roles of earth and mother offers a glimpse at the interpretive possibilities made available by Hussie’s statement that Homestuck is in a way a synonym for Earthbound (an RPG in which “homesickness” is a status ailment which can be cured by calling your mom). Stuckness or boundness can be deployed to communicate a sense of longing for “home”.

A good chunk of Homestuck is built upon feelings of nostalgia, taken to mean a sort of intense separation anxiety with the past. John speaks about this when he watches Con Air with Jade – John wants the movie to feel like it did when he watched it with his Dad long ago, but the feeling from when he was a kid is gone. This upsets him. Moreover, John’s freakout starts at the moment Cyrus puts a gun to the bunny’s head (5286): Con Air itself is partly about Nic Cage trying to return to the life he lost when he went to jail, and ‘putting the bunny back in the box’ is a metaphor for the attempt. Cyrus, in threatening the bunny, is highlighting his role as a force preventing things from going back to how they were. Thus, if we are to believe that John is responding to the movie thematically, Cyrus confronts John with his own inability to go back to a happier past – his inability to go home -- and this recognition is met with anger.

In making the leap to the psychoanalytic motifs, it helps to recall the part where baby!Dirk responds to being born by cracking open his ectotube and crawling back inside. Dirk, who aspires towards his “ultimate self”, illustrates here that he envisions his ascension as a return to the ‘essence’ of Dirk from which he (and all other iterations of himself) arose, as represented by the ectoslime. Baby!Dirk gestures at unity with his ectoslime/essence by crawling back into the place from which he was born, which I’m basically claiming is a “return to the womb” on a symbolic level, or at least that this is a useful parallel to draw. (A related motif to think about: Dirk decapitates himself by sticking his head inside a box, which as per Con Air symbolizes the place you wish to return to)

[Hella Jeff sez: “i took (my pants) off because i was banging your mom for a minute there..... AND NOW YOU ARE BANGING HER”]

Castration becomes unavoidable as you try to relate all of this to Dave, whose occasional references to banging hot moms are part of an ongoing reference to the Oedipus Complex. Critically, the complex is not /just/ about wanting to bone your mom, but also fear that your dad will chop your junk off if you do. The breaking of Dave’s sword on the rooftop is a realization of this fear (yes, we’re doing the “swords are phallic” thing). But Dave has no mom that he knows of, so what gives?

The answer is in the way Bro inexplicably breaks the record emblem on Dave’s t-shirt, as though he has introduced a fissure into Dave’s very identity. Life with Bro has made it very difficult for Dave to be honest with himself, which is to say, Dave pictures Bro’s abuse as having divided him from an ideal “true self”, which can feel emotions without all the anxious ironic detachment. I mentioned before that seeking unity with that from which you came is a “return to the womb”. This is the sense in which the Oedipal mom attraction becomes relevant: the return to the past is sexualized. The ‘home’ Dave wishes to return to is /himself/, and in this sense Dave is his own hot mom (which is related to how often Dave compliments his own looks, as well as the above gif suggesting Dave’s boner – he is literally/metaphorically “attracted” to himself).

(Incidentally: this model of desire, in which a broken subject attempt to become whole again by seeking out its lost half, is basically the concept of the soulmate, as laid out by Plato. Cherub reproduction turns the metaphysical pursuit of one’s lost half into a plot-level objective)

John’s entry item (apple) was linked to fear embodied in a childhood trauma (the Fall), and the same can be said of Dave. Hatching from the shell that contained your primordial goop (Dirk) is analogous to being violently separated from yourself (Dave), which is why Dave’s entry item (an egg) hatching coincided with Bro slicing the meteor in half: the abuse that divided Dave from himself, his “castration” by Bro, is simultaneously the “birth” that separated Dave from his “mother” (which is also Dave).

The general idea is that birth = self-alienation = castration, insofar as all are depicted as modes of being separated from oneself.

The broad motif of ‘being separated from oneself’ can be very useful for identifying brain ghosts in unexpected places. Take for example, Roxy’s fenestrated planes: when they are introduced the narrative is quick to tell us that if someone were caught half in/out of one of the windows when the power cuts out, they would be sliced in half. By the rule of Chekhov’s gun, this introduction should mean we should eventually see someone get gorily bisected by the window, but alas we never do.

Instead, when Gcat warped the panel away, trapping Roxy between the windows, we were shown the image of a bisected horse puppet in Dirk’s apartment, This signals that Chekhov’s gun has indeed gone off. But rather than splitting a body, it split a soul: Meenah’s introduction follows the sequence because Roxy has generated a shadow of herself, a doppelganger. This is not without precedent: an earlier portion of this post was devoted to exploring the fourth wall as a mode of self-alienation. Roxy’s panel mishap can be considered part of that pattern.

If Meenah functions as an extension of Roxy, all of her actions can be read as bearing some relations to Roxy’s own latent thoughts and desires. Prior to the epilogues, for example, Meenah imploring John not to give her the ring seemed to be yet another Fuck You to the late Chekov: the issue never comes up again. But a psychic link between Meenah and Roxy would suggest that John broke his promise to Meenah by giving the ring to Roxy, and that whatever motivations compelled Meenah to make her request in the first place would also apply to Roxy.

Decapitation is yet another mode of self-alienation, and thus can be construed as a mode of birth. Hence the image of Lil Sebastian hatching from his shell of taxidermied man meat. That’s a motif unto itself, but what I wish to call attention to is the match-cut from John’s broke body to Jake’s broken tower. The juxtaposition collapses the images into metaphor, such that Jake’s loose dome in the woods becomes a decapitated head -- an appropriate addition to the pumpkin patch it rests in, given all the Headless Horseman jokes. We can look to Dirk for for another example of a headless horse-man of the house echoing the head: for a guy who idealizes decapitation to such a degree, it is striking that Sburb aims to provoke him by reattaching his beheaded apartment to its underlying units.

Houses act as metaphors for heads, then “Homestuck” could also interpreted as “head trapped” -- like the title emphasizes confinement within one’s own mind. Such a reading offers up Failure to Launch and Arrested Development (posters on John and Jane’s walls) as alternate synonyms for Homestuck, as each satirizes (or outright mocks) potential failure states in the process of inter-personal and mental development (ie “growing up”). Like Earthbound, both lean on a sense of homesickness in characterizing despondency, as though characters are haunted by the needs that defined their childhood -- or else find themselves needing that childhood itself.

But collapsing nostalgia into infantile regression is far from the only way to approach the house/heads equation. One might read the transformation and growth of houses with Sburb as metaphors for expanding the mind. One might infer that the choreography of events within houses can map out thoughts like dancing bees. One might take the metaphor as a foothold for interpreting the significance of the Sburb logo being at once a house and a window. \I have my own thoughts about Homestuck’s brain-ghost haunted house-minds, but for now, I only hope that this document has raised some interesting questions -- and ideally, that the interpretive approaches I’ve described might be useful in seeking answers.

#homestuck #homestuck meta #this is basically the contents of the stream #movies #john #rose #dave #jade #jake #dirk #roxy #gamzee #vriska #4th wall #psychoanalysis #house as head #plato

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aro-ace-advice · 4 years

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So I have mostly figured out the asexual part but it’s really complicated to me to figure out the romantic part, like I don’t know if what I think that were crushes were indeed crushes or that’s what I would like to think. It gets a loooot more difficult because I am a hopeless romantic and I LOVE reading fluff stories and they make me want a romantic relationship, that “want” only lasts for a few minutes (or it’s only that moment and then I move on). I had only one boyfriend (I’m 18 btw) when I was 9yo and our “relationship” ended when we were 12 I think? I wouldn’t call it a relationship because we barely talked to each other (I was shy around him) and I only gave him a peck because we were playing a game with my classmates, also I thought that it was the best when he was away of me¿? Idk. Also when I was older I had like only two (or one) crushes in boys that I didn’t meet and maybe other five (less than 5 but I love lying to me, sorry) in people that I met but I didn’t want a romantic relationship with them, maybe I thought that I would like to date them but if we didn’t that was okay too. But I never had a physical response to crushes, like you are supposed to feel butterflies in your stomach and all of that right? I only thought about two of them randomly and that I would date them but I never did sth to date them. Also I would avoid dating with sb because I was reaaaally busy with school (I literally slept when I was free and saw my friends rarely out of school so that was a excuse) and if sb said that they were interested in me I would literally run away, like I would be like “whyyyy, why did I do to caught your attention??? stop liking me please” then I would crave for affection and cry because I wanted a partner to cuddle lol. I may use the greyromantic term because I think that I may have felt romantic attraction but I am not sure if I have felt it or not.

It would really help me to talk with someone on the aromantic spectrum to figure out about this. Lastly, English isn’t my first language so that would be the why sth isn’t well explained here, thanks<3

ree says: hi there :) don’t worry about your english, you explained everything just fine! gosh, i totally understand how you feel! the romantic aspect of sexuality is SO CONFUSING. i also really love romances in tv and books and fanfiction and felt that want for a romantic relationship, so much so that i bounced from straight to bi to pan to lesbian before i was even willing to consider aromantic. i was always like “but i can’t be aro, i want to be in a romantic relationship!!” which isn’t exactly how it works.

i think part of the problem that makes it so hard for some people like you and i to find a label and define our own feelings towards romance is heteronormativity, which is essentially the idea that being cishet and wanting romantic / sexual intimacy is the only way to be.

for anyone reading this who hasn’t heard of this term and isn’t sure quite what i’m talking about, take the nuclear family as an example. so much of society (western in particular) is based around the general idea that a family consists primarily, if not completely, of a cisgender man and a cisgender woman and their eventual kids, and occasionally a grandparent if they’re feeling quirky (which is dumb. a family can be any group of people, blood-related or not). we’re taught by society basically from birth that couples are The Most Important Thing Ever and if you don’t wanna end up Alone, you need to find someone of the opposite gender to fall in love with Or Else!!

this can be extremely alienating if you fit into any category besides cishet, or even if you’re just not that keen on that kind of partnership. romance is such a central idea to so many societies that i think a lot of aro people have trouble identifying their lack of romantic feelings. like, we’re taught that a boy being mean to a girl in gradeschool is because he has a crush on her instead of him just being rude, and we’ve come to expect that when a man and a woman make eye contact for longer than 4 seconds on TV that they’re in love or at least attracted to each other. it’s everywhere. and it’s like, when romantic subtext is apparently in everything to some people, and they feel it all the time, we go “i guess i feel this thing, since everybody else seems to?” and it’s a little confusing, but we go along with it and just assume that it’s there since it seems to be so prevalent literally everywhere.

it took me 4 different romantic relationships to realize that i don’t like romantic things. i don’t want to be with someone romantically, i don’t like holding hands or cuddling or kissing or hanging out with people in situations with romantic subtext. i don’t want any of it and whether or not i would be okay with participating in those things depends entirely on who i would be doing it with. however, i do want to have a partner someday, someone to share my life with, who will hold me when i cry and give me a kiss on the cheek when they leave for work! i want to be someone’s most important person, without all that romantic stuff. but since the only intimate partnerships we see in most mainstream media where any of that happens is when a cis man and a cis woman fall in romantic love, it becomes clear fairly quickly to any queer person that what we want is Not Normal, and occasionally feels unattainable and impossible.

it’s also easy to get confused with what you really want when you don’t see any accurate examples of your own feelings around, which is why queer representation is so important. when the primary examples of intimacy you see are romantic, it’s understandable to assume that when you want someone who prioritizes you in a similar way, you’re wanting a romantic relationship, even if the romance aspect makes you feel uncomfortable, or when you really think about it or are offered the chance to be in a romantic relationship you don’t want to do it.

my point is, you can want the same things that happen in romantic relationships without ever feeling romantic feelings towards someone or wanting that dynamic. you can want a partnership without the romantic aspects. and it’s not unattainable or impossible, it just isn’t shown very often in media. humans existed for millennia before the concept of a nuclear family was born. we weren’t always queerphobic and transphobic. it is possible to find the kind of relationship you want with another person on your terms, no matter what those terms are, as long as you communicate with them about your needs!

tl;dr you can have or want intimate relationships with other people and still be aromantic or somewhere on the spectrum.

some additional info: i’ve seen some aro people use the term queerplatonic to describe the kind of relationship they want, and squishes to describe a non-romantic crush, or platonic attraction. i’ve never personally felt like they fit me, but they’re good terms and i’ll give ya some links to basic definitions of them and if they feel right to you, i would recommend continuing to look into them! link to queerplatonic (aromantics wiki) link to queerplatonic (lgbta wiki) link to platonic attraction (squishes)

as to the physical response to crushes– i’m aroace (have i mentioned that enough yet?), and i’ve never experienced it before either. i get like swoopy nerves when i’m around people i think are cool, and i used to think those were butterflies, but it feels really similar to how it feels when i get an intrusive thought or something gives me anxiety, so… take that how you will, i guess. ultimately i think being aromantic is more than just any physical responses you get to people, but every aro person is different, and how i feel about that sort of thing is definitely not necessarily how every aro person feels.

feel free to message again if you wanna talk more about aro stuff!! :)

#aromantic #greyromantic #asexual #arospec #submission #aroace advice #heteronormativity

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