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jazmintrinidadianlitblog · 9 months

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Five Books from Trinidad and Tobago

The Loss of El Dorado: A Colonial History

The story of Trinidad starts with a lie: people thought that El Dorado, the mythical kingdom of gold, was somewhere close to the South American mainland. V. S. Naipaul, who was born and raised in Trinidad, shows in this amazing and often gripping book how that delusion pulled a small island into the center of world events, making it the target of Spanish and English colonial plans and a haven for treasure hunters, slave traders, and rebels.

Even though there are murders, poisonings, thefts, and international plots, there are two main themes: the grinding down of the Aborigines during the long battles of the search for El Dorado, and the horror of slavery, which was caused by people. We learn as much as we can about day-to-day life in the slave colony from a collection of small, horrible details. There, despite having different names of nobility, there is only an opportunistic, almost lawless community that is always afraid of slave suicide or poison, African sorcery, and slave revolt. This complicated story is told by Naipaul with confidence, biting irony, and lively feeling. The result is writing about history at its best.

The Undiscovered Country - Essays

Andre Bagoo is a real essayist because he asks interesting questions, like "Was there another way for Trinidad to get its independence in 1962?" and is willing to see where his thoughts take him, which is often to places he didn't expect. He is very interested in the world around him, including literature, art, movies, food, politics, and even Snakes and Ladders. At the same time, he is eager to show the reader how his point of view has been formed. He writes as a gay man who grew up in a country that still has colonial rules against being gay. He also writes as a man with African and Indian roots who grew up in a country where ethnic differences have made it hard for the government to work. And what happened when she watched over and over again a broken video of The Sound of Music that cut off at a key point? There is a lot of proof that he knows how to write well-formed sentences and essays. He has an interesting personality and a sharp, inquisitive mind. Even though encyclopedic information isn't usually the point of an essay, most people who read this collection will feel like they know more and are more interested in the world around them.

"The Undiscovered Country" is a lot of things: a manifesto, a literary criticism, a personal account of a writer's life, a book of days, a stage where famous writers like Walcott, Thomas, Gunn, Espada, and others play roles, and more. One thing is for sure, though: Andre Bagoo has a fearless and brilliant mind. He can take us from a formal critical point of view to a new futurist "visual essay," to a verse essay, to a broad historical account that isn't afraid to go as far back in time as Columbus and as close to home as Brexit. He can do all of this with a brilliant attention to detail that is as shocking as it is brilliant. "Good job!"

Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad

There, Krystal A. Sital looked up to her grandpa, a rich Hindu landowner, who lived in a lush area with fire-petaled immortelle trees and huge coffee and cocoa plantations. The three hills along the southern coast protect the area from hurricanes. Years later, to get away from crime and the lack of economic growth on the island, Krystal's family moved to New Jersey, where Krystal's mother works as a babysitter. The warmth of Trinidad seems like a pretty but faraway memory. But when her grandpa has a fall at home and goes into a coma, the women he has terrorized for decades start to talk, revealing a brutal past.

Krystal learns the long-held secrets of her family's past from the way her mother and grandmother speak. She also learns what it took for her foremothers to live and find strength in themselves. The three women become closer as they share their stories. The music of their voices and their care for each other ease the pain of remembering.

Trinidad's past is full of violence, a strict caste system based on race and ethnicity, and an acceptance of domestic abuse. These are all harsh effects of plantation slavery. On the island's plantations, in its growing towns, and in the family's new home in America, Secrets We Kept tells a story of ambition and cruelty, endurance and love, and, most of all, the bonds between women and generations that help them make peace with the past.

The Middle Passage: The Caribbean Revisited

In 1960, the government of Naipaul's home country, Trinidad, asked him to go back and write about what he saw. In The Middle Passage, Naipaul sees a Trinidadian movie crowd react to Humphrey Bogart's appearance by shouting, "That is man!" He goes to a slum in Trinidad called the Gaza Strip because it is so dirty. He watches a racially charged election campaign in British Guiana, which is now called Guyana, and is amazed by the arrogance of the people of Martinique, who pretend that their roads are extensions of France's routes nationales. Throughout the book, he talks about the horrible things that happened in the region's colonial past and shows how they still affect the language, politics, and ideals of the area. The result is a book that has the vividness and sharpness of a story and shows Naipaul at the top of his game.

Letters from London: Seven Essays by C.L.R. James

In 1932, C.L.R. James left Trinidad for the first time and went to the UK to follow his dreams of becoming a writer. During his first weeks in London, he wrote a number of strong, opinionated essays for the Port of Spain Gazette. In these essays, he talked about what he thought of the city and its people and how he moved through the Bohemian circles of Bloomsbury. These essays, which James wrote during a very important time in his life, are being released here for the first time in seventy years.

~ All these summaries came from goodreads except the last one which came from google books

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ikusayu-no-hana · 1 year

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guden thought dump

(pronouns will vary, it's not deep I prommy)

the OP is so so so hot everyone is x100 more beautiful somehow . FANS. truly whats hotter than women dancing w fans. actual fav op after kiden's.

ok so im v bad at parsing lyrics in songs of any language by solely hearing them but im p sure they mention Ishiyama - the temple at which it is said murasaki shikibu wrote out the entire tale.

i've heard that ayana has a background in ballet?? norimune could high kick me any day of the week

being bi really amplifies things

hajimeyouka ^^

well the goal here is to make the tale of genji into actual history. that would implicate and fuck up the existing imperial lineage ig.

its soooo weird to see kasen being so friendly and vibing w his teammates bc usually he has a massive stick up him . he even lets ookurikara go his own separate way pursuing the shikigami (?) like???? thats a step up from the hostility theyd share n he's more trusting of kara in this honmaru.

individual fights now. norimune really is stealing the show i cant tear my eyes off herrrr.

its so cute how nansen and himetsuru call each other hime no aniki and nan-kun........ and nansen being taller than hime too. like an elegant elder sibling indulging the younger scruffier one.

hmmm so in GM the 'rainy night conversation' scene where genji and co. r dissecting what kind of woman would be the best to pursue takes place in hahakigi, literally the second chapter, and the opinions of women they put forth in the text r presented as worldly advice that spurs genji to realize that he loves fujitsubo, and in the long run, also shapes his motivations behind kidnapping wakamurasaki ("it is probably not a bad idea to take a wholly childlike, tractable wife and form her yourself as well you can"). while the entire thing does reek of misogyny its more nuanced and bealievable given that the characters justify their opinions w anecdotes (also very fucked up in their own right). guden sort of downplayed the nuance there by solely having genji, to-no-chuji et al focus on beauty and a few quick lines resembling a summary of one or two paragraphs of to-no-chujo. it serves its purpose but......i would have liked it to be a bit longer.....

OHHH MY GOD one of them says 「美しさは人を惑わせる」 / beauty leads people astray which is just like kasen saying 「美しさは兎角人を狂わせる」 / beauty tends to drive people to madness' in kiden. didnt realize my blog title could fit both sutes

*touken danshi roasting the misogynistic convo* this has so many layers bc. written by a woman -> story centred around a casanova -> adapted into a stage play for a franchise that only has male characters -> all of the roles are played by actresses

this kasen uses his hands while talking and its such an extrovert trait its throwing me off lol.

gyoukan: between the lines of the text vs honpen: main story. so gyoukan is the designated period where the people behind the roles of the characters of genji monogatari retain their original sense of self, while during honpen they completely become the characters n forget their real selves. so koshosho no kimi (one of murasaki shikubu's close friends) is the antagonistic empress mother of the tale, kokiden no nyogo.

hmmm i wonder what the mechanism that determines the turnover of gyoukan/honpen is. the touken danshi arrive in heian-kyo, and find the entire era under control of this dichotomous influence, but how did the hra even manage to pull off smth on this scale? and why even give leeway to the touken danshi to break this process by keeping the gyoukan as a loophole?

but actually id say gyoukan serves its purpose in expanding upon the finer aspects behind the work and working it into the narrative.

so murasaki shikibu's caught on to the fact that the novel's story should be destroyed to stop this historical aberration and passes the book onto koshosho no kimi's keeping and thats why shes been resisting the forced characterization even tho its honpen rn

they made rokujou no miyasudokoro an ONMYOJI

koshosho hands three books to kasen. im glad they kept this little detail bc in fact genji monogatari is divided into three parts: the first two deal with the life of Genji and the last w two of Genji's prominent descendants, niou no miya and kaoru. theres much academic contention abt how much of the later chapters murasaki shikibu herself wrote, whether there were supposed to be more chapters, all the complications added from the fact that no original text exists etc etc but sute's understandably not involving itself w all that.

how come rokujou Knows shes in a story,,,,

like what is the criteria for someone to be aware theyre an actor

norimune's so Pretty its like hes a statue in a display case made to be revered . the curves of your lips rewrite history etc

kasen literally has sparkles in his eyes when talking abt how genji is a tale of love + how his prev master was one who lived alongside love and nansen paws him and says 'you bring up your former master everytime' wwww

norimune and himetsuru whispering to each other behind norimunes fan is,. literally the peak sexy use of a fan

apparently hosokawa yuusai used to be regarded as an authority on genji .... and thats why kasen is so passionate in his explanation of it. what a nerd (affectionate)

nansen being disgusted by the fact that genjis #1 love was a woman that resembled his mother . girl it gets worse hang on tight

make way for the hottest most haunting fucking part of this sute (starts reciting th names of all 54 chapters) boy am i glad i read all the chapters guden covers

honpen time....utsusemi's chapter. really fun that they included the snippy remarks towards genjis lecherous insistence and nansen's tsukkomi to genji flattering himself. this man keeps getting more and more disgusted by genjis actions towards women its so funny

yeah they did the sex.

the poem that earns utsusemi her name in genji monogatari (just gonna shorten that to GM from now on) is: 'underneath this tree, where the molting cicada shed her empty shell / my longing still goes to her, for all i know her to be' referring to the kimono she leaves behind while escaping him. but the poem kasen recites is 'just as drops of dew settle on cicada wings, concealed in this tree / secretly, oh secretly, these sleeves are wet with my tears' which is actually utsusemi's own reply to genjis aforementioned poem in GM.

RARE kasen boke moment. at least he realized he shouldnt make utsusemi accept genjis advances for the sake of distorting GM's plot bc that would be against her wishes. consent > tentatively correcting history. rare W there. genji could never.

interesting moral conflict here...norimune and choumou would rather cut down petty things like consent for the greater good of protecting history.

ookurikara went on a solo mission to confront genji while the rest (all 5 of them) go witness utsusemis chapter. so their plan mutsve been to break apart the story by either distorting the women's part of the story, or killing genji himself. what kind of insane confidence did kasen have to let kara go on his own to kill genji lol. also whats with the uneven team distribution....

ookurikara smack cam😔😔

genji cant die bc it isnt his time to die, as per GM. so he has infinite revival and plot protection to back him up

ironic that genji calls kara dekuningyou/ wooden puppet as an insult for a hollow and manipulated being bc at the end of the day isnt he also supposed to be bound by the story thats woven around him? yeah hes gained sentience now, but originally he existed inside the fourth wall, just like originally touken danshi used to be metal. but then again, this role-reversal has been brought about precisely so that his story will be recorded as reality, as his own actions, and that would make him better than sword puppets who will always be invisible and obedient toward the saniwa.

kasen: thank you for your hard work, i appreciate it ^^

kara: im not ur errand boy

kasen: ya thats why i expressed my gratitude (classist nod)

no one perfectly knows what the creator intended save for the creator themself, so only murasaki shikibu can know the contents of kumogakure, and she alone will be able to kill him.

thats the 'lack' in GM which leaves the death subject to interpretation. what genjis last moments are like, who he was surrounded by, etc etc will never be known to us. but since theres no description of his death, in what manner will he die....

for the love of god theyre SOOOO. (not meant in a shippy way tbc)

rokujou's actress is so good. thats a fucking villain alright.

hmm when the characters place blame on murasaki shikibu for making them the way they are, theyre also discounting the coherence and agency of the tale that has its roots in courtly affairs

with sentience also comes the indispensable fourth wall . and the newfound denial of free will.

chilllllls when genji wraps the manuscript around kasen as the newly formed genji.

"a tWeLvE LAyErEd KiMiNo woNt SuiT yOU" BET

ughfjdhjsdhvjksnj aoi no ue's baby fjkdsnfkjsdnvjkdsbnfjbwkjfnrkjfnekfnjewbfskdfnrkfnuejfnskjfnjsefnefkjbejkfn this scene is so kfjsndjfkjdnjvkbfgjbdfvnwsedrftgybhnjkmnhbgfrdecfvgbhjbgfdsrxcgvhbjnkmjhuygtfrdtfwghdvbcehefbiuwgnuwifn 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 FUCK😭😭😭😭😭😭KASEN AS GENJI HOLDING HIS BABY 😭😭😭😭😭

BECAUSE THATS SOMETHING NO TOUKEN DANSHI WILL EVER GET TO EXPERIENCE IT MAKES ME A LITTLE INSANE

hes a father....like an Actual Biological father......

ok but that doesnt happen in GM like in no shape or form do they share a happy-married-couple-cradling-their-child moment like that but also i am not complaining

youve got to fucking wonder when aoi says "resembling hikaru-gimi, how beautiful you are!" to her baby is it resembling kasen. Like does she mean the abstract concept of beauty that is general rather than particular or does it have purple hair blue eyes etc. sorry

ach whys sanchoumou spouting nikkaris battle lines. and norimune's saying kogarasumaru's and hime's doing hasebe's

actually i really like this. the government's actually outdone itself . using the power of anecdotes of swords and attaching them to unrelated swords to make them stronger...well ofc the expected end result is for mkzk and to sort out the number he's done on the timeline, but this is still! so! delightfully fucked up!! the end result of increased power takes precedence over individual stories!!! the ichimonji themselves dont seem to mind the fact they might just be an experimental citadel after all .

does that mean that kasen having gracia as master wouldve made him stronger than if he was regular old kasen w tadaoki ..? and ookurikara being stronger without the date attachment ..? but they still do retain their original characteristics. except that kasen is not as intense. <-idk if thats just the way kaichan interprets him or it's intentional writing

hello ms murasaki shikibu finally. fitting that the author takes the role of she who is forever out of genjis reach, and the person playing genji is an avid GM fan thats willing to doom history as we know it to save the author. get you a man like that etc etc<- NOT.

its so very sad that genji has to find a replacement for fujitsubo in a child of all places.

'Because it's from zuka and the cast is all female, the harshness is alleviated, and because it's a female cast, the hellishness of the women who live the story as reality stands out' <- someone i follow on twt said this and its so so true

ive read a bit of murasaki shikibus diary + the context of it and the reason why people were so dissuasive of murasaki was bc she was keen on pursuing the chinese texts and those were, as a rule, male territory. while men concerned themselves w chinese characters, women wrote in kana, and . that is why the big fabric of script they use in guden has only kana on it !! bc its a tale by a women for women. 'The Tale of Genji’s readership too has been naturalized female, at times discussed as if women were the exclusive audience of the tale, not least because by Murasaki’s time in the Heian period fictional tales had long been identified as a generic category for women.' (x)

lmfaoo suetsumuhana's actress-courtier saying she didnt like sei shonagon's makura no soushi as much as shikibu's GM (<- context is that shonagon served the empress teishi and was the literary jewel of her entourage while shikibu was empress soshi's. shikibu had some not-so-polite words to say abt shonagon in her diary w)

rattles cage DEATH OF THE AUTHOR DEATH OF THE AUTHORRR

perhaps soshi asking shikibu abt why she decided to write a tale of 'man and woman' is the only instance she was asked abt her intentions behind it

i like shikibus answer actually. it doesnt advocate for separatism of the 'man' and 'woman' binary, but shelters the motivations and flaws of characters under the umbrella of simply 'people'. ofc the book is a criticism of male whims and ofc guden does take it that way, but the motivations and fates of all characters cannot be put solely in the neat category of 'due to gender', bc in the end even the characters and ofc shikibu herself realize that this is how the wider society has molded them to be. so, it is 'a tale of people'

thatd mean touken danshi are outsiders with no relation or stakes in the tale, they are neither women who have loved/endured affairs, nor are they men that whimsically toy around in love. they are there to voice (ours, the audience's) morality.

so the logic used by th Nobody is: waka and poems are permissible bc they r expressions of the heart, but not prose that contains fiction, which is why writers like izumi shikibu and sei shonagon will be spared while murasaki shikibu will fall into hell. all out of respect for buddhist precepts. (mental note to translate shiotsuki shu's blog entry soon)

and making the lie that is GM into reality/truth will absolve shikibu of her sins

just realized...didn't Ishiyama temple become a sort of tourist spot for allegedly being the spot where GM was completed? Ironic how such a 'heretical' piece of work could come into being in the house of god.

really good stuff in this paper

seeing how protests only arose from the 12th century on and there arent any surviving records of such criticism from the time shikibu wrote , im inclined to think that maybe the unnamed man that confronts shikibu is literally some rando guy from the latter centuries that got picked up by the HRA, from when the availability of printed books led to GM being way more accessible . bc come to think of it - its highly unlikely shikibu would Not know a courtier, the only class that was in the know abt GM. but then again, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so maybe putting that 'nobody' there as a placeholder male aristocrat is so he can serve as vehicle for the problems that arise when fiction is come across by those who were unintended as target readers in the first place, in this case, men.

also its sort of ironic how the guy (the nobody) is overly concerned with the metaphysical fate of shikibu while the flow of history has proved agin and again that she remained not only an author that was respected and idealized, but also a historian that was treated as a valuable source on heian noble etiquette. typical patriarchal delusion stemming from misplaced concern.

well either way, whether all this is true or not, its p clear that there have been exaggerations and unproved myths surrounding shikibu and GM all along, whether be for or against, so should another lie really make any difference in the grand scheme of things?

'....aren't we also a big lie? what a sinful existence are touken danshi' norimunes fucking line deliveryyyy

i bet real genji made quick work of koremitsu during gyoukan to appear in front of genji!kasen as koremitsu himself lol

ah the ave maria from kiden

when the fuck did they discover they can travel to diff chapters by flipping pages ???????? itd be funny if kasen just realised that spur of the moment

fitting that empress soshi mentions chuang tzu's 'butterfly who dreams' analogy to describe their situation bc historically, she was so interested in chinese lit that she studied it under shikibu's guidance

wait so this has strayed far enough from reality that the intention has transformed this genji monogatari re-enactment into a genji kuyo? oh this FUCKS

norimune's old man laughter >>>>> mkzk's old man laughter

'the only actual person here is that man playing genji?!' theyre in platos cave. theyre all in platos cave. we were all in platos cave until now. we were all butterflies dreaming we're humans.

its the fact that everything was truly black and white until now history was history and GM was a story that was well liked until some guy came along, threw everything into chaos, managed to mix up actual existences with falsified ones, gave rise to incoherence in the story due to the existence of multiple genjis at the same time, with the sole hope that in the future some people would dig up his bones and recognize GM as a true story, but the only way to stop this contradiction is itself a contradiction: killing the main genji in kumogakure would indeed lift the altered existence of heian-kyo, but it would also accomplish his death which was what he hoped for in the first place. is this really then a plot with no holes?

good lord but that is quite a nose on suetsumuhana. it looks like...something else entirely. not gonna say what

wakey wakey @ ookurikara. congrats to date masamune for appearing in three difftypes of stage adaptations

ive said it already but its so striking how different the types of scenes we're shown of kasen as genji and kara as genji are. kasen's always romancing and getting the best scenes while kara isnt shown romancing at all

norimune is a beaut x100

GOD himes fight sequence w all the wings flapping sfx and the twirling is so elegant ..... what was that HRA formation tho lol they were just being goofy

did i mention norimune is so mesmerizing everytime she's onstage . the sex appeal is off the charts like genuinely

i keep forgetting its a woman in ookurikaras role bc she looks so cool.

I will literally never get tired of the sute trope of having kasen's fight sequences the last w dramatic music precluding his appearance onstage and him spreading his arms wide and going ware koso wa nosada ga hitofuri, kasen kanesada nari! and then wrecking shit up (god there r so many similarities between this fight and kidens hissatsu fight)

shut upppp shut up the kuyou spotlight circling the kikyou spotlight as he realizes his true story >!>!!>I!UH@*#$%^&*(struggles to breathe

final form genji looks like hes stepped out a wuxia novel. jun wu vibes fr

yayyy final fight

i think so far in the entire play norimune's had her stomach slashed in the same place thrice

i like how they include little waltz (?) dance steps into hime's fight choreo

CHILLS as norimune says theyre not the ones who'll kill genji and then all the women walk on stage

ummmmmmmmmmmmmm

🔪⁉️

uhhhhhhh

-_-

the honpen retains its influence on them....ofc they wont be the ones to kill genji. that would be incoherent with the storyline . what do you call it when the characters drawn by a woman for women are in the end too crippled by love to kill the source of their suffering? .... someone who is until the end mean in his love....

after rewinding multiple times......yes wakamurasaki does stick the knife into herself . the thrust overlaps w kasen pushing his sword into genji + lights go off so its jus t silhouettes

its so fitting that genji dies right after wakamurasaki here since kumogakure follows right after maboroshi (the chapter in GM where wakamurasaki dies)

whats a little homoerotic cheek cupping between enemies...heh

we cannot leave heiankyo in any media without mentioning shuten douji ofc

kasen................why . how do you justify that

they let th HRA fucken run off w genjis dead body like bro. BRO I AM SHAKIGN YOU SO HARD . HIS CORPSE WAS RIGHT THERE HOW COME NOBODY THOUGHT OF HOLDING ON TO IT TO YKNOW, ACCOMPLISH THE MISSION THEY CAME HERE FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE .

AND DNA TESTING EXISTS????????????? COULDNT THE GUY'S BONES BE TESTED AND THEREFORE PROVED NOT TO BE GENJI BC HIS GENE POOL WOULD NOT MATCH THAT OF THE PREVIOUS IMPERIAL LINE OR SMTH. I DOUBT THE HRA METICULOUSLY PROGRAMMED THE STORY TO MAGICALLY ALTER THE GENETIC MAKEUP OF THE GUY

kasen says its alright bc itll be imperceptible but. no ? if GM is proved to be real it won't be the first fictional novel discovered anymore??? that's a Big thing

nyan's silliness is so refreshing after That

what. was that contradiction. why . what was the neeeed for a flimsy ending like that. just to secure their citadel's destruction? semt-san i know youre better than thisss i know you can write a complicated ending to your complicated premise but this really wasnt it

'even though you might be broken, gozen sure is carefree' lets just carry on like normal after saying that yeah

hime saw kasen stuck in platos cave slowly realizing he should turn around and said no we hold on to the illusion that everythign right in frotn of us is reality. harsh ? maybe, but it coheres. the ichimonji are after all government tools.

hell is other people hell is us . theres so much potential here for sequels of zukatousute, esp since they brought up og tousute's manba and mkzk. feels cruel to leave that honmaru hanging.

curtain call now

shu is so cute she talked abt how she was out of letter sets so she couldnt send her honmaru's nansen for his kiwame

sayato sumiki saying she'll feel #gudenloss

noooooo maomao is so close to tears ;-; but also WOW the gap moe

so ayana's voice is so much higher than what she uses for norimune... i could listen to her for hours ….. heart is taking -1000 dmg

zachouuuuuuuuuuu aaaaaaaaa. [mimes closing a book] "i believe its time to close this story." *someone from the cast whispering "kawaii!"*

all in all, i think the genji monogatari + jinbutsu storyline was pretty solid and did make for a gripping plot but the ending that the touken danshi chose troubles me to no end......ideally kara wouldve snatched genjis corpse and theyd have given him a proper cremation and theyd have pondered the same things they do after the hra take away genji

or what would also have been fun is kasen and kara realizing their altered stories were due to the government's tampering and thus letting go of genji was a conscious decision between two of them setting up for a nice kurikase / ichimonji-seifu dichotomy where they chose to remain true to themselves while the ichimonji willingly give their stories up and resign themselves to being mere tools

......plus the fact that none of them ever mentioned smth like hope to see you in another sute work! in the curtain call...........aaaa it's too sad

#randomeows #tousute

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nevermindirah · 3 years

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I hope Simone Biles gets to curl up in the fluffiest blanket and hear the funniest jokes from her very favorite people today.

She's 24 years old — she's an adult, and damn did it show today when she was put in the position of announcing to the world that mental illness symptoms caused her to withdraw from an Olympic event. But fuck, 24 is so young. The idea of being forced to disclose what are probably very severe mental illness symptoms to a global audience while those symptoms are happening, my heart just breaks for her.

The media talks about Simone Biles like she's a superhuman. And hell yes, she's the most exceptional gymnast in history! Rave about her all day long! But she is a goddamn human being. I'd forgotten that Larry Nasser abused her, because the media attention is so laser-focused on her historic talent. The media didn't let me forget that asshole abused Aly Raisman.

I just, the human mind was not built for the intense scrutiny this young woman is facing. And so many of our institutions were built specifically to extract money from the dehumanization of Black women. I just really, really hope all the people who love her are holding and protecting her.

Simone Biles makes stunning withdrawal; U.S. women’s gymnastics takes silver

American gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from her final Olympics team competition in Tokyo on July 27, which ultimately lead to Team USA taking silver. (Allie Caren/The Washington Post)

full article under the cut

By Emily Giambalvo Today (Tuesday July 27, 2021) at 1:39 p.m. EDT

TOKYO — When Simone Biles soars through the air, her skills flow in an effortless rhythm that makes the extraordinary seem simple. She’s been superhumanly dominant for nearly a decade, even with a load of pressure and expectation always resting on her shoulders. But as Biles pushed off the vaulting table Tuesday night, her first flight of the evening, a peculiar sight emerged: She looked lost and shaken as she flipped and twisted, unable to perform the skill she intended.

So Biles did the unthinkable. She stepped away from the meet and her role in the United States’ quest for another Olympic gold medal in the women’s gymnastics team competition.

After her unusual vault, Biles scurried out of the arena with a medical staffer by her side. She said she realized she wasn’t in “the right head space.” When she returned to the competition floor, she pulled her sweatsuit over her leotard and hugged her three teammates, who suddenly became aware they would have to compete without her.

At first, they were stressed and in tears. Ultimately, they earned a silver medal, placing second to the Russian Olympic Committee team.

At 24, Biles is the veteran on the women’s team. But she says she doesn’t trust herself as she used to. The sport doesn’t feel as much fun, she says. Nerves bubble to the surface, especially in the high-stakes environment of an Olympic gymnastics team final. And on Tuesday, it all became too much for the world’s best gymnast.

“I know that this Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself,” Biles said afterward, tearing up. “I came here, and I felt like I was still doing it for other people. So that just hurts my heart that doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people.”

Biles stands among the world’s most popular athletes. She holds power to spark change with her words. She’s been an outspoken critic of USA Gymnastics, the national governing body she represents, and how it failed to protect gymnasts from sexual abuse. Biles is the only self-identified survivor of former national team doctor Larry Nassar’s crimes still competing at the elite level.

After the United States qualified for the team final in second place on Sunday, Biles wrote on social media: “I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times.”

When asked about those comments following her decision to withdraw from the team final, Biles said: “Yeah, that s---- heavy.”

Five years ago, when Biles led the United States to a gold medal at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, she probably wouldn’t have made the choice to withdraw, she told reporters. She said she might have pushed through, attempting dangerous skills while second-guessing herself and “fighting all those demons” that occupied her mind. In 2021, she said, withdrawing was the right option — for her safety and even for the team’s medal chances.

“We want to walk out of here,” Biles said. “Not be dragged out of here on a stretcher or anything. So it's like, got to do what's best for me and that was what was best for the team.”

Biles arrived in Tokyo with the expectation that she could earn up to five gold medals. Now she has a silver and a spot in five individual finals — the all-around competition, as well as the final for each apparatus. But she doesn’t know what lies ahead for her at these Games.

“We’re going to take it a day at a time and we’ll see what happens,” Biles said. She confirmed that she had no physical injury, “just my pride is hurt a little bit.”

With the all-around final Thursday, Biles admits that there will be a quick turnaround. Annie Heffernon, the vice president of the U.S. women’s gymnastics program, said USA Gymnastics has a plan in place to help get Biles the professional support she needs. Biles said in the past, therapy has helped with mental health challenges. But this high-stress atmosphere of the Olympics made the struggle on the competition floor too much to overcome.

“Going into the next couple days, it’s like …” Biles said, pausing to collect her emotions as her teammates wrapped their arms around her. “Sorry,” she then said. “It is what it is. Whatever happens, happens.”

Biles could return to herself — a dominant gymnast who understands that her performance here is secondary. Or she might not feel comfortable enough to compete again. Biles said her goal for the rest of the Olympics is to “focus on my well-being and [that] there’s more to life than just gymnastics.”

As Biles trained for her second Olympics, she said she wanted the Games to be about herself — not about what others thought and not all those otherworldly expectations that she can somehow usually meet anyway. As these Games approached, she said, she felt that mind-set drifting. The struggles seeped into her training, prompting mental errors. The vault in the team final was the first public sign that something was not right, but her teammates had witnessed similar episodes in practices.

“She was giving us a little heart attack,” teammate Jordan Chiles said.

“It just sucks that it happens here at the Olympic Games, because it can happen any other time,” Biles said. “But with the year that it’s been, I’m really not surprised how it played out.”

As Biles stood on the sideline Tuesday night wearing a white sweatsuit and cheering for her teammates, she processed the drastic decision she had made on the sport’s biggest stage.

“At the end of the day we’re human, too,” Biles said, “We have to protect our mind and our body rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.”

#this is devastating #simone biles #mental health #abuse cw #misogynoir #i'm so tired #olympics #mine

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

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More ask answer about Word of Honour (山河令, WoH) and the so-called “Dangai 101 phenomenon” under the cut ~ with all the M/M relationships shown on screen, does it mean improved acceptance / safety for the c-queer community?

Due to its length (sorry!), I’ve divided the answer into 3 parts: 1) Background 2) Excerpts from the op-eds 3) Thoughts This post is PART 1 ❤️. As usual, please consider the opinions expressed as your local friendly fandomer sharing what they’ve learned, and should, in no ways, be viewed as necessarily true. :)

(TW: homophobic, hateful speech quoted)

After WoH had started airing, I had waited for one of China’s state-controlled media to publish opinion pieces about the show. Specifically, I’d like to know ~ what is the administration’s current take on Dangai (耽改), as a genre? How does it characterise the closeness of the same-sex leads—the closeness that is suppressed when the original IP, of the genre Danmei (耽美) was converted for visual media presentation?

This is important, as China is a country where the government’s attitude becomes the official public attitude. The state opinion pieces will be quoted and parroted, especially if they come from heavy-weight sources (state-controlled media also have their importance/influence hierarchy). Production of the upcoming Dangai dramas will adjust their scripts accordingly. Marketing tactics will also adjust, make sure it doesn’t spread “the wrong message”; Dangai and Danmei dramas have both been pulled off shelves during or immediately after its airing before (Addicted 上癮 and Guardian 鎮魂, respectively), despite having already passing the censorship board.

If a heavy-weight state opinion piece pans the one-lead-fawning-over-the-other scenes in WoH (there are a few of them), for example, scenes / lines of such suggestive nature will likely disappear from the upcoming Dangai dramas for at least a year or two. If the critique spills over to a harsh stance against the presence of queers in Chinese media, all future Dangai dramas can become strict “socialist-brotherhood” stories, their “no homo” message reinforced by, for example, by inserting a female lead (or changing one of the leads to female).

Whether the official public opinion equates the true public opinion or not, public behaviour in China is quickly driven by the official public opinion. Example: the Xi regime’s conservative stance on queer issues has already translated to a quick deterioration of queer tolerance in China; open expressions that were tolerated, even welcomed, just several years ago are now met with significant hostility in the public.

This is a reflection of the nature of their government. A quick thought experiment may explain this. Take … jaywalking. It’s probably fair to say we’ve all committed this “crime” before?

Will you still jaywalk if your government declares it immoral to do so? Where I am, in the United States, the answer is definitely a no. The public will probably laugh at (and make memes about) the poor official who made the declaration, kindly ask the government to do something useful for once (f*** off), and keep jaywalking.

Now, what if the declaration comes with a law that includes a one-year prison term + lifelong criminal record for jaywalking? Let’s say this law is fully executable and irreversible, given this being a thought experiment—nothing you, or the public, can say or do can contest it.

Will you still jaywalk, even if you disagree with government’s stance that the act is immoral? You’ve got a neighbour who continues to defy the law. Will you think twice before letting your young loved ones go out with them?

Very soon, jaywalking becomes “bad”—even though such “badness” had little moral basis at its origin. It is bad because the government has “characterised” it to be so—an authoritarian government that doesn’t allow challenge of the characterisation.

The retention of queer elements in Dangai is the jaywalking in the example. The Chinese government stepping in to characterise (定性) an event, a phenomenon etc is common, and the people know the drill well that they fall in line quickly.

If a powerful state-controlled media publish a negative opinion piece on the queer elements in Dangai / Danmei, therefore, those elements can disappear overnight.

My question had been: will the state do it? The Xi regime has made its distaste for LGBT+ representation in visual media abundantly clear with its NRTA directives. However, while the Chinese government typically puts ideology (意識型態) as its Guiding Principle, exceptions have always been made for one reason. One word.

Money.

TU is a legendary financial success story every production company (Tencent itself included) wants to replicate. As a result, there are ~ 60 Danmei IPs (book canon) with their copyright sold for Dangai dramas; this long line of Danmei dramas in the horizon has been nicknamed “Dangai 101”, after the name of the show “Produce 101” Dd was dance instructor in. These dramas are all competing to be the next TU by profit.

Adoration from fans is nice, but money is what matters.

C-ent is currently in a financial bleak winter. The anti-corruption, anti-tax-fraud campaign started by the Xi regime in 2018, which cumulated to a sudden (and unofficial) collection of 3 years of back-taxes from studios and stars, has drained a significant amount of its capital; the number of new TV dramas being filmed fell 45% between 2018 and 2019, and production companies have been closing by the tens of thousands. The tightening of censorship rules also means production is associated with more risk. The commercial sector outside c-ent is also eager for replications of TU’s success—they need more “top traffic” (頂流) idols like Gg and Dd whose fans are sufficiently devoted to drive the sales of their products. Such “fan economy” would benefit the government, even if it doesn’t have direct stakes in the companies in and outside c-ent. People’s Daily, the Official State Newspaper, previously published a positive opinion piece on fan economy in 2019, estimating its worth at 90 billion RMB (~13.7 billion USD) per year.

But if the state allows the queer elements in Dangai’s to pass the censorship board (NRTA) for profit, how can it do so with the current “No homo” directive in place? From previous experience (scarce as it may be), the queerness has to be sufficiently obvious for the shows to make the profit everyone is wishing for. Dangai dramas in which the leads’ romantic relationship remains subtle have not sold the way TU does, even if they are well-reviewed and feature famous, skilled actors (as Winter Begonia 鬓边不是海棠红 last year.)

NRTA, and the government behind it, can’t just say I’m turning a blind eye to the flirting and touching for the money. What can it say then?

Here’s what I’d thought—what it can say, or do, is to “characterise” these Dangai dramas in a way that leave out its queerness. It did so for TU. TU’s review by the overseas version of People’s Daily devoted a grand total of two characters to describe WWX and LWJ’s relationship—摯友 (“close friend”). The rest of the article was devoted to the drama’s aesthetics, its cultural roots. (The title of the article: 《陳情令》：書寫國風之美 Chen Qing Ling: Writing the Beauty of National Customs).

How could it do that? The State’s power ensuring few questioning voices aside, I’ve been also thinking about the history and definition of Danmei (耽美)—Dangai’s parent genre as the causes. Based on the history and definition, I can think of 3 ways the queer elements in Danmei (耽美) can be characterised by the state, 2 of which provide it with the wiggle room, the movable goalposts it needs should it choose to want to overlook the queerness in Dangai.

The 3 characterisations I’ve thought of, based on the history and definition of Danmei (耽美) are:

1) The queer characterisation, which focuses on its homoerotic element. * Summary of the characterization: Danmei is gay.

2) The “traditional BL” characterisation, which focuses on BL’s historic origin as a “by women, for women” genre. The M/M setup is viewed as an escapist protest against the patriarchy, a rejection of traditional gender roles; displays of M/M closeness are often “candies” for the female gaze. * Summary of the characterization: Danmei is women’s fantasy.

3) The aesthetic characterisation, which focuses on beauty—from the beauty of the characters, the beauty of a world without harm to the romance. * Summary for the characterization: Danmei is pretty.

The queer characterisation (1) is well-understood, and likely the default characterisation if it is to be made by the fraction of i-fandom I’m familiar with. Most i-fans I’ve met, myself included, would likely and automatically associate the M/M relationships in The Untamed (TU) and WoH with queerness.

The “traditional BL” characterisation (2), meanwhile, equates Danmei with BL as the genre of homoerotic works developed in 1970’s Japan for women comic readers, and has been widely interpreted from a feminist point of view.

Under such interpretation of “traditional BL” works, the double male lead setup wasn’t meant to be an accurate depiction of homosexuality. It wasn’t about homosexuality at all. Rather, it was about the removal of women and along with it, the rage, the eye-rolling, the unease women readers had often felt when attempting to interact with mainstream romance novels of the time, in which the female leads had mostly been confined to traditional women roles, and their virtue, their traditional feminine traits.

The M/M setup therefore acted as a “shell” for a het relationship that allowed removal of such social constraints placed on women. The lead with whom the woman audience identified was no longer bound to the traditional role of women, such as being the caregiver of the family. The lead could instead chase their dreams and roam the world, as many contemporary women already did or aspired to do; they were no longer limited to playing the passive party in life and in the relationship—and they enjoyed such freedom without risking the love, the respect the other male protagonist felt for them.

BL, in this traditional sense, has therefore been interpreted as an answer for, and a protest against the heteropatriarchal gender norm still dominant in societies deeply influenced by Confucianism, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China. The M/M setup is, at heart, (het) women’s fantasy. The inclusion of two young-and-beautiful male leads also satisfy “the female gaze” ~ the popularity of BL among het women has therefore been compared to the popularity of lesbian porn among het men. In both cases, the audience is drawn not for the homosexual element but by the presence of double doses of sexual attraction.

(Please forgive me if any of my wording comes as disrespectful! I’m not used to talking about these topics.)

The availability of the “traditional BL” characterisation (2) is key to bypassing queerness as a topic in the discussions of Danmei (耽美).

The aesthetic characterisation (3) is very closely related to 2) in origin, but deserves its own point as a characterisation that can stand on its own, and may be more obscure to the English-speaking fandom given the common English translation of Danmei (耽美) as Boy’s Love.

Boy’s Love, as a name, amplifies the queer characterisation (1) and de-emphasises the aesthetic characterisation (3); Danmei (耽美), meanwhile, does the reverse.

Where does the name Danmei come from?

When BL was first developed in Japan, it used to have a now out-of-fashion genre name: Tanbi. Tanbi was borrowed from same name describing a late 19th century / early 20th century Japanese literary movement, known as Tanbi-ha and was inspired by Aestheticism in England. Aestheticism “centered around the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose”. Along the same line, the core belief of authors of Tanbi-ha was that art should celebrate beauty and reject the portrayal of ugliness in human nature, the darkness of reality:

…Tanbi writers argued that the ideas of naturalism writers such as “objectivism,” “truth is more important than beauty” and so on would “oppress human beings’ desire” so as to “lose beauty and human nature.” Accordingly, they insisted on “acute mental and emotional sensibility” [Ye, 2009].

(Source, with more details on Tanbi.)

Neither romance nor homosexuality were requirements for works in the original Tanbi-ha genre. BL borrowed the name Tanbi because its early authors saw their work created under the same principles: the emphasis on the beauty of their characters, their love (romantic and platonic), in a world that was also beautiful and untouched by ugliness such as sexism and homophobia.

The stubborn persistence on keeping one’s eyes trained on the beautiful, the willingness to turn a blind eye to reality for the sake of the beauty is built-in in the genre’s name. Tanbi meant more than beauty, aesthetics; its kanji form was written as 耽美; 耽 = to sink, drown in, to over-indulge in; 美 = beauty.

Tanbi, therefore, literally means to drown in, to over-indulge in beauty.

Over time, as the genre expanded its writing style, Tanbi eventually fell out of favour as BL’s genre name in Japan. However, as it gained popularity in the Sinosphere in the 1990s, starting with Taiwan and Hong Kong, the kanji of Tanbi was retained as the Chinese name of the genre.

In Mandarin Chinese, 耽美 is pronounced Danmei. A hyperfocus on the aesthetics, the utopian aspects of traditional BL is therefore retained in Danmei by its name. People’s Daily could therefore devote its review of TU on its aesthetics. Realism, including politics and all discussions of social issues, can therefore be swept aside in the name of respecting the genre’s tradition.

I’ve mostly been reading about and observing c-fandom, and I believe these 3 characterisations have all attracted its own kind of fans. Fans who care and talk about queer issues even when it isn’t encouraged by their sociopolitical environment, who shine a light upon these issues in their fan works. Fans who treat the M/M leads as if they were a traditional cishet couple, such as calling one of the leads 老婆 (wife) and assigning him biologically female functions when needed (via, for example, the ABO trope). Fans who insist the works must meet their beauty standards, rejecting those that fail (for example, if the leads are not good looking enough) by claiming they’re there for Danmei, not Danchou (耽醜, “over-indulgence on ugliness”). Fans who are drawn to the genre by a combination of these characterisations.

By the history and definition of the genre, all the above reasons for fanning Danmei are as valid, as legitimate as one another.

I thought about this related question then: are c-fans of the second (traditional BL characterisation) and third (aesthetic characterisation) groups homophobic? When I first asked this question, I—a fan whose fandom experience had been entirely in English-speaking communities—assume the answer was yes. I thought, in particular, the insistence of treating Danmei’s M/M couples as cishet couples in a homosexual shell had to be conscious queer erasure. How can anyone ignore the same-sexness of the leads? How can anyone talk about Danmei without associating it with homosexuality?

However, as I read more—again, specifically about c-fandom, and in Chinese—I realised the answer may be a little more complex.

Previously, I had largely thought about homophobia in terms of individual attitudes. This has to do with my current environment (liberal parts of the United States), in which the choice to accept or reject the queer community has become a close to personal choice. Pride flags fly all over the city, including the city hall, every summer, and most churches welcome the LGBT+ community. I hadn’t considered how an environment in which queers have never enjoyed full social exposure, in which education of related topics is sorely lacking, would affect Danmei’s development as a genre.

In such an environment, it is difficult for Danmei to evolve and incorporate up-to-date understanding of RL queerness.

The consequence I can see is this: Danmei is more likely to be “stuck” in its historical characterisation as (het) women’s fantasy inside than outside the Great Firewall, with its queerness de-emphasised if not erased—and it draws fans who are attracted to this kind of characterisation accordingly. This is, perhaps, reflected by the fact that the (het) women-to-queer ratio of Danmei / BL fans is significantly higher in China than in the West (Table 1 in this article summarises how Danmei / BL fans have split between different genders and sexual orientation in the Sinosphere vs the West in different research studies).

Another driving force I can see for Danmei to retain BL’s traditional feminist and aesthetic characterisations: women in China are not free from the social pressure that led to the birth of BL in 1970’s Japan. While many of them have achieved financial freedom through work and have high education, the young and educated have been subjected to immense pressure to get married and have children especially in the past decade.

In 2007, the China’s state feminist agency, the All-China Women’s Federation (中華全國婦女聯合會), coined the term 剩女 (literally, “leftover women”) for unmarried, urban women over 27 years old. The government started a campaign that, among other things, associated women’s education level with ugliness, and their unmarried status with pickiness, moral degeneracy. The reason behind the campaign: birth rates are plummeting and the state wants educated women, in particular, to nurture a high quality, next generation workforce. More importantly, the government sees a threat in the M/F sex imbalance (high M, low F) that has commonly been attributed to the country’s “one child policy” between 1979-2015, which encouraged female infanticide / abortion of female foetuses in a culture that favours surname-carrying boys. The state fears the unmarried men will become violent and/or gay, leading to “social instability and insecurity”. Therefore, it wants all women, in particular those who are educated, to enter the “wife pool” for these unmarried men. (Source 1, Source 2: Source 2 is a short, recommended read).

For Chinese women, therefore, patriarchy and sexism is far from over. Escapist fantasies where sexism is removed—by removing women from the picture—are therefore here to stay.

Danmei is therefore not queer literature (同志文學). The difference between Danmei and queer literature is highlighted by this reportedly popular saying (and its similar variations) in some Danmei communities:

異性戀只是傳宗接代，同性戀才是真愛 Heterosexuality is only for reproduction. Only homosexuality is true love.

The attitude towards heterosexuality is one of distaste, viewed as a means to an end the speaker has no interest in. On the contrary, homosexuality is idealised, reflecting the disregard / lack of understanding of some Danmei fans have towards the RL hardships of c-queers. The ignorance may be further propagated by gate-keeping by some Danmei fans for safety reasons, keeping queer discussions away from their communities for fear that their favourite hangouts would meet the same uncertain fate of other communities that previously held open queer discussions, such as the Weibo gay and lesbian supertopics. Such gatekeeping can, again, be easily enforced using tradition as argument: the beauty 美 is Tanbi and Danmei (耽美), remember, includes the beauty of utopia, where ugly truths such as discrimination do not enter the picture. A Danmei that explores, for example, the difficulty of coming out of the closet is no longer Danmei, by its historical, aesthetic definition.

[I’ve therefore read about c-queers viewing Danmei with suspicion, if not downright hostility; they believe the genre, by ignoring their RL challenges and casting them as beautiful, even perfect individuals, and in some cases, by fetishising them and their relationships, only leads to more misconceptions about the queer community. Dangai, meanwhile, has been viewed with even more distaste as potential weapons by the state to keep gays in the closet; if the government can shove the Danmei characters into the “socialist brotherhood” closet, it can shove them as well.

I haven’t yet, however, been able to tease out the approximate fraction of c-queers whose views of Danmei and Dangai is negative. The opposing, positive view of the genres is this: they still provide LGBT+ visibility, which is better than none and it would’ve been close to none without Danmei and Dangai; while Danmei may skim over the hardships of being queer, fan works of Danmei are free to explore them—and they have.

This article provides insights on this issue. @peekbackstage’s conversation with a Chinese film/TV director in Clubhouse is also well worth a read.]

That said, Danmei can only be dissociated from the queer characterisation if there’s a way to talk about the genre without evoking words and phrases that suggest homosexuality—something that is difficult to do with English. Is there?

In Chinese, I’d venture to say … almost. There’s almost a way. Close enough to pass.

The fact that M/M in traditional BL has been developed and viewed not as queer but as a removal of F also means this: queerness isn’t “built-in” into the language of Danmei. The name Danmei itself already bypasses a major “queer checkpoint”: it’s impossible to refer to a genre called Boy’s Love and not think about homosexuality.

Here’s one more important example of such bypass. Please let me, as an excuse to put these beautiful smiles in my blog, show this classic moment from TU; this can be any gif in which the leads are performing such suggestive romantic gestures:

How can I describe this succinctly? In English?

Two men acting in love? Er. That’s… the definition of gay, almost.

Two men acting gay? Well. GAY.

Right. Fine. Let’s go negative. Queerbaiting? … Still gay, because the word “queer” is in there.

[Pie note: for the record, I don’t think TU or WoH is queer-baiting.]

Personally, I find it impossible to describe the GIF above in English that I do not automatically associate with RL romantic love between two men, with homosexuality. But can I do it in Chinese?

… Yes.

There’s a term, 賣腐 (pronounced “maifu”), literally, “selling 賣 the rot 腐”, derived from the term known among i-fans as fujoshi and written, in kanji, as 腐女. Fujoshi, or 腐 (“rot”) 女 (“women”), describes the largely (het) female audience of the Japanese BL genre (>80%, according to Wikipedia). Originated as a misogynistic insult towards female Japanese BL fans in the 2000s, fujoshi was later reclaimed by the same female BL fans who now use the self-depreciative term as acknowledgement of their interest being “rotten”, for BL’s disregard of the society’s traditional expectations on women.

賣腐 is therefore to “sell the rot” to the rotten women; ie. the suggestive romantic gestures, exemplified by the GIF above, between the M/M leads are catering, performing fan service to their target audience.

[賣腐 is also a term one will see in the state opinion pieces.]

There’s nothing gay about this term.

I’ve therefore found it possible to talk and think in Chinese about Danmei while giving little thought to queerness. The history and definition of Danmei allow that.

Again, I’m not saying any of this to excuse homophobia among in Danmei and Dangai fandoms. The point I’m trying to make is this — given that Danmei has three potential characterisations, two of which can be discussed without abundantly evoking queer concepts and vocabularies, given that history of Danmei, as a genre, already favoured characterisation 2 (traditional BL), the government addressing homosexuality in its opinions on Danmei and Dangai is far from a given.

By extension, the popularity of Dangai may mean a lot or little to c-queers; by extension, the state can approve / disapprove of Danmei and Dangai in a manner independent of its stance on homosexuality, which is itself inconsistent and at times, logic-deying (example to come…).

This is both good and bad, from the perspective of both the government and the c-queer community.

For the government: as discussed, the “triality” of Danmei allows the state to “move the goalpost” depending on what it tries to achieve. It has characterisations 2 (the traditional BL characterisation) and 3 (the aesthetic characterisation) as excuses to let Dangai dramas pass the censorship board should it want their profit and also, their promise of expanding the country’s soft power overseas by drawing an international audience. These characterisations also allow the state to throw cold water on the popularity of Danmei / Dangai should it desire, for reasons other than its queer suggestions—despite the Xi regime’s push against open expressions of queerness (including by activism, in media), it has also been careful about not demonising c-queers in words, and has countered other people’s attempts to do so.

Why may the government want to throw cold water on Danmei and Dangai? They are still subculture, which the state has also viewed with suspicion. In 2018, a NRTA directive explicitly requested that “c-ent programmes should not use entertainers with tattoos; (those associated with) hip-hop culture, sub-cultures (non-mainstream cultures), decadent cultures.” (”另外，总局明确要求节目中纹身艺人、嘻哈文化、亚文化（非主流文化）、丧文化（颓废文化）不用。”).

Subculture isn’t “core socialist values”. More importantly, it’s difficult to keep up with and control subculture. 環球網, the website co-owned by People’s Daily and Global Times (環球時報), ie, The State Newspaper and The State Tabloid, famously said this on its Weibo, on 2020/03/04, re: 227:

老了，没看懂为什么战。晚安。 Getting old. Can’t figure out what the war is about. Good night.

The State also cannot stop subculture from happening. It doesn’t have the resources to quell every single thing that become popular among its population of 1.4 billion. What it can do to make sure these subcultures stay subcultures, kept out of sight and mind of the general public.

Characterisation 1 (the queer characterisation), meanwhile, remains available to the state should it wish to drop the axe on Dangai for its queer elements. I’m including, as “queer elements”, presentation of men as too “feminine” for the state—which has remained a sore point for the government. This axe have a reason to drop in the upcoming months: July 23rd, 2021 will be the 100th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the state may desire to have only uniformed forces and muscled, gun-toting “masculine” men gracing the screens.

What about for c-queers and their supporters (including group I fans)? What good and bad can the multiple characterisations of the genres do for them?

For c-queers and their supporters (including group I fans), their acceptance and safety are helped by the Dangai genre, by the Dangai 101 phenomenon, if and only if the state both characterises the queer elements in these dramas as queer (characterisation 1) AND their opinions of them are positive.

Personally, I had viewed this to be unlikely from the start, because a queer characterisation would mean the censorship board has failed to do its job, which is embarrassing for the Chinese government.

Characterisations 2) and 3) are not bad for c-queers and their supporters, however, and definitely not “enemies” of Characterisation 1); they can not only serve as covers for the queer elements in Dangai to reach their audience, but also, they can act as protective padding for the LGBT+ community if the content or (very aggressive) marketing of the Dangai dramas displease the government — with the understanding, again, that the “traditional BL” arm of the Danmei community is itself also highly vulnerable by being a subculture, and so its padding effect is limited and it also deserves protection.

The downside to achieving LGBT+ visibility through Dangai is, of course and as mentioned, that these dramas are, ultimately, deeply unrealistic depictions of the c-queers. The promotion of these dramas, which has focused on physical interactions between the male leads for “candies”, can encourage even more fetishising of queers and queer relationships. The associated (character) CP culture that makes and breaks CPs based on the dramas’ airing cycle may also fuel negative perception of queer relationships as attention-seeking behaviour, something that can be initiated and terminated at will and for the right price.

Finally, with all this said, which characterisation(s) have the government taken re: Dangai and/or WOH? And what opinions has it given to its characterisations?

PART 1 <-- YOU ARE HERE PART 2 PART 3

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“…The ideas that animate Harlequin romance novels, Game of Thrones, and Disney movies alike can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Look at the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites and others influenced by them—works like John William Waterhouse’s “Lady of Shalott” (1888) and Frederic William Burton’s “The Meeting on the Turret Stairs” (1864)—and you’ll see some very familiar figures.

These canvases reflect popular Victorian understandings of medieval ladies: passive, slender, aristocratic, the objects of knightly devotion. These women have never laboured in the fields with sunburned necks or callused hands. Their clothing and flowing hairstyles are eclectic, designed more to make nineteenth-century audiences think about a distant, misty, heroic past than to accurately reproduce any given moment in the Middle Ages. And, they are, invariably, white.

Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. These paintings were produced when European imperialism was at its zenith; when Darwinian theories of evolution were twisted to justify colonialism and social hierarchies based on race; and when a supposed early-medieval “Teutonic”—or Germanic—ancestry for the white Protestant populations of Britain and North America was claimed to be the reason for the explosive economic growth of those regions.

They were also painted at the same time that white people in Europe and the Americas were enjoying steadily increasing standards of living—in large part thanks to the backbreaking, and often coerced, labour of those in colonised places. Black and brown women helped to shape history, but Victorian society excluded them from the category of “lady” because of the colour of their skin.

Nineteenth-century thinkers drew on the medieval past in order to justify racial and class inequities, or burgeoning notions of nationalism. These thinkers racialised the medieval lady. They idealised her as white, passive, and unsuited to manual labour. In doing so, they made her into a rationale as to why her elite, white, female descendants could sip tea in parlours while brown and black women toiled in the fields—or in their houses—to bring them that tea. The status quo was given such a venerable heritage that it was made to seem natural, even inevitable. Such ideas were then, and are now, pervasive and insidious. They were absorbed by white women, by Disney animators, by the makers of Halloween costumes, and even by those who write histories.

But what happens if we take the medieval lady off her pedestal? What kind of woman do we see inhabiting the Middle Ages if we try to peel off the Victorian veneer of chivalry and politesse? Does looking at what medieval people actually did in the past tell us something about our own assumptions concerning race and gender? In part, this is a process where we have to reconsider the language we use. What do we mean by “lady”? What did medieval people mean by the term? Or, rather, since most texts produced in western Europe in the Middle Ages were written in Latin, what were the connotations which they associated with the word domina?

The first key difference is that the modern English word “lady” simply doesn’t have the aura of power which the Latin word domina did in the Middle Ages. A domina was a woman with authority and moral rectitude in her own right, not simply the consort or complement to a dominus (lord). A domina (and holders of other Latin titles applied to women in medieval records, like comitissa, vicedomina or legedocta) administered estates and adjudicated legal disputes. It did not matter whether she held her title by inheritance or through marriage. Those who held titles in their own right, or those who were widowed, could exercise significant power over fiefs and vassals.

For example, when Matilda, countess of Tuscany (1046-1115), was referred to as domina, it was because she controlled a large swathe of northern Italy. She was the mediator during the famous meeting between Pope Gregory VII and the German emperor Henry IV at her great fortress of Canossa. In doing so, she influenced the outcome of a major medieval power struggle. On his accession to the throne in 1199, King John of England installed his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine (ca. 1122-1204), as domina of the French territory of Poitou and gave her authority in all of his lands—a tacit acknowledgement of her political skill.

Eleanor even managed to expand queenly authority in some ways. She seems to be the first queen of England after the Norman Conquest to have regularly collected the “queen’s gold”, a one-tenth share of some of the legal fines paid to the king. This gave her a valuable (and somewhat independent) source of revenue—and with money comes power. As a more modest example, one contemporary of Matilda of Tuscany’s was a woman named Mahild of Alluyes, domina of a far smaller territory in northern France. She wasn’t a player in papal or imperial politics. Yet as wife and widow, she oversaw the affairs of her vassals and witnessed charters which they drew up in the chapter house of the nearby abbey of Marmoutier, which gave her considerable influence over their lives. And there are many, many more dominae in the sources.

Medieval aristocratic women were sometimes seen as passive by their male contemporaries; those with power who broke this mould were sometimes described in plainly misogynistic terms. But equally, their deeds could be lauded. For example, one of the great chroniclers of the early twelfth century, the Anglo-Norman Orderic Vitalis, wrote that the French noblewoman Isabel of Conches was “lovable and estimable to those around her.” He complimentarily said that she “rode armed as a knight among the knights”, and compared her favourably with Amazon queens.

Matilda of Boulogne (ca. 1105-1152), queen of King Stephen of England, was one of her husband’s most capable partisans during the Anarchy—the period of civil war that tore twelfth-century England apart. Not only did she head the government during her husband’s captivity, but proved herself a capable military commander. She directed troops into battle at the so-called Rout of Winchester and arranged for her husband’s release when he was captured.

A generation or so later, the English countess Petronella of Leicester (ca. 1145-1212) participated alongside her husband in the Revolt of 1173-74; she gave her husband military advice, rode armed onto the battlefield, and was even wearing armour when captured. These actions may not have been normal behaviour for a domina—administration and adjudication were more usual. But they were still within the bounds of possible behaviour for a medieval woman without endangering her status as a “lady.”

The Matildas, Mahild, Eleanor, Isabel, and Petronella: it is hard to imagine any of these dominae as the subject of a Waterhouse painting or the centrepiece of a Disney movie. They weren’t always victorious or virtuous; they could be ambitious and high-handed and hold ideas which most people today would find distasteful. And yet, whether medieval chroniclers approved or disapproved of these women individually, they didn’t think the very fact that they were active, decisive, and opinionated was out of the ordinary. Neither should you.

Nor would the colour of their skin have been thought a defining aspect of their status as a lady. There was certainly prejudice about skin colour in the Middle Ages. The relatively small number of non-white people in northern Europe means that we can’t definitively point to a woman of colour exercising political power there. But things were slightly different in southern Europe, in areas like Iberia—modern Spain and Portugal—which was long home to Christian, Jewish, and Muslim populations of multi-ethnic heritage.

While there were religious prohibitions against Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men, there are some scattered examples of intermarriages between dynasties in the early Middle Ages: Muslim women of north African or Arab descent marrying into northern, Christian royal families. For instance, Uriyah, a daughter of the prominent Banū Qasī dynasty, married a son of the king of the northern Spanish kingdom of Navarre; Fruela II, king of Asturias, married another Banū Qasī woman called Urraca. Their ancestry doesn’t seem to have posed a barrier.

Western Europeans may have only rarely had direct contact with non-white female rulers further afield—like the powerful Arwa bint Asma, queen of Yemen (r. 1067-1138)—but when they did, it could be in dramatic fashion. Shajar al-Durr, sultana of Egypt (d. 1257), famously captured Louis IX of France during the Seventh Crusade and ransomed him for an eye-wateringly large sum.

While historical examples of women of colour exercising prominent roles in Europe during the Middle Ages are few in number, skin colour didn’t limit the imaginations of white medieval Europeans. Medieval people often had clear anxieties about skin colour and blackness, but despite this racism they could still envision a brown- or black-skinned woman as a member of the upper classes, just as they did the white-skinned Mahild or Isabel.

For example, the early thirteenth-century German epic poem Parzival centres on the eponymous hero and his quest for the Holy Grail. Parzival has a half-brother, the knight Feirefiz, who is mixed-race. His mother, Belacane, is the black queen of the fictional African kingdoms of Zazamanc and Azagouc; the narrative praises her beauty and her regal bearing. As another example, a Middle Dutch poem written about the same time, Morien, recounts the story of the handsome, noble knight Morien, “black of face and of limb,” whose father Sir Aglovale fell in love with his “lady mother,” a Moorish princess.

However, the most vivid example is provided by medieval depictions of the biblical Queen of Sheba. Scholars think the historical Sheba likely lay somewhere in southwestern Arabia; other traditions place the kingdom in east Africa. Regardless of the queen’s historicity, various traditions grew up around her in the Middle Ages. Some of the most popular of these claimed that she had a son by the biblical king Solomon. She frequently appears alongside him in art, in elegantly draped garb as on the late twelfth-century Verdun Altar, or accompanied by courtiers as in an early fourteenth-century German illustrated bible: a beautiful black woman and a regal queen. When you think of a medieval “lady”—you could do worse than to think of her.

All of this should prompt us to look again, to reconsider how racialized Victorian ideals of womanhood still impact us—both in contemporary popular culture and also in our understandings of the medieval past. When we think about the Middle Ages, we should consider the impact of race, and especially whiteness, on how we think about it. That is not necessarily because our medieval forebears did so, but because our nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ones did so very much.

The idea of the “lady” was one of the useful fictions which they and others employed, glorifying white, upper-class womanhood as an apex of western achievement. This helped to make existing racial and imperial hierarchies seem like they had such a long history that they must be innate, biological: a simple fact of life. But it was a fiction, and a harmful one. If we are to better understand the medieval past, it is one we must set aside.”

- Yvonne Seale, “My Fair Lady? How We Think About Medieval Women.”

#medieval #race #gender #history #yvonne seale

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mc-critical · 3 years

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Something I can never bring myself to understand is the MY fandom’s seeming obsession with *proving* Mahidevran or Hürrem as the more morally correct, more noble, more respect-worthy etc sultana. Or measuring whose actions and beliefs were the most justifiable or who suffered the most unfortunate circumstances. It seems to completely ignore the fact that most characters in the franchise, sans a small handful of characters, fall into the category of morally questionable or ambiguous. I feel like both Mahidevran and Hürrem are both victims to the same terrible circumstances and the enviornment in which they both lived and were forced to adapt to was a catalyst to a lot of their deplorable actions and beliefs. They both came to the palace as concubines with no family nor money to their names (I can’t recall if this was held consistent in the TV series for Mahidevran’s case or not but I know this is the case for her historically as well), both of them had their worth and their livelihood tied to their ability to produce princes and please the Sultan (who will take any opportunity to remind these women that they are a mere piece of property to him anytime they attempt to assert themselves in any way.) Then there’s the looming threat of the principle of fratricide that basically haunted them throughout the entirety of their motherhood. I’m in no way saying the immoral decisions they made was justifiable or somehow okay (Mahidevran killing Mehmet, Hürrem killing Mustafa, etc.) I just feel that there’s a lot of black-and-white thinking at play whenever the Mahi/Hürrem discourse comes up. What do you think?

Thank you for bringing this up, because it's probably the thing that bugs me the most about this fandom (outside of Tumblr currently). You voiced my overall thoughts into words so well!

I think these double standarts come from many places that can be both the only reasons for a person or just one of the many. In my experience, this "black or white", "all or nothing" attitude stems from the absolutist belief that people should pick sides and root for only one character (usually the protagonist) in a narrative. They're using the standard, superficial narrative roles of the protagonist and the antagonist in terms of Hürrem, thinking that for some reason the protagonist is always morally right in all she does, simply because she's the protagonist and we're supposed to unconditionally root for her. And if they don't like the protagonist, they choose root for "the other side" instead. They're better than that anyway, so of course, we should root for them!!

To be honest, the earlier seasons of the show make an attempt in justifying this assessment, with them having the narrative voice be rooted in Hürrem's favor, despite of all possible problematic actions that tell a different story altogether. MC Hürrem was given very understandable and sympathetic motivations, thorough character exploration, gradual character development and the privilege of far too obvious Plot Armor (make no mistake, every historical figure in the show has Plot Armor, but with the many attempts at her life, Hürrem's in particular, was way too glaring at points, sometimes to a ridiculous degree.) and the writers making her enemies doom themselves by their own failings, with her seemingly only enduring the "charade". (Valide's flanderization post-E38 is the most egregious example of this.) People I've encountered that are excusing Hürrem's behavior, are citing precisely the first episodes to present their arguments, often refusing to go beyond that. Mahidevran's motivations, while as nuanced as Hürrem's, don't seem as delved into in comparison at first (the origins and backstory of MC Mahidevran are shrouded in ambiguity, and while this is thematically appropriate for her character arc, as I explained here, it definetly doesn't help her case in bringing in more vocal sympathy.) and it could seem that her character is simply antagonistic to Hürrem, doesn't go anywhere and later revels in the depths of her ambition and wounded pride earlier than Hürrem began that similar development of hers. Some Mahi stans could see that probable difference of treatment in narrative and support her simply because of that, as well.

Assessing moral ambiguity isn't all that easy in the grand scheme of things, but it especially falls short when the narrative voice seemingly doesn't support it at first. But many miss that there's a very thin line between the actions and the narrative voice, that only turns into a very deep incongruity as the series progresses. I don't know, perhaps determing the moral ambiguity is indeed so complex, confusing and conflicting, since the whole story could get too complex and many might wonder who they'll root for now when everyone is so problematic. And that's a show that began as a simple soap opera, no less! Why would they even put in the effort in this case?

Not many people are used to ambiguous and questionable character development and are still trying to prove that there is one main positive characters in the show, which is why they try to make Mahidevran or Hürrem more morally right and justifiable than they actually are. They are so passionate about the debates they engage in, because this time period and MC is truly so ripe in analysis and it could be very fun to figure out where these characters come from and go through their 4-seasons long evolution in one chosen context, but by doing this, they so often miss the depth and nuance of the subject at hand and it all turns into a one-sided discourse that drives me nuts.

There is a historical context of the issue is also important to note, in my opinion. Both Mahidevran and Hürrem are historical figures and quite a bit of facts and deeds of theirs are now widely known. Most people in the fandom have opinions of them in advance or could've gained opinions of them a while after they began to watch the show. (There are also numerous fictional interpretations of the events during Süleiman's reign and the players in it, which may also play a part in the overall judgement.) Either way, the known historical facts about them (and other fictional interpretations one could've read, of course) could influence their points of view by a certain amount and use these general impressions to present them while analyzing the characters in the show. I've heard numerous arguments that this Hürrem isn't like the Hürrem the history knows about, that she isn't "their" Hürrem and what they read about her isn't depicted all that much in the show, which takes a lot away, according to them. I especially hate when they call MC Hürrem a one-dimensional "evil" caricature that only has vileness and smug about her, no conscience, no complexity whatsoever. (no, MC Hürrem isn't as simplistic and is much deeper and more nuanced. As far as fictional interpretations go, what they're describing is Hürrem in "The Sultan's Harem" from Colin Falconer, not MC Hürrem! In the MC/K franchise's terms, all they're doing is reducing her to the level of MCK Turhan Sultan, which is disrespectful to this character, to say the least. Turhan is the exact thematic contrast to Hürrem smh while Falconer's Hürrem is the most absurdly evil caricature imaginable, at least IMO, please and thank you!) Or even more unbelievably and outright hilariously, considering Hürrem's actions and the Sultanate of Women overall the downfall of the Ottoman Empire o.o and that's why Hürrem is so ruthless, so cruel, always intentionally, of course. This is plain ridiculous. Mahidevran, on the other hand, is presented by this clique as her "victim", as a completely innocent victim that had everything taken away from her. That Hürrem had stood between her and Süleiman and "ruined" their family. This take ignores every other factor of this falling out (Süleiman, that is) and a part of the nuance of Mahidevran's character. Reducing her to a simple "victim" doesn't cut it at all. Conversely, we have fans that simplify MC Mahidevran's character beyond every belief, loving the historical figure, but claiming they made her an "evil" and "stupid" bitch that cries and whines all the time. It's limiting and one-sided and even if it appears so, there are way far more layers to her character, that develop consistently throughout the narrative. The historical context of the time period itself is usually brought up in the debates, too, justifying whoever they want to justify by "It's a war, only the strongest ones survive!" or "You eat or get eaten! We should understand their time period, not judge by our contemporary times !", which is understandable and valid, but the only thing they end up doing is applying this logic only to their preferred characters when it should be applied to everyone. They try their best efforts to make one more morally right than the other, but they continually fail in the process, because the metric they judge them from is plagued by double standarts.

I wholeheartedly agree with you that excusing one of them, but not the other for most situations is wrong, because Mahidevran and Hürrem.... aren't all that different. What most people seem to miss, is that their character arcs are so contrastingly paralleling, because both of their endings were far from victorious and they got it for the exact same character reason, gained in a different way and in a different time. The persistent insistence of the fandom wanting a main character necessarily having a triumphant grand finale fails flat immediately, because there is no true victory in the franchise. They also miss the negative character development of both of them, them having to do the exact same stuff in many instances, both of them letting go of their pasts and/or former attachments, becoming vicious and ruthless in order to adapt to the circumstances, both of them had to make moves out of desperation because they felt threatened and they both protected their lives and the ones of their children at the end of the day. Heck, they're way more alike than they're different in my book. There is no morally right, no more noble here. Both of them had no qualms to do whatever it took to secure their own future and as you said, the narrative presented very neat motivations for them to do so as a whole. There is always a shade of grey and yes, who has the lighter shade of gray could be up for debate due to differing sympathies and perceptions, but that mustn't stop people to at least try looking at the "bigger picture" and try to view their characters with a bit more criticality, depth and respect.

Rooting for both conflicting sides is still seen as questionable and contradictory by some, but there really is nothing wrong with exploring their motivations without justifying them, no matter where your sympathies extend. I think it creates a more unbiased outlook on the both these characters and the themes around them and it's always awesome to see people doing that in any fandom, really.

And both Sultanas are worthy of respect, I said what I said.

#magnificent century #mahidevran sultan #hurrem sultan #ask #stuffandthangs #again this is all in my experience #there could be many other reasons for the double standarts #but they're all equally wrong and one-sided and one-dimensional and transparent

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strawbebehmod · 4 years

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Some potentially controversial headcanons about sexuality and gender in atla

Ok so I have some headcanons about gender and sexuality in the atlaverse that may controdict some aspects of canon as well as many other's headcanons but I feel go pretty inline with the nations, either based on their inspo country's history or the feel I get from the nations in canon culture. If you disagree that's totally chill I just wanna get my thoughts out there to see who else agrees.

So with that let's begin:

Air nomads

This I think everyone agrees on that the air nomads didn't give a shit about gender or sexuality. Love is love and gender is an illusion.

They also were very pro poly relationships

However, cause of the whole communally raising children thing that's a part of canon I don't think all the temples really had a concept of marriage and some groups may have actually given you odd looks if you wanted to be exclusive with someone

But the general 'let it be' culture meant you really wouldn't get any widespread social grief on the issue just maybe have a few arguments with friends or maybe a partner that wasn't used to being exclusive or was used to being exclusive and you weren't, and you veritably weren't going to be ostracized for your sexuality or preferences in a relationship. It's a domestic issue rather than a social justice one.

Air nomads were by far the most accepting of asexuality and aromaticism.

Water tribe

I actually think things very between the north and the south a lot due to their seperation, but a commonality between them is their strong sense of gender roles and other ridged segregations in gender like the whole waterbending thing.

That being said, transness is very much accepted but there are specific ceremonies for transitioning and coming out to the tribe, and it can mean losing some privileges you had from the gender you were assigned at birth.

There's also a third non-binary gender that has its own specific ceremony. This circumvented a lot of rules about who could learn what type of waterbending, particularly up north but also carried a few unique social responsibilities like officiating weddings but could also strip you of some priviledges from your initially assigned gender, such as paticipation in specific gendered rituals such as women's cerimonies or men's cerimonies.

Those members had their own unique cerimonies and celibrations however.

In the northern watertribe specifically homosexuality is very much accepted but under the current cheiftan unions of politics like Yue's will almost always come before unions of love, so gay individuals can sadly be forced into hetero relationships via arranged mairrage, with the only concessions being that they can take on a single same sex lover outside of the union.

The absoluteness of the arranged mairrage rules can change based on who is in charge however.

Biphobia has had a history of being a problem in the water tribes as they have a huge emphasis on separation and opposites in their culture as their two biggest spirits represent yin and yang. Lesbians were long considered favored by tui and gay men favored by la, as if they were living symbols of the spirits.

There was discourse as to how bi and pan people fit into this model, some even horribly suggesting they were abandoned by the spirits, but the current concesus among spiritual experts and elders is they are actually a symbol of tui and la's love for eachother and thus favored by both.

The southern water tribe has always been laxer about the gender specific stuff and never had the arranged mairrage rules.

It was always much smaller however so LGBT individuals were less common. This often made it harder for homosexual individuals to find romantic love as there were just fewer fellow LGBT people that were avalible.

So if you came out as gay/bi/pan/lesbian to the tribe it was often the tradition to complete your ice dodging cerimony soon after and then become a sailor for at least three years to try and find romance while trading goods with the other nations if you didn't have a partner already.

A majority of southern tribe fishermen/women as a result were LGBT. Being a full-time fisherman is now a euphamism for being a lonely gay person.

Southern watertribe mermaid tales were almost always very gay as a result.

Unfortunately due to the southern watertribe's culture and traditions being decimated by the firenation's raids, a lot of LGBT culture in the southern tribe was also lost.

They're still pretty accepting but because of the dwindled population of the southern tribe and the fact that LGBT people tend to only make up 1-10% of an average population in the real world, it's rare for a gay individual to be born into the southern tribe, usually only once every generation now, if they realize they are gay to begin with.

As a result of that and the fact that bringing it up generally brings up the fact that the firenation destroyed what nice things they had, it's often not talked about outside of between elders mourning better times, which has made it even harder for some individuals to even realize they are LGBT to begin with.

The swamp benders are mostly men who wear leaf loin cloths they gay af and we're probs established by southern watertribe gays and bis that got lost in their travels and decided to settle down in the swamp, eventually attracting the attention of other lgbt earth kingdom people who decided to live with them.

Earth Kingdom

There's a huge divide among how it's treated among peasents and aristocracy

Peasents grew up on stories of past earth kings with many lovers, including several gay ones

So depending on where you live homosexuality is either considered something romantic of fairy-tales or celibrated as something unique and uncommon

In some places where people have more spirituality, some joke that gay people were royals in their past lives.

The earth kingdom is big tho, so some small towns can be homophobic but it's much rarer and usually because they were established by homophobes who were chased from areas that were very anti homophobia.

Fetishization of homosexuality can happen but it's again depending on where you are.

The earth kingdom is also very accepting of asexuality but there are stereotypes such as asexuals usually becoming gurus.

In aristocracy things are a bit different

Homosexuality is still pretty accepted but due to how prevalent arrange mairrages are it's heavily assosiated with affairs and running away from family obligations and thus it's a bit taboo to speak publicly about it in high society.

Lesbianism specifically cause China, what the earth kingdom is based on, has a long history of writing off women's feelings.

The upper crust of Ba Sing Se, despite lots of historically gay earth kings, has a big homophobia issue thanks to the Dai Lee slowly becoming corrupted after Kyoshi died.

Long Feng particularly had a hand in making talking about gay stuff practically off the table or seen as only something for filthy commoners.

Transgenderism, again cause of China historically treating women like shit, is a subject of a lot of discourse in the Earth kingdom, although there are no legal issues with being transgender and one can have their passports changed in certian cities and towns to reflect their gender identity if they move there, but only in those specific towns.

Omashu is one of them and is extremely pro trans and in general pro LGBT even among the aristocracy, infact king Bumi in his first year of rule established specific holidays for celibrating trans people, gay men, lesbians, asexuals, bisexuals, agender people, and any other gender or sexual identity Bumi knew about.

He has added to the list since. Whenever he finds out about a new gender identity or sexuality he sets the day he found out as a day for a feats next year celibrating it.

This is why there are so many feasts in omashu.

He also often officiates gay weddings himself because according to him "gay weddings are the most interesting and creative. They all have mad geniuses for their wedding planners I tell ya"

Tbh he will randomly show up to any wedding in his city cause he loves parties but he will specifically officiate gay ones.

The Fire Nation

Ok this is where some people may get pissed cause I disagree that the firenation is horribly homophobic

I know it was stated by one of the creators that the firenation has anti gay laws thanks to Sozin but Japan had a loooooong history of celibrating gay stuff prior to westernization and the firenation is based off of Japan. Also kinda headcanon Sozin as having a thing for Roku that fell apart with the whole war bs.

So Sozin never imo put into place any homophobic laws aside from banning gay writings and plays within the palace out of bitterness of having Roku betray him and just didn't want to have anything around him that would remind him of him. Dude got so mopey over it he neglected his wife and children a lot, despite the whole thing being 100% his fault.

Azulon on the other hand was a homophobic son of a bitch and put a lot of anti gay and trans laws into effect. While none outlawed same sex relations, they included ones that allowed people to get away with firing people or harming people for being LGBT.

Ozai was also extremely homophobic.

But before all this the fire nation was practically a gay paradise. Fire is the element of passion, and so gay sex and relationships were considered for a long time just as normal as heterosexual relationships.

There were festivals and holidays celibrating gay lovers, lots of LGBT writing and art, and many many plays on the subject

There were several folk stories of Agni the sun spirit coming down to earth to meet his male human lovers, including one that explained why we have night and day. (Tui introduced Agni to one of the volcano spirit's sons so that she may rule the night in peace without his constant incercession and annoying boastfulness)

Soldiers were pretty much expected to have a gay relationship with one of their brothers in arms if they were single to increase the loyalty among troops.

The firenation was the only nation where arranged mairrages could be nullified instantly on the grounds that one of the individuals involved was gay, unless you were the firelord and that was only because it was the firelord's duty to produce at least one heir to continue the linage, so it was seen as the firelord's sacrifice to his or her people to take up at least one opposite sexed partner. Romantic affairs were expected and understood in such situations however so long as there was already an heir to the throne born.

Families could even be punished with jail time for knowingly forcing their gay children into heterosexual relationships.

Gay couples could adopt children too and denying one on the grounds of being gay would be grounds for removal of your position in child care and being blacklisted.

There were still homophobes but homophobia was squashed a lot

Azulon managed to "justify" the cultural shift and changes to laws by having newspapers publishing fake news about pedophilia cases being linked to homosexuality as well as other stories linking homosexuality to degenerate acts.

He also used the culture of honor and family loyalty to shame gay children for ending their parent's bloodlines and claiming gay individuals were less likely to take care of their parents in their old age. And that trans children dishonored their parents by rejecting their "birth gender"

He even had certian folk stories changed to be heterosexual

This allowed homophobia and transphobia to spred in the firenation

However many individual towns held onto their pro LGBT roots and still published and performed gay literary works and plays.

And azulon and ozai were unable to remove many nonheteronormative traditions, such as guy friends being extremely physically affectionate, more so than with their girl counterparts.

In some areas it's still customary to greet close male friends with platonic kisses on the cheek

Zuko repealed many of the old laws established by his father and grandfather almost immediately, and reestablished many old holidays and protections for LGBT individuals.

Fixing the damage is still taking time, but with a corrected history of the firenation being now taught in classes thanks to zuko and aang, things are getting back to the way they once were slowly.

#avatar the last airbender #zuko #aang #water tribe #atla #fire nation #earth kingdom #air nomads #long post #homophobia #biphobia #lgbt #transphobia #gay #bi #ace #headcanon

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mediaevalmusereads · 3 years

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Matrix. By Lauren Groff. New York: Riverhead Books, 2021.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: historical fiction

Part of a Series? No

Summary: Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough? Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

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

Content Warnings: blood, violence, gore, childbirth, threats of rape

Overview: As a medievalist, I’m admittedly a little picky when it comes to my historical fiction set in the Middle Ages, but because this book was about Marie de France, I decided to give it a go. While I do think that Groff is a talented writer, I ultimately felt let down by Matrix; when I think about Marie de France, I think of her lais and the magic she weaves into them (not literal magic, mind you, but things like the power of women, courtly love, lush atmosphere, etc). This book, by contrast, contained very few of the themes that make Marie’s work so memorable, to the point where the less you know about the real Marie de France, the better. Instead of exploring the mind of the woman who wrote such wonderful, magical tales, we get the story of a nun who brings an impoverished abbey to prosperity. It’s a fine story, don’t get me wrong - it’s just not one I’d associate with Marie de France. Honestly, I think Groff would have had more success writing about her own original character, taking inspiration from mystics like Julian of Norwich or Margery Kempe. Thus, this book only gets 3 stars from me.

Writing: Groff’s prose is beautifully crafted with evocative imagery that is also easy to read. Everything flows well and moves at a quick pace, so readers won’t feel bogged down by details such as the day-to-day work at the abbey or some such. This book also uses present tense to narrate the story, and while I’m not usually a fan of the present tense, I think Groff made it work. The narrative feels energetic and grounded, and I think it combined well with the technique of using run-on sentences from time to time to convey the feeling of being caught up in the moment or lost in thought.

Plot: The plot of this book mainly follows Marie de France as she is yanked from her life at the French court and placed in charged of a poor English abbey. We follow Marie as she rises through the ranks and brings the abbey to prosperity, all while wrangling unruly nuns and doing her best to convince Eleanor of Aquitaine to come for a visit.

I think I would have enjoyed this plot more if the protagonist were someone other than Marie de France. As I said in my intro, the story isn’t an exploration of the inner workings of the mind of a (female) medieval poet; rather, it’s a story about a woman obsessed with her own power and reputation within the Church. The lais themselves get only about 3 pages of mention, and it felt like none of the themes that we associate with Marie’s real-life lais made it into this novel. While I did appreciate the little nods to history here and there (for example, the description of one of the nuns sticking a paintbrush in her mouth and getting lapis lazuli in her teeth), there wasn’t enough in this book to made the story feel fresh or new. Perhaps Groff was working with the theory that Marie de France was Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury, but even so, the lack of attention to the lais and how they’d complicate our expectations or assumptions about the life of a medieval nun was baffling to me. Personally, I think Groff would have had more success if the book was “about” Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury, or about an original character, inspired by female mystics such as Julian of Norwich or Margery Kempe.

I also wasn’t enthusiastic about the way Groff chooses to present her “feminist utopia” of an abbey staffed with only women. Despite the desire for Marie to protect her nuns from male violence and power, not much work is put into describing the abbey as a haven. Instead, Marie imposes her own will onto others and replicates the power hierarchies that she is (supposedly) so desperate to escape. I think I would have liked this book better if the author could have looked for the ways in which abbey life could have been a solace to the women. For example, maybe the daily routine provides comfort for those struggling with the chaos of the outside world. Maybe the queer nuns finally find a place that feels safe for them to express their affection for other women. Anything that complicated our modern assumptions about medieval Christianity would have been welcome; instead, I felt like I got a lot of “barbaric Middle Ages.”

I guess I’m being harsh in that Marie explicitly says that she thinks women are only safeguarded by their reputations. Thus, all of her actions are in service to cultivating a particular image of herself and the abbey (imposing, impregnable, protected by magic, etc). I think this could have been more satisfying for me if A.) again, we weren’t reading a story about “Marie de France,” or B.) the novel was very self-conscious about the fact that Marie was manipulating the perspectives of others.

Characters: Marie, our main protagonist, is confusing and difficult to like. Originally, she’s too cool for school; she arrives at the abbey more than a little skeptical of Christianity, and she judges the other nuns around her rather harshly (even though some deserve it, but still - there was this “not like other girls” vibe that I didn’t like). The novel tells us that she was a child crusader, which seems odd for one not invested in Christianity, and then never really does anything with that except use it to instill fear in people who are uncomfortable with her “imposing” demeanor. After a few years, Marie becomes devout to the point where she’s having divine visions, like e medieval mystic. The switch felt fairly abrupt, and Marie’s ruthless pursuit of power and prosperity was admittedly a little tired at times. The only things I liked about her were her queerness and obsession with Eleanor of Aquitaine. Queerness is fairly commonplace, which is refreshing; even though Marie struggles with the idea of whether it is a sin or not to have carnal desires for other women, I did appreciate that wlw relationships were everywhere within the abbey, not just between Marie and a single other nun. Marie’s obsession with Eleanor was also interesting in that it bordered on erotic obsession and made manifest the pains unreciprocated love, mirroring courtly love in real medieval literature. I liked how Marie strove to please Eleanor in everything that she did, and loving the Queen from a distance put an interesting spin on courtly love between two women.

Eleanor, for her part, was intriguing because she was something of a mystery. We mainly saw her though Marie’s eyes, which meant that she was held up as a paragon - of beauty, of intelligence, of courage, etc. When we do finally see Eleanor in the flesh (so to speak), she doesn’t quite live up to Marie’s hype, and I liked the conflict between reality and the lover’s image of the beloved.

Most other characters blurred together for me. There are many nuns at the abbey, and most of them have quirks or jobs that make them unique. In that respect, I liked how Groff made each nun feel like an individual, and that they all came together to form a community. What I didn’t really like, however, was how they always seemed to be in conflict. Aside from a couple characters, it didn’t seem like any of the women had any close relationships; rather, I felt like the women were frequently in conflict or at least consistently incompatible in some way or another. If Groff really wanted to paint the abbey as some kind of haven or utopia, I think having more of the nuns find emotional intimacy with one another would have gone a long way. Even if some of the women didn’t get along, I would have liked to see more positive relationships rather than negative or impersonal ones.

TL;DR: Matrix is ultimately a compelling novel about running an abbey, but a poor imagining of real-life poet Marie de France. While there is much to admire about Groff’s prose and the book would have been a fine work of historical fiction if written about, say, the Abbess of Shaftesbury, the narrative is unfulfilling for those who are familiar with the lais of Marie de France, primarily because none of the core themes from the medieval poems play major roles in Groff’s novel.

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emutempo · 3 years

Text

Strike A Pose (domestic SuperCorp one-shot)

Summary: Everyone has the day off but Supergirl. And even though it means leaving Lena home alone for much of the day, Kara's determined to make the best of it.

Posted to my Ao3 here.

Notes: It's 4:40AM and I just couldn't sleep without getting this out of my head. And since I'm still anxious about posting any of my fics, I figured once again it'd be better to hit that post button before I get too nervous and hit delete instead. Anyway, I hope this brightens at least one person’s day.

----------

Rays from the sun pour in from the windows of Lena’s bedroom and her eyes flutter open as she feels the heat on her face. She forces her eyes open and stretches into a yawn.

She looked across the bed and first saw a mess of golden hair splayed across a pillow. Kara was still fast asleep after a long week working at the DEO. It had been a long week for both them and Lena was looking for to a relaxing Friday with no work.

She was happy the 4th of July landed on a Friday this year. It usually meant she had a three day weekend with Kara all to herself. No L Corp, no CatCo. Except, today, Kara was on call. Even though the DEO was operating with the minimal crew, Kara had volunteered to cover for J’onn, Winn, James and Alex. They had been so accommodating of Kara’s requests for days off to spend with Lena that Lena didn’t mind.

Today would be like any other busy weekend day for them. They’d lounge around the house, playing board games, watching their favorite movies and cuddling on the couch. And when Kara was called away for her Supergirl duties, she’d give Lena a quick goodbye and take off to deal with the problem before eventually coming back to Lena and resuming their activities like nothing had interrupted at all.

For now, it was still early and the city itself was still waking up so Lena turned over and cuddled against Kara. Her head, barely hit the pillow before she fell back into slumber.

—

Later, Kara and Lena were sat up, cuddling on the living room couch, each with a cup of coffee in hand. On the TV, an episode of QI playing. Kara took a sip of her coffee before

Kara and Lena had taken to watching QI on their lazy mornings. Kara was fascinated with the random knowledge and discussion on the show and more-so with Lena’s endless intelligence. This morning, they were talking about the history of astronomy.

Kara cleared her throat, “so when did people start thinking the Earth was flat again? It’s like they’re afraid the Earth is round. They’re lucky it is or they’d be off floating somewhere in space!”

Lena loved these little conversations with Kara. No matter how long she’d spent on Earth, still so much surprised her. Lena shrugged. “You know, the only thing flatearthers fear is sphere itself.”

It took Kara a moment to realize Lena’s joke before a giggle escaped her throat, still a tinge of morning gruffness in her voice. Lena stared into her eyes, trying to memorize the beautiful sound of Kara’s laughter. But it was short-lived as Kara suddenly tilted her head, listening.

Lena smiles, knowing in that moment that duty was calling to Supergirl. National City needed its savior. Kara looked up apologetically to Lena. “Small kitchen fire. No extinguisher. Should be quick.”

And a moment later, a whoosh fills the Lena’s living room as Kara disappears for a moment before another whoosh brings Kara back, clad in her blue suit and red cape. Lena blows her a kiss. “I’ll be waiting for you, Supergirl.”

Kara mimes catching her kiss in the air and puts it to her lips before stepping out onto the balcony. Even though Lena’s a little disappointed, she can’t help but smile as she watches her go.

Kara has the goofiest grin on her face she holds Lena’s eye contact. Lena smiles, shaking her head. She knows what’s coming and she waits for it…

Lena watches as Supergirl turns around and takes a big step away from the balcony door. She turns around in place and mimes pressing an elevator button before taking a patient stance with her arms crossed in front of her, as if waiting. A moment later, still ‘standing’ with her arms crossed, Kara slowly floats up into the air as if riding an invisible elevator until she’s out of Lena’s view. But not before giving the Luthor a playful wink.

Lena can’t hold back the laugh caught in her throat. It’s loud and she knows Kara hears it.

—

Later, they’re sitting on opposite sides of the coffee table, a chess board between them. It’s Kara’s turn but she’s gone on a rant and Lena doesn’t have the heart to interrupt her.

“I just don’t understand. Why are ALL of them so sad? Isn’t there a single period drama about two women falling in love where they get to be together? The endings are always so tragic. Unrequited love… pre-arranged marriage… and that’s only if we’re lucky enough one of them doesn’t die! Doesn’t anyone run away together? Or say ‘screw you’ to all the cranky old men?”

Lena can’t stop herself. She leans over the chess board and kisses Kara. It’s soft and sweet. When she pulls back, she gestures to the chess board and Kara finally realizes it’s her move. She hastily moves one of her pieces and by the look on Lena’s face, it’s not… the best move. But Lena ignores it.

“I think they’re just trying to be historically accurate, love. Times were a lot harder for us not too long ago.”

Kara doesn’t seem satisfied with that answer. “Well, I still don’t like it. No more sad movies like that one we watched last night. Here Comes the World… or was it… A World to Come?”

“The World to Come,” Lena reaches forward to brush a hair out of Kara’s face. “We could watch Gentleman Jack.”

Kara pouts. “That doesn’t sound promising.” Lena chuckles, about to launch into an explanation of the history behind the titular character of Anne Lister when she sees that signature head tilt again and Kara’s eyes focus into the distance. Lena’s puts her hand up over the chess board about to say, “Kara, mind the chess board—“ but it’s too late. Two back to back WHOOSHES and Supergirl is again standing before Lena, who’s eyebrow’s cocked in ITS signature position. Kara notices the chess pieces all over the floor and looks at Lena apologetically, “you were winning anyway?”

Kara leans in and gives Lena a quick peck on the cheek. “Drunken brawl. I’ll get everyone settled down and be right back.” She keeps her eyes on Lena’s as she backs her way toward the balcony door. The look in their eyes and the suppressed smiles on their faces tell us that, again, they both know what’s coming. Lena watches as Kara steps outside, her cape flapping in the breeze, and takes her superhero stance. She double taps the emblem on her chest and then puts her hands out behind her and takes off in flight… Is she serious?

Lena guffaws and yells after Kara. “Iron Man? Are you kidding me?” But Lena giggles. Kara knows she’s gonna give her a hard time for that one later. As if to dig in even more, Kara loop-de-loops and flies by the window on her way to the drunken brawl.

Yeah she definitely heard that.

—

Back at home with Lena and Kara relaxing in front of the TV. Kara channel surfs while Lena plays with her hair. She lands on a movie that’s just started.

“Oh, I love Megamind! Have you ever seen it?”

Lena shakes her head, “I think most of the animated films I’ve watched in my entire lifetime on Earth I’ve seen first with you. And we haven’t watched this one yet.”

Kara scoots up closer to Lena. “Can we? Can we watch it together? It’s one of my favorites.”

Lena puts her arm around Kara and pulls her in. “How many times have I ever said no to your movie picks?” Kara turned around, wearing a hurt look on her face even though Lena knows it’s put-on. “You keep saying no to Hocus Pocus!”

“That’s because it’s a Halloween movie and we should watch it on Halloween.”

Before Kara can protest… another head tilt and yep, a WHOOSH away and back.

“Car wreck on the bridge. Firefighters’ jaws of life aren’t working. Back in a jiffy. We’re not finished discussing this.”

Kara went straight for the balcony and Lena thought she wasn’t going to get a special send off. But, of course, Kara had something else in mind. She turns around and grabs her cape, pulling it up over her head in a somewhat childish maneuver.

What the hell is she doing this time? Then Lena gets her answer when the cape puffs up revealing Kara blowing air into it to resemble a parachute before she floats up, up, and away.

“Ok, that was a good one.”

She can picture the shit-eating grin on Kara’s face and shakes her head, turning back to the TV and hitting play.

—

Kara and Lena in the kitchen, making an early dinner. Kara’s arguing a point and waving a spatula around like a judge waves a gavel.

“You agree that Bette Midler’s amazing and this is one of her favorite roles she’s ever played. She said so herself. I know because she follows me on Twitter.”

Lena flicks a gravy-covered whisk at Kara, flinging the brown sauce onto her shirt and face. Kara mouth drops open and she freezes in place, shocked at Lena’s gravy betrayal.

“That’s what you get for showing off.”

Kara, hands and face still frozen, pivots to face Lena, “oooh, you’re going to be sorry for that.” With a burst of speed, Kara reaches out and tickle Lena’s sides. Lena squeals as she tries to escape but she knows it’s futile. There’s no way she’s escaping Kara’s grip so she does the next best thing and flicks more gravy at her. And now it’s Kara’s turn to squeal. “You are gonna HATE gravy by the time I’m through with you!” Kara dives for Lena but before she can catch her up in her arms again… you know what it is. The head tilt. Kara listens for a moment as she wipes gravy from her face and licks it from her finger. Lena takes a swipe for herself too.

Kara quickly glances at Lena before a smirk takes over her face. But Lena can’t stop her before…

“Kara don’t—“

… Kara WHOOSHES away, spinning the gravy off her body and flinging it EVERYWHERE, including Lena.

“—Do the whoosh thing.”

Lena stands there for a beat. Now SHE’s the one frozen with gravy-face. Kara whooshes back into the kitchen and licks a spot of gravy off Lena’s face.

“Break in at the pawn shop. Don’t try to sneak any kale into the fagioli ‘cause I’ll know.”

Kara makes her way to the balcony but Lena doesn’t turn around. She waits a beat for the tell-tale whoosh but doesn’t hear one. She knows Kara’s waiting for her to turn around and although part of Lena doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of turning around, she does. Supergirl has places to be and she doesn’t want to keep Kara waiting.

Kara smiles as Lena turns around before jumping onto an invisible broomstick and doing her best interpretation of a witch cackle as she ‘flies’ off.

Lena rolls her eyes as she wipes the gravy off her face with a towel. “Ok, ok! We can watch Hocus Pocus when you get back.”

Lena goes to the fridge and grabs the bunch of kale she’s hidden in one of the fridge drawers.

—

The evening. Lena and Kara lay on the couch, the remnants of their dinner on the coffee table in front of them. Kara swipes a remnant of gravy from one of the plates and quickly dabs it on Lena’s nose. Lena’s nose scrunches at the cold liquid as Kara fights to keep a straight face. So does Lena.

“I’m starting to understand why these witches want to eat these children.”

Kara playfully smacks Lena’s arm. She knows Lena isn’t mad in the slightest. Kara giggles as Lena tries to lick the gravy from her nose with her tongue. But her tongue can’t reach. Kara leans forward and licks it off for her.

“I could eat you.”

Lena blushes and leans in for a kiss. It’s tender and sweet. Lena pulls away to look Kara in the eyes. “Well, you have put a spell on me so I’d probably let you.”

Kara’s eyebrows perk up and she bites her lip, “is that a request, Ms. Luthor?”

But of course… Lena doesn’t get the chance to answer before Kara’s head tilts once again. A beat before… WHOOSH.

“Run of the mill creep following a woman home. Give me five minutes to set this guy straight.”

Kara plops a kiss on Lena’s nose where the gravy was before she turns and runs straight out for the balcony. She doesn’t wait for Lena to turn around but Lena watches anyway as Kara takes a running leap toward the balcony bannister and lands on top of it. She takes a few more jumps like she’s on a diving board before leaping and tucking into a somersault as she “dives” off the bannister and disappears below the balcony.

“Go get him, love.”

Lena hits pause on the movie and sits back, staring off through the balcony windows at the city, her eyes filled with a dreamy haze. She’ll wait for Kara to come back and watch with her.

—

Later that night, Kara and Lena are finally lying in bed cuddling and listening to the last of the fireworks going off.

Kara flips through Twitter on her phone while Lena reads a book in one hand and uses the other to stroke Kara’s hair. She hears a small yawn escape from the blonde’s mouth and looks at the clock.

“It’s getting late. Are you ready to go to sleep, love? Should I turn off the light?”

Kara drops her phone dramatically and tucks her head into Lena. Her arm lands with a thud across Lena’s stomach, collapsing as if exhausted.

“I’m not tired if you’re not.”

Lena strokes her head a few more times before she dogs ears the book she’s reading and places it on her night stand. She leans over to turn off the light when she feels Kara sit up. She turns and sees Kara’s head tilted, listening. Lena picks her book back up, ready to continue reading while she waited for Kara to come back from another rescue.

“What is it this time? Wild assassin penguin on the loose? Three crazy witch sisters kidnapping innocent children?”

Kara stiffens up and tilts her head the other way. “No, it’s a woman…”

Lena sets her book to the side, noticing the serious tone in Kara’s voice. “Kara, what’s wrong?”

Kara looks at Lena, seemingly concentrating on a sound in the distance, a look of concern across her face. “She’s dying… of patience.”

Lena’s eyebrows scrunch together and she squints at Kara, confused. “What?”

Kara turns to face Lena, still as serious as ever.

“She has this girlfriend who keeps rushing off all over the city, leaving her alone at home and she’s just… been so patient.”

Lena’s face relaxes and falls into a lazy grin as she catches on to Kara. Kara can tell Lena’s savvy to her playfulness but she doesn’t drop the series tone.

“See, she’s a very important and very busy lady who doesn’t get a lot of time off to spend with her girlfriend and when she does, her girlfriend always has to fly off. So, if it’s ok with you, I’ve gotta go fix that.”

Lena pulled Kara in close. She didn’t try to feign shock or surprise or play along. She was too consumed with earnest love and she didn’t want to waste any more of their time today, “so how long will it be this time?”

Kara leans in close, kissing Lena with soft lips and tenderness, “forever.”

#supercorp #karaxlena #kara x lena #ao3 #supergirl #fluff #domestic fluff

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comrade-meow · 3 years

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The Marxist left finds itself confronted by three insidious big lies that threaten the revolutionary and emancipatory foundation of the Marxist project, all related to undermining women’s liberation; they are:

1. Transwomen are women.

2. Sex work is work.

3. Feminism is bourgeois.

Misogyny in its many forms has long been a challenge for the left; not just the misogyny of the reactionary right, but misogyny coming from within the left itself. But it has not been until recently that this leftist misogyny has sought to portray itself as being inherently progressive. By engaging in revisionism of the most blatant kind, reactionary elements within the left have managed to posit themselves as the agents of progress. Much has already been written about the harms caused by these three lies, but no attempt has yet to be made to debunk them from a solidly Marxist standpoint. That is what we are out to accomplish here; to demonstrate definitively that these big lies are not just regressive, but inherently revisionist and anti-Marxist to the core.

The first of these three big lies, “Transwomen are women”, might well be the most damaging, because it directly contradicts the heart of the Marxist method: dialectical materialism. There are two main definitions used by proponents of transgenderism to explain their narrative. The first is that gender is an identity; the state of being a man or a woman (or any one of the other numerous “gender identities”) stems not from biological sex (to the extent that transactivists acknowledge the existence of biological sex), but from an internal identity, i.e. personal feelings, personal consciousness. The second definition says that transpeople are not really the sex they physically are, but the sex they say they are, because they really have “male” or “female” brains. Both of these definitions are rooted in the personal, not the material. One of the patron saints of queer theory, Judith Butler, says:

“It’s one thing to say that gender is performed and that is a little different from saying gender is performative. When we say gender is performed we usually mean that we’ve taken on a role or we’re acting in some way and that our acting or our role-playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world. To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.”[1]

Though queer theory is a postmodernist philosophy, its roots go far deeper than just postmodernism; rather, this statement of Butler’s is an example of the dialectics of idealism. Marxism, as a philosophy, was formed in reaction to the idealist dialectics of the Young Hegelians. The dialects of idealism posit that reality flows from consciousness. Marx, on the other hand, argued “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”[2] That is, it is not our thoughts that shape material reality, but material reality that shapes our thoughts. In fact, Marx’s first major work, The German Ideology, is exclusively dedicated to explaining this.

So what is the materialist definition of gender? And how does the embrace of the idealist definition under the guise of Marxism harm the Marxist aim of women’s liberation? The foundational Marxist text dealing with the oppression of women is Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. According to Engels, while there has always existed a sexual division of labor in human society, it is not until the rise of private property that this division becomes hierarchical. Before the rise of private property, society was organized under what was called “mother right”, i.e. a person’s family is traced through their mother, given the difficulty of identifying with certainty the father in primitive communist society. But because private property grew out of male labor, and became concentrated in male hands, mother right gave way to “father right”. In order to bequeath his property to his son, the father needed to know with certainty who his sons were. This meant controlling the reproductive labor of the female sex, and its subordination to male supremacy; thus the advent of patriarchy. In Chapter II of Origin of Family Engels calls the overthrow of mother-right “…the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.”[3] Note that Engels here is dealing with sex, with biology. Women are not oppressed because of some abstract gender identity, but because of their sex. Class society and patriarchy, the two of which exist in a symbiosis, need to control women’s reproductive labor to sustain themselves. To put it more bluntly, they need to control the means of reproduction. Thus, women’s oppression has its origin in material reality.

But we have not yet dealt with the concept of gender. In the current queer theory dominated discourse, sex and gender are increasingly become conflated to the point that they are being used as synonyms for one another. Engels analysis of patriarchy is in many ways incomplete, but it forms the basis of future materialist explorations of sex and gender. The second-wave feminists who developed much of the thought around gender did not revise these fundamentals, but expanded on them, the opposite of what today’s revisionists are doing. Gender, according to the radical feminist Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, is “the value system that prescribes and proscribes forms of behaviour and appearance for members of the different sex classes, and that assigns superior value to one sex class at the expense of the other.”[4] Gender is therefore not the same thing as biological sex, but a kind of parasite grafted on top of biological sex to maintain the current sexual hierarchy, and ensure continued male control over reproductive labor. Gender non-conforming, as well as homosexual, men and women are therefore “exiled” from their gender community not because of some abstract identity, but because they do not fulfill their proscribed functions as members of their sex class; they are essentially class traitors. Intersex people, which form a distinct material category, are also lumped into this community of “exiles” because they too are unable to fulfill the goals of the patriarchal sexual hierarchy. Such communities of exiles have existed throughout history, and continue to exist to this day in all parts of the world, from the hijra in India to the two-spirited people of the Native Americans to the contemporary shunning and violence directed at gender non-conforming individuals. But to reiterate, none of this has to do with identity, but with the material structuring of class society.

While transactivists have started to turn against the biomedical explanation for transgenderism, it is very much alive and well in the medical and psychological community. Victorian-era theories about “brain sex” that would have earned the ire of Marx and Engels are now making a comeback. At best, these theories are chimerical pseudoscience which have not even come close to being conclusively proven in any legitimate scientific study. The standards by which gender dysphoria is diagnosed falls back on the constructed tropes of masculinity and femininity already discussed. Such theories risk misconstruing gender roles as being rooted in nature as opposed to constructions that reinforce ruling class control. Rather than being seen as the disease, dysphoria should be seen as the symptom of the sexual hierarchy. The pressures of gendered socialization are ubiquitous, and begin at birth. Very often we are not aware of the subtle forms socialization exerts upon us. For those who reject this socialization, it follows that they would experience levels of extreme discomfort and anguish. Gendered socialization is not just some abstract phenomena, but is, again, literally grafted onto us. Under this system of socialization, the penis becomes more than just the male sex organ, but the symbol of male aggression and supremacy, in the same way the vagina becomes the symbol of female inferiority and subjugation. Sensitive individuals who struggle against this socialization often hate their bodies, but not because their bodies are somehow “wrong”, but because of what they are drilled into believing their bodies are. What they suffer from is the inability to tear away the curtain that has been placed in front of material reality and to see reality in an objective manner. The fields of medical and psychological science are not immune from the influence of the ruling class. This is especially the case in the world of psychology, where a method of analysis is employed that isolates the individual from the wider society around them, preferring to view internal struggle as the result of some defect as opposed to the result of material and social forces exerted on the individual.

While capitalism has broken down certain elements of patriarchy, and allowed for women to make some gains, it has not dismantled patriarchy completely. Capitalism, being a class system, still needs to retain control of the means of reproduction. For example, laws that restrict access to abortion and contraceptives, while having negative repercussions for all women, have the most negative impact on poor, working-class women. These laws may be cloaked in the terminology of moralism, but have a far more base logic; they ensure the continued production of future proletarians for the benefit of the capitalist machine.

By shifting the definition of “woman” away from a materialist one to an idealistic one, we lose the ability to define and fight the causes of women’s oppression. In its most extreme form it erases women as a class, and makes it impossible to talk about patriarchy as an existing force. Why, then, are Marxists, who are supposed to be dialectical materialists embracing a set of ideas the very opposite of dialectical materialism? To answer this, we need to look at the nature of patriarchy; it is a system that predates capitalism. As already stated above, patriarchy and class exist in a symbiosis with one another. The one cannot be eliminated without the elimination of the other. Overthrowing capitalism is not the same as overthrowing class. As Mao pointed out, class dynamics still exist in the socialist society, and require continuous vigilance and combat on the part of revolutionaries. This is why many socialist states still restricted women’s rights to certain degrees, such as the draconian anti-abortion laws of Ceausescu’s Romania. All males benefit in some way from patriarchy, even males in a socialist society. It therefore follows that socialist males fighting capitalism also benefit from patriarchy. While men and women may be in solidarity with one another as workers, working class men also belong to the male sex class, a class that predates the existence of the modern working class. Class allegiances run deep. This is why so many socialist and “feminist” men are quick to defend and even endorse the violent language and actions perpetrated by some gender non-conforming men against the female sex class, regardless of how these gender non-conforming men identify themselves. This is not to deny that gender non-conforming men are discriminated against, and face harassment and violence themselves, but even as exiles from the male sex-class, they still benefit from some of the privileges awarded to this sex class. Note that I do not use privilege in the manner it’s currently used by the regressive left, i.e. as some abstract notion that needs to be “checked”. Rather, it is an actually existing force that must be combated, just as white revolutionaries must actively combat white supremacy, and first world revolutionaries must actively combat “their” state’s imperialism.

Opportunism and the “fear” of being on the “wrong side of history” are also driving forces behind this embrace of revisionism. The Anglophone left, especially in the United States, given its weakness in the overall political arena, has long sought to be seen as “acceptable” and “polite”, and is often eager to jump on any bandwagon it believes can advance it. This desire to be accepted also drives the fear. It is true that communists have made serious errors in judgment in the past, but that is not an excuse to rebel against core philosophies and hastily embrace ideas and movements without fully analyzing their beliefs and goals. This is not to say that communists should not be on the forefront in defending gender non-conforming individuals. A thoroughgoing socialist revolution requires that these existing oppressive structures be cast aside. But it is possible to defend gender non-conforming people without embracing misogynistic pseudoscience and revisionism.

Women are not just oppressed, but thoroughly exploited. Working class women make up what is possibly the most thoroughly exploited section of human society. By embracing philosophies that not only erase their ability to define and explain their exploitation, but also deny them the agency to organize as a revolutionary class, these “Marxists” have proven that they are in direct contradiction to Marxist philosophy and ideas. They are engaging in revisionism.

In the next part, we will examine the second big lie plaguing the left today, the notion that “sex work is work”.

#Anglo.txt

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mynameisnowwyrm · 3 years

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Ok disclaimer, I really don’t like ABO but i don’t care if you do and it took me a very long time to articulate my feelings on why. I generally don’t like blanket statements, especially with no further explanation on why, so every time the subject of ABO has come up and my gut reaction is just “no”, I wanted to figure out why and it lead me to do some introspection.

So my exploration into “free things to read online” started with wattpad. I had not gotten into fan fiction yet and wattpad had a bunch of original stories. I also really like werewolves. And if you were on wattpad in the mid 2010s you know about the sheer magnitude of ABO style werewolf stories (haven’t been on wattpad in maybe a year or two, don’t know about their popularity now, though I’m guessing it hasn’t died down). Another thing that wattpad has been historically known for, is bad writing. So my introduction to ABO was extremely repetitive badly written wattpad stories. I’ll detail what I didn’t like about wattpad ABO later, but this basically turned me off werewolves altogether for a while and because wattpad’s tagging system is horrible, I lived in fear that every werewolf story would just be ABO. I have since realized that wattpad is trash and I am never going back.

Things I didn’t like in ABO stories I read on wattpad. To clarify, this is not criticism of ABO as a whole, just my experience with it.

The caste system. Alpha/beta/omega are are literally biological roles you are born into and cannot change. That is terrifying to me because one of my biggest fears is not being able to break away from societal constraints placed upon me. I also want to point out that even in the stories with no women, it still managed to be really sexist because the whole alpha/beta/omega positions are so heavily gendered.

Alphas, or as I like to call them (specifically how they were written in the stories I read): just straight up abusers. The way alphas were characterized was also terrifying because you have this aggressive, emotionally/physically/sexually abusive guy at the very top of the social hierarchy, and then you’re supposed to like him.

Mates. I am aroace, for a long time I didn’t know that but it clearly influenced how I viewed romantic and sexual relationships. The thought of being arbitrarily stuck to anyone because of some predetermined destiny did not sit well with me, as well as all of the character’s own agency being stripped away. In my mind when I was reading that, it was like destiny is fucking you over supremely. There you are living your life, then all of a sudden bam! You are now attached to this shitty person who will treat you shittily and there is literally no upside for you, you no longer have control of your mind and body because destiny has taken over.

The fetishization of the alpha/omega relationships when it comes to mlm pairings, especially in combination with the things mentioned above. The werewolf societies were always aggressively patriarchal, even when it was both men, the roles of alphas were always stereotypically aggressive manly men and the roles of omegas were always meek, weak, shy and needed to be taken care of and protected, with them also usually being described as physically feminine in a way. It’s that thing where people cannot view queer relationships outside of a patriarchal, heterosexual lens that usually leads to questions like “so who’s the man and who’s the woman in the relationship?” Secondly, with the characterization of the alpha as abusive and the characterization of the omega as submissive and having their relationship portrayed as a good one is a very bad message, especially when applied to a queer relationship because it feeds into really homophobic propaganda that queer relationships are inherently abusive.

The “I’m not like other girls” of it all in m/f stories. It’s not a teen oriented wattpad story if the main girl isn’t a totally unique individual who constantly puts down other women for no reason. Why and how that’s bad has been done to death so I’m not going to go into it further. Also again being mated to an abusive asshole because of destiny and having it play out as a good thing is really not a good message to send.

The absolute lack of wlw stories. At this point I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing when it comes to these stories specifically.

I don’t know what the general current ABO landscape looks like and I don’t want to find out, partly because my wattpad experiences scarred me, and partly because even if you stripped away the problematic aspects and write an actually good story like I’m sure many people have, a lot of the things that are built in parts of ABO still make me very uncomfortable. This was definitely not meant as an attack on people who enjoy it, if you do then more power to you, I just wanted to detail my history with the subject matter and how that informs my current position.

#it’s 4:24 in the morning right now this took me almost two hours to type out #ABO #alpha/beta/omega dynamics #omegaverse #wattpad

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flashfuture · 3 years

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Follow up questions because I’m a Nerd and I love learning: is there any evidence to suggest frequent inclusion of women in Scandinavian warfare? Or is finding something like women’s armor rare? Was there a standard definition of any queer terminology in any ancient civilization? Did any Norse culture ever find its way to the Middle East???

I feel a bit like an over eager student writing this but uh...I’m very curious. 👀👀

When talking about women in Scandinavia you run into people describing how it appeared these women would take on the role of men in the absence of men. But I think there is an issue in that we’re assuming the role of women in these societies would match the role of an Ancient Greek woman (which is a whole other thing but I digress)

They’ve found that some of the founding fathers of Iceland were women, thirteen of them to be exact. women could inherit land and money from their parents. Women could be involved in legal matters and hold official positions.

There is lots of evidence that women were very frequently going raiding. They have been debating recently I believe if the term dregnr a young warrior really was only applied to men. Young women were described in the same vulgar terms as dominators and something we discuss in ancient Rome was the ideal of male “hardness” basically just being the top dog in the room. Women were the same in Ancient cultures if not expected to hold themselves differently but Skalds (the poets) describe the women just like the men.

Another thing quite recently (1993 so really recent in terms of historical archives) is the idea of the surrogate son. Basically, if a man died with no son to inherit a surrogate son would be chosen over a daughter. It has recently been noted that they very well could have been describing the daughter as a surrogate son. Someone to take up that male role of head of the household. This suggests in the sagas we have noted women but there is also a possibility for women to be described with male traditional words because of the role they were playing.

And we have found tons of armor that looks ceremonially and some battle worn for women yep. All women could fight though it was excepted they could defend themselves and their home front. Against potential attackers and wild animals.

Plus in the 13th century, the Christians introduced the Law of Gulathing which were sets of rules for people to follow. Women were then banned from cutting their hair like men, dressing like men, or in general behaving like men. This suggests It was common enough for them to throw it in the laws that banned traditional things that Scandinavians did that did not fit the Christian narrative or way of life.

-- This is gonna go under the cut for the rest cause wow I got long lol.

Okay queer terminology. You’ll see lesbian which was women who fucks women. and you’ll see penetrator a lot. These were slave cultures also so the idea of sleeping with another citizen was defiling them you shouldn’t do it.

In Ancient Athens, you saw men preferred the company of men over women because they didn’t think women were of value they were only good for producing heirs. There was a thing called pederasty where a wealthy man in his 20s, the erastes, would court a young wealthy man from the ages of 13-19, the eromenos, and teach him and keep him as a lover. Their debate over Achillies and Patroclus for example wasn’t if they were sleeping together but who was fucking who really. Because Patroclus was older but Achillies was the hero so was he being emasculated or were they breaking the age rule? That was their debate cause these things mattered to them

They were kinda the exception to the citizenship rule. The Spartans felt the pederastry was weird because it involved citizens but they were all in with the homo. Obviously, this was all very public and you’d be scorned if they thought you were being penetrated.

All in all, being penetrated was something women and slaves did and the last thing you wanted to be was a woman.

Another thing to consider was these cultures had a lot of problems with excess. So too much sex or food and in Rome you were a uh Cnidus? Idk I can only spell it in Greek which is staggeringly unhelpful but basically, you can’t control your urges. Based off that time someone tried to fuck a statue I think or something like that

The Norse had a similar word ergi which meant you had too much heterosexual sex actually, you were too promiscuous. In the 12th century we know in Iceland homosexual acts like sodomy were banned under Christian canon (Thanks Richard I of England) so there is that. Pre-Christian influence there seemed to be no stigma around this minus don’t force yourself on your friends that’s rude but slaves were fair game. (I wrote a paper on the weird stereotypes of Vikings being the sexual aggressors when the literature of the time suggests the Lotharingians were way way more likely to commit those acts. At least according to French who were besieged constantly by everyone all the time.)

níð was an insult for the ancient norse which basically you had displayed unmanliness. Or you liked to take it up the ass to be plain about it. (Ancient people were vulgar as shit the Romans were obsessed with sexual threats to the point where its just in common day-to-day speech.) Ragr was a term that meant you were unmanly which is much more severe and you could like legally kill someone for saying that up till the 13th century.

There is actually some debate that the concept of unmanly comes from making fun of the Germans. So like if you were Ancient Germanic or Ancient Brittania you were the savages of the day. Which is interesting when you consider the rhetoric those two countries put out. Like literally no one like the Germans or the Brits they thought they were filthy uncivilized and cowardly people.

Also fun from the 7th to 10th century in Norse culture there were these figurines called gold foil couples. In it a couple would be portrayed which was a way of proclaiming themselves married before the gods. It was a very religious practice for them. There are figurines depicting people of the same sex in the gold foil figurines.

Basically, we can thank Christianity for why we think the Vikings didn’t do homosexuality or homosexual acts. Because well they didn’t want them to starting in the 12th century again thanks Richard for having the worst break up with your boyfriend in the history of break ups.

And onto gender which if you know Loki from Marvel him being genderfluid is based entirely on mythology and is common in Norse writings. Okay so essentially we think of seiðr or magic as something women do. And they did too. But men did practice it. This was seen as a third gender in Norse culture, the seiðmaðr a man who practices magic. Hence Loki moving between the three as he’s a known magic-user. There was also this concept of gender mixing, biological men buried in traditionally female clothing. But there is no way for us to know if that is this third gender or potentially they were more excepting of what we would call transgender.

Because most of the writings we have come from the 13th century where Christianity really took over and just started making shit up. Like we have evidence they were trying to cover up things about Norse culture they didn’t like. So men who practiced seiðr were actually ergi and not a different gender, just an unmanly male.

So yeah lol these were acts they did so verbs can be found really easily. But we have mostly Icelandic stuff cause Christians they did fucked up shit

And the Vikings in the Middle East. They went all over. We have this assumption they were raiding whenever they went. Actually, the thing is they only raided northern Europe because they rightfully assumed those guys couldn’t fight back.

But they had trading agreements easily with the Greeks, Persians, and Abbassids mostly. There is a woman from Sweden who was buried with a ring that was inscribed with “For/To Allah”

The Arabs had the term Rusiyyah to describe the Vikings because they came so often. They noted that the Rusiyyah were not good at practicing hygiene but also describe their bodies as being “in perfect form” They liked a good ripped viking and I can appreciate that. They were like “they’re filthy but damn are those rusiyyah built”

Baghdad had the first real market place and they had paper from China so they were printing stuff into books which the Vikings found very interesting. There was so much international trade but the British and Germans who we mostly hear from now were so technologically unadvanced there was no way they could have participated with these other older cultures.

There is money found sometimes that was certainly viking in nature. They didn’t really have money like the Arabs at the time preferring to trade in goods. So they offered furs and silks along with weapons and slaves.

And it is possible that there was culture exchange as all cultures were being exchanged back then. We know some vikings converted to Islam as Arab writers commented that they missed pork dearly but were committed to the Path of Islam.

The Slavs or Rus (Russians) of the time were also annoyed with these viking raiders because their shit would get stolen and then sold to Arabia where they’d have to buy it back usually.

So yeah lots of trading going on. And many Vikings like I mentioned worked as bodyguards or mercenaries. We don’t know much of what the Vikings thought except that the writers in Arab noted they were very polite to their hosts if not aggressive with each other in a playful manner.

Lol you really let my nerd pop off here. I’d have to do more research into the Norse effect on the Middle East though cause I only know about the other way around off the top of my head here.

#ask #history #me and my nerd brain

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alistonjdrake · 4 years

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Adapting Historical Fashion for the Fantasy Eye

I’m back. Why? Because we’ve seen a resurgence of people talking about corsets and whether they were the death traps some would like you to believe (they weren’t and we’re not here to discuss that but I beg you to do some research), people not knowing that there is a vibrant and active historical fashion community who either engage in history bounding (dressing up in period accurate clothing) or add elements of it to their daily lives, and just as always people not knowing the difference between stays and corsets.

But, June, you say. You’re a fantasy writer. What does historically accurate clothing have to do with anything? Historical accuracy is for losers. And to that I say, you are correct. But if you’re using something that has a heavy historical context (like clothing, technology, etc) you might as well know a thing or two about the subject before looking a fool. If only because readers like me notice the small things and cry OR because the aesthetics are cool but knowing where they come from and how they can be changed to fit your world is even cooler.

Fashion defines a society. Fashion defines a culture. What garments are important? What garments are the same among the upper and lower class? Do their roles as garments change depending on class? (ex: stays were often wore “out” for working class women while upper class women would see them strictly as undergarments) How do fashion trends define the eras? It’s not hard to notice that throughout history nearly every decade as a definite silhouette. It’s not hard to tell the difference from a regency era gown from an early Victorian gown to a late Victorian one. They all look vastly different.

I’m not asking anyone to know the ins and out of historical clothing but it doesn’t hurt to read up on it or look at some existing examples. To know the anatomy and construction of what would make a complete outfit (or to read about what people might wear for a given situation if no artwork or garment exists). It all feeds into how your characters hold themselves, how they might be able to move. It’s not so much that people were just “Shaped Differently” back then. Their clothes were constructed with a certain poise or look in mind. And y’know. I just want to stop seeing modern underwear in fantasy underneath historical clothing while we all pretend the undergarments don’t contribute greatly to the finished overall look.

But again, you’re right. We’re not writing historical fiction here. We don’t need to have every mention of clothing in our fantasy novels be completely in line with the point in time we might be basing our setting off of. This is about adaptation.

Adapting Historical Fashion for Non-Historical Purposes.

I’ve said it a bunch by now I’m sure. My books take place in a world based off the late 18th century. Why? I dig it. As such, when I first started putting together the aesthetics of the world that period was also my go to. I know I already did a whole thing on culture and society but really this is more or less just about how fashion can amplify those two things. I mentioned setting and what fabrics might be commonly used or found. And what might make sense to use (lighter, breathy fabrics for hot climates vs thicker fabrics and furs for cold ones) vs ones considered high class and enviable or with trends that might be coming from other countries that have stronger influence.

When I take real life fashion and shove it into my world (give or take a few changes) I usually ask myself a few things first.

1. Who controls the fashion trends?

The younger generation, the monarchs, a group of travelers who just look super stellar? Who is the rest of the community following when it comes to the newest look and what elements of it are they trying to steal/adapt? What element is the thing that really catches on?

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a huge fan of waistcoats and breeches and stockings, tailed coats with flaps (although anyone who reads my book will also know I axed powdered wigs. Because I could.) But to just copy wouldn’t say much about the opulent and flamboyant Escana. To increase the idea of the vanity and the peacock attitude of the younger, partying courtiers I have young men who usually dye their stockings to match their waistcoats (because colored socks > white or black socks) and forgo the coat to show off sleeve details as well as lose some of that “seriousness”. It says a lot about them while still remaining in a circle that gives readers a clue as to where my inspiration came from.

2. Who disagrees with the fashion trends?

And how does their disagreement influence the perception of certain garments or the people who wear them? Just read one thing about how evil corsets are and how crinolines are literally cages for women and how many of us go around thinking Victorian ladies fainted every time they opened a window and understand these perceptions can be long-lasting and completely change an outsider’s opinion on how people lived. Granted for world-building or story purposes hopefully these will be happening currently instead of being a huge misunderstanding of history.

Over and over again I say things like cultures not being monoliths but neither are generations and there’s nothing that makes a world feel more lived in and full than people who don’t all wear a uniform based vaguely on what the author thinks a medieval gown looked like. It’s just also sometimes nice to get tidbits like a character wearing a scandalous or pricey color just to look good even if they can’t afford it. Is it usually super vital to the plot and story? No. If used sparingly can it be fun background information to how the society your character lives in works or views things? Sure.

3. Colors and fabrics and spares, oh my

Okay. That’s not a question. But it’s an umbrella for me to put my thoughts under. Because I live in the 21st century I don’t often think about things like dyes or luxury fabrics but this would be front of mind for most of my characters. Not everyone can afford to wear certain colors, or certain colors come with a context that means they shouldn’t be worn for certain situations or for certain people and the same could be said for fabric. We live with these fashion rules now (although I’m not so strict in my memory of them because my current life doesn’t depend on it, but I do write about princes and courts so it’s more important for a courtier to not wear a happy color to a funeral than for me. Or things like no white after labor day).

Hand-me-downs. I grew up wearing them. They were common in history and should be more common in fantasy. If a family was not wealthy they could only afford so much fabric or to follow fashion trends for their eldest. It wouldn’t be unheard of for a family to still be wearing clothes considered “outdated” and it’s not like we all just throw our clothes out when they get old. While a trend might have moved onto a new silhouette or something, someone with less means might still be wearing decades-old clothing that have held up well (these clothes were built to last. Fast fashion could never) or could have chosen not to jump on the trend at all. In my book, the opulent courtiers and royals of Graza Palace dress completely different than some traditionalists who wear garments more native to Escan before it was an empire that are completely different from the suits and 18th century gowns I’ve borrowed. They’re timeless and probably see a lot more turnover from one family member to the next than a gown that could be out of style in a year.

4. And lastly, making sure I’m not turning it into a costume

This becomes important when taking garments that have a cultural context in the real world and using something similar to it or basing another garment off of it. I would start with this for the purposes of using culture clues to ease someone into what actual culture the fantasy one is taking inspiration from to give them a taste of what certain things might look like without going into full detail but it’s key to then know what makes these garments...these garments so you’re not bastardizing them. Why do people wear them? (especially if a form is still worn in modern times) What are they usually made out of? What are the occasions they are worn for? A respectful nod to something will just add to your world building, a costume rendition with 0 understanding of how certain garments will work will just make it seem like all your characters are in cosplay.

So in conclusion: No, I’m not advocating you be historically accurate for your already not historically accurate but it pays to look into why your basing clothing off a certain period and what goes into making that piece of clothing...that piece of clothing. Why it looks that way, how someone wearing it would look/hold themselves, and what it means in the context of your setting as well as things you might change and take extra liberties with for the purpose of storytelling. Clothing can add character and it could be just as useful a tool in world building (in my biased opinion) as language given that fashion can have such a huge impact on people but it can also fall flat.

#june trash #world building #worldbuilding #tss trilogy #thanks for letting me rant #I'm glad I got that out #never post another picture of a robe a la anglaise and say something about corsets again if you wish to live

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Where Are All of the Mothers in Fantasy Fiction?

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This is a guest post from Gabriela Houston, the London-based Polish author of Second Bell, a Slavic fantasy debut described as a cross between His Dark Materials and The Bear and the Nightingale. You can find out more about the book here.

Historically speaking, the fantasy genre has a thorny relationship with motherhood. Technically, it’s acknowledged that the protagonists must have sprung from somewhere. But it is often solely their paternity that is seen as important—while the mothers, if mentioned at all, are usually either dead of irrelevant: unmentioned or languishing in a convent somewhere. If the mothers (or stepmothers: a different type of a mother-figure) persist in being alive into their children’s adulthood they are most often presented as an obstacle to their child’s self-actualisation/quest, or, as is most common with the stepmother archetype, present an actual threat to the protagonist.

Since mainstream fantasy as a genre was Eurocentric, this is a trend that is very much connected to the patriarchal structures persisting throughout Europe for most of recorded history. King Arthur, whose legend was first written down in the 12th Century by Geoffrey of Monmouth, had a mother, of course, but her only real importance was in how her beauty drew the eye of Uther Pendragon, who raped her, conceiving Arthur. Since Uther ended up marrying Arthur’s mother, Igraine, story-wise all was considered to be well, and, her role in birthing the future king done, Igraine became an irrelevance, just as any feelings and thoughts she might have had on her second husband. All we know is she was beautiful, chaste and gave birth to the real protagonist of the story.

The courtly love conventions forming the basis of many medieval European legends have seeped into the genre of fantasy, especially high fantasy, and have shaped the way in which female protagonists are related to. In most “traditional” fantasy, motherhood was seen as nearly opposite to personhood. A female character’s value centred squarely on her attractiveness to the male protagonist, meaning that the moment she aged/became a mother, she ceased to hold that particular form of attention that comes from extreme youth and innocence. Motherhood is seen as the end of a female character’s journey. The experiences, shifting relationships and emotions linked to motherhood are not seen as interesting enough to garner any space at all.

In The Lord of The Rings, we are faced with a whole cast of missing mothers. Moreover their absence is not noted as particularly important or carrying any emotional load. Aragorn, son of Arathorn, clearly had a mother, but when his father died he was shipped off to live with the elves. We neither know, nor are expected to care about what his mother thought on the subject. Then, of course, he falls for the elven maiden Arwen, whose mother, we’re told (as an aside) had the good sense to disappear from the scene by sailing beyond the sea before the plot of LOTR begins. Frodo Baggins’ mother helpfully died before he was born and Bilbo Baggins has the rare privilege of having a named mother, Belladonna Took, who, however, is quite dead by the time The Hobbit begins, and is referenced only as a link between Bilbo and the adventurous Took clan. She was a Took and she birthed him. Thus her role ended.

The halls of speculative fiction are carpeted with the corpses of the mothers who died of broken hearts and colds in order to not complicate their progeny’s journey. In fantasy TV and Film the trend, quite naturally, continued. In the original Star Wars trilogy, Princess Leia and Luke’s mother, Padme Amidala lived a full life of adventure but then died of a broken heart shortly after her children were born, as of course she should have done. Can you imagine, had she survived, the plot-spoiling link to their past she would have become? In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Joyce Summer’s death, whilst arguably the critical highpoint of the series, was seen as necessary. She had to die, or else Buffy might have never become who she was always meant to be. As a mother she was an obstacle, one the scriptwriters helpfully removed.

Occasionally, the death of the character’s mother brings about the advent of the perennial archetype of the evil step-mother. A twisted parody of what a mother should be, just as the dead mother was convenient to the character’s journey, the insertion of the stepmother exists solely to scupper all of the character’s efforts. The examples of the conniving stepmother trope abound in traditional folktales (like in Cinderella, or its Slavic equivalent, Vasilisa, where the young protagonist is sent off by her stepmother to ask a favour of the infamous witch, Baba Yaga), mythologies (think the ultimate evil stepmother, Hera, who habitually persecuted the innocent results of her husband Zeus’ many indiscretions), and, not surprisingly, in fantasy genre as well.

In A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin (which actually does portray an unusual range of mothers with agency), Catelyn Stark, an otherwise fiercely loyal mother, is a cold and distant stepmother to Jon Snow. In the first novel in Katherine Arden’s fantastic Winternight trilogy, the main protagonist grows up in the shadow of her vapid, fearful and cruel stepmother. Part of the reason, I’d argue, why older women are so often portrayed as annoying and conniving, is because, as far as the traditional narratives are concerned, the whole of their role and purpose is fulfilled the moment their physical (youthful) attractiveness wanes. Those without the wisdom to exit the stage by dying become at worst a cumbersome plot bunny and at best an obstacle.

The issue of a lack of older women in fantasy is such an expansive subject that it demands the respect of a separate thought piece, really. And, as regards the stepmothers, I’m not saying, of course, that they should always be portrayed as kind and loving. But precisely because their archetype is rooted so strongly in our collective consciousness, it’s particularly important to acknowledge their humanity. And as far as the humanity of the older female (in the traditional fantasy fiction this seems to describe any woman over twenty) character goes, the good news is the tide is turning.

Part of the reason for that is that more women than ever are given the platform to write their stories. Perhaps somewhere along the way the publishing industry as a whole realised that as women account for the majority of fiction readers (according to one cross-Atlantic research they make up to 80% of fiction market), then perhaps portraying women as actual people, whose agency doesn’t evaporate once they get pregnant, might simply be good marketing.

In the recent years I’ve been ecstatic to see nuance brought into the motherhood trope within the genre. Where the mother of the character is dead, she is so for a damn good reason, with the echoes of her absence reverberating through the story in the most compelling ways, like in Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn. Mothers fight beside their children, and grandchildren (Like the pink-haired protagonist of The Phlebotomist by Chris Panatier), and battle hardship and heartache, like in Madeline Miller’s Circe.

As a mother it was important to me to focus on the humanity of motherhood in my debut, The Second Bell. The mothers I wrote are not perfect, and they are not always right. And even when they are, they might not know it for certain. And that is the point. Mothers deserve their place in fiction not because they’re perfect, but because they are human. Their decisions are just as complex as their younger counterparts and are complicated further by their new and life-changing bond with their child.

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Writing mothers is writing humans. No more, no less. They matter and they are worthy of notice.

Second Bell will be released on Tuesday, March 9th. You can find out more about Gabriela Houston here.

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