#...about how they view a marginalized status

[uncanny-tranny]

I think when people talk about things like desirability, they can miss the deeper point of why it can be important to analyze why people are seen as undesirable. It isn't just that a type of person is just... not hot... but often, it's the dehumanization of a person based on marginalized features.

For instance, I had a conversation with somebody about disability portrayal in media, and we had agreed that, historically, disability had been portrayed as a horrific ordeal. However, I think they missed the point as to why the "undesirable disabled" character was so appealing to a broader audience. The idea that disability is other, inhuman, and something that depersonalizes somebody from society is partly why those ideas were and are prevalent in mainstream media and culture. It is the idea that "nobody likes you. Nobody needs you. Nobody wants you" because of the person's marginalized body or experience or whatever it may be.

It isn't some superficial "oh why aren't I seen as pretty by everybody?" It is the knowledge that you are portrayed as undesirable in this way because it is a way to separate you from everybody else. It isn't about beauty, nor is it a selfish desire to be wanted by somebody. It is the desire to be seen as a person - an equal, regardless of who desires you or who does not.

#beauty culture #desirability politics #ableism #ableism tw #i brought up media but it doesn't solely apply to that and the same with disability #i just thought the conversation perfectly encapsulated my frustration with how people interact with desirability #because some people go at it with the assumption that it is shallow and vapid and vain to want to have people change their perspective... #...about how they view a marginalized status #like when trans people have criticism of desirability favouring cisnormativity fot instance - people assume it is vapid and vain... #..but it is us asking to be seen as PEOPLE even *if* we aren't fucking ~desirable~ by everybody. your desires shouldn't impact us like that #our lives shouldn't hinge on us fighting to be seen as human beings - we shouldn't need to fight tooth and fucking nail for it #i've been thinking about that conversation for a while now and it's kind of nice to somewhat flesh out my problems with it all #i have no ill-will to the person i was talking to and about. we just went at the premise in different ways and i have different ideas #i don't think the person is Bad and Horrible. i think that they AND i are impacted by this and we have different experiences

[practicingbushiho]

ngl people keep bitching about tumblr's choices to basically skullfuck their own UI as if the average user has any bearing or influence on the choices made and its starting to irritate me.

it can't be unique as a platform because shareholders and investors are generally high risk to maintain and most corporate teams do whatever the trend is to play conservatively to old men with money who have no idea how the average user interacts with social media. they literally hire everyone to do that research for them.

and you can insist that tumblr is worse; but it isn't and has always been like this. I understand the frustration, and I even agree with it. But can we stop being naive for five minutes and accept that no matter what if a social media platform is funded by corporate wealth hoarders that they will never give a shit what you personally enjoy doing with a website at least?

i use tumblr because it works and for no other reason. if it stops working for me, I follow the rules of capitalism and fuckin leave. This is why the free market sucks! because its blind competitive growth that means ultimately extremely nothing, and CEOs can just claim failed websites as tax deductible expenses if and when they fail.

They will tell staff they care about user retention. The staff believes them. They are being lied to, and so are you. Use the service as long as it is useful to you. That's it.

#like im sorry i just am about to start blocking mfs that keep regurgitating this shit #'wahhh tumblr is trying to be twitter' YEAH because twitter WORKED #and its only NOT working now because it was bought by an attention seeking 12 year old who didnt want to to be twitter to begin with! #like i understand that we prefer a different blogging platform but god the status quo really does not and will not care about that #you dont affect their bottom like the way you think you do! #so at least acknowledge that its not a question why they dont seem to do 'rational' things! #capitalism is not rational!!!! #and what you see as rational socialization is not how corporations view profit margins! sorry! #idk running a business has made me extremely jaded about both sides of discourse like this bc people always act enraged or confused #like this is new shit we are just now stumbling on instead of it being historically how social media has worked forever #lmao #ok sorry rant over lol

[heritageposts]

[...] More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo. The game's co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the [occupied] West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game's themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. Some of the gruesome details of the incident were captured on video, which Druckmann viewed. In his interview, he recounted the anger and desire for vengeance he felt when he saw the video—and how he later reconsidered and regretted those impulses, saying they made him feel “gross and guilty.” But it gave him the kernel of a story. “I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.” Druckmann drew parallels between The Last of Us and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again on the official The Last of Us podcast. When discussing the first time Joel kills another man to protect his daughter and the extraordinary measures people will take to protect the ones they love, Druckmann said he follows "a lot of Israeli politics," and compared the incident to Israel's release of hundreds of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. He said that his father thought that the exchange was overall bad for Israel, but that his father would release every prisoner in every prison to free his own son. "That's what this story is about, do the ends justify the means, and it's so much about perspective. If it was to save a strange kid maybe Joel would have made a very different decision, but when it was his tribe, his daughter, there was no question about what he was going to do," Druckmann said.

And continuing, on the security structures featured in the The Last of Us Part II:

Besides the familiar zombie fiction aesthetics of an overgrown and decomposing metropolis, The Last of Us Part II's main setting of Seattle is visually and functionally defined by a series of checkpoints, security walls, and barriers. There are many ways to build and depict structures that separate and keep people out. Just Google "U.S.-Mexico border wall" to see the variety of structures on the southern border of the United States alone. The Last of Us Part II's Seattle doesn't look like any of these. Instead, it looks almost exactly like the tall, precast concrete barriers and watch towers Israel started building through the West Bank in 2000.

Illustrations, from the article:

The first barrier Ellie and Dina encounter when arriving in Seattle / West Bank barrier.

. . . article continues on Vice (July 15 2020)

Backup -> archive.today link /archive.org link

#free palestine #palestine #israel #gaza #the last of us #tlou #tlou2 #zionism #i know this article has made the rounds here before but i wanted it archived in case vice goes down

[genderkoolaid]

hello! i was wondering your take on uh. this.

These kinds of comments have been talked about a lot & the general consensus is that they are Not Great

It's basically the model minority mindset put on trans men. You have a wildly polarized view on gender, but trans men are okay because they're The Good Ones. I know a lot of people's criticisms are that this is degendering & making trans men out to be not real men, and I agree, but it's also telling trans men that their gender is bad and hated by the people around them, and that they are only barely saved because of the idea that being trans makes them more palatable for cis women.

It's trying to marry both essentialist views on gender and pro-trans politics, but the result is that trans men have to play a balancing game of "how much of a man am I allowed to be before I make the people around me uncomfortable?" It allows people to constantly tug around trans men by the leash of "ugh you're being too much like a man right now :/" whenever a trans man gets too emotional, or talks to much, or has an issue with how he is being treated, or doesn't want to do something traditionally feminine, or even dresses typically masculine. It seems positive on it's surface, but it actually serves as a way for people to police trans men & their marginalized manhood by threatening to take way their status as The Exception if they act out of line.

#m. #ask box #examples of transandrophobia

[akajustmerry]

"The cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modelled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes the Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.

The game's co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game's themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. Some of the gruesome details of the incident were captured on video, which Druckmann viewed. In his interview, he recounted the anger and desire for vengeance he felt when he saw the video—and how he later reconsidered and regretted those impulses, saying they made him feel “gross and guilty.” But it gave him the kernel of a story.

“I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”

"That's what this story is about, do the ends justify the means, and it's so much about perspective. If it was to save a strange kid maybe Joel would have made a very different decision, but when it was his tribe, his daughter, there was no question about what he was going to do," Druckmann said.

In the game, most of the Wolves regime's restrictions are directed at a post-apocalyptic religious sect called the Seraphites (the Wolves call them "Scars" after the ritualistic scarring of their faces). These Scars vexed FEDRA as well when it was in control. The dynamic in the city when the game begins is one of conflict, escalation, and a broken truce. The Wolves, like FEDRA, leverage more resources and raw power, while the Scars rely on surprise strikes against Wolf patrols, and a zealous willingness to die for the cause.

To run through just a few key ways in which the Scars uncomfortably reflect some Israeli stereotypes about Palestinians: Later in the game, Ellie finds a location called "Martyr Gate," where the Scars' spiritual leader apparently died, indicating a religious significance of a specific and disputed location, and emphasizing the notion of martyrdom as central to their culture. The Scars are able to get around Wolf patrols and various barriers around the city via an elaborate, secret system of bridges between skyscrapers. These function as a kind of flipped version of the underground tunnels Palestinians use to bypass Israeli blockades and other means of limiting free movement in order to get supplies and carry out attacks on Israel.

In The Last of Us Part II's Seattle, Scars and Wolves hurt each other terribly, and the same can be said about Israel and Palestine. The difference is that when flashes of violence abate and the smoke clears, one side continues to live freely and prosper, while the other goes back to a life of occupation and humiliation. One side continues to expand while the other continues to lose the land it needs to live. Imagining this process as some kind of symmetric cycle benefits one side more than the other, and allows it to continue.

Ellie's journey of revenge seems especially cruel, even idiotic, because we are never given a good reason for why she keeps recommitting to it. Acts of cruelty along the way, like Ellie's torturing another character to get information, are presented as inevitable. This seems to be The Last of Us Part II's thesis: humans experience a kind of "intense hate that is universal," as Druckmann told The Post, which keep us trapped in these cycles. This is not a universal feeling as much as it's a learned way of seeing the world. 

The Last of Us Part II is an incredible journey that provides not only one of the most mesmerizing spectacles that we've seen from big budget video games, but one that manages to ask difficult questions along the way. It's clearly coming from an emotionally authentic and self-examining place. The trouble with it, and the reason that Ellie's journey ultimately feels nonsensical, is that it begins from a place that accepts "intense hate that is universal" as a fact of life, rather than examining where and why this behaviour is learned."

The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of 'The Last of Us Part II' by Emanuel Maiberg

#tlou #the last of us part 2 #the last of us #neil druckmann #free palestine #palestine #unfriendly time to rmr who made this game and why the violence is like that #/

[sahonithereadwolf]

Can I tell you about the very queer game I made this Pride?

In A World That Hates and Fears You, Living Becomes an Act of Rebellion.

Exceptionals is a game inspired by X-Men about and for the spaces and communities marginalized peoples make for themselves. Play as a Geno, one of little less than 0.5% percent of the population that has gone through a mysterious process called Claremont-Simonson mutation, as you try to navigate a world that won’t make room for you. Exceptionals is a game about what the mutant metaphor means to you and the different lenses through which we view it. Punch back and build something of worth together in this narrative tag-driven tabletop role playing game. 🧬Features Open-Ended Character Creation🧬 Mix and Match between (23) open-ended but guided protocols. Answer questions to create high concept and unique super powered characters where the only real limit is your imagination. Get invested in who you make as a whole person, and not just a set of powers. Build a Community 🧬Create a living and dynamic community space full of colorful characters. 🧬 Grow your base as an anchor for other geno and help fill it with the resources they and you need. Understand how your actions effect others and gain trust through the bonds mechanic. It’s a game where you get stronger by growing your community and heal by being part of it.

🧬Comic Book Storytelling 🧬 Play as a creative team of writers and editors working to tell the best version of the story you can over time and storyline-based experience to model changes of the status quo and creative direction. Enjoy panel based action pacing and the ability of characters of all power levels to coexist and carry the same amount of story weight.

🧬Not Pain Tourism 🧬 While Exceptionals offers a number of places to push back, we understand and recognize that the most important part of a punching bag is that you choose to hit it, even if it’s not at all. We recognize not everyone gets to set the issues that the mutant metaphor is used to talk about down when they leave the table and offer many ways to tell stories outside of a lens defined by pain. We also put an emphasis and mechanical weight on the importance of joy and celebration. 📚You can buy the Core Book here:📚 https://bramblewolfgames.itch.io/exceptionals 📚You can buy the Expansions here:📚 https://bramblewolfgames.itch.io/exceptionals-expansion-bundle 📚You can buy the bundle with everything here:📚 https://bramblewolfgames.itch.io/exceptionals-expansion-bundle I didn’t go out with the intent of making this a very queer game. Not explicitly. I started making games because  I got frustrated waiting to feel seen or acknowledged. Another game got me mad about using my peoples stories to be transphobic, to be racist, to be ableist. Nevermind my people have more than two genders traditionally and faced a genocide. That was too much for me. I said this was enough and the quite indignities I suffered to feel included wasn’t worth it. I could do better myself.  So I set out to make a superhero game. I hated just about every comic book game on the market. It never seemed to capture what I did like about big hero comics with high concept storytelling and powers and couldn’t care less on a mechanical or narrative level about who this person was outside the mask. More focused on bashing action figures together and golden age pastiche that doesn’t really reflect the decades of character and genre developments that have happened since then. I later found games that do it better, but I was dissatisfied... I chose x-men for the homies. I’ve always been an x-men fan. A lot of people my age were. My first action figure was one of rogue I got at a garage sale, where she then went on to fight many a play-dough monster. But for many of us it was the first place we were allowed to be heroes. There are no natives on the 90′s x-men team. But I had uncles and older kids all too eager to tell me about Forge and Warpath (I hate that name) and my favorite Dani Moonstar (I ain’t the biggest fan of that name either, but she’s the closest thing mainstream hero comics have to a good NDN).

After that, things just kinda flowed from there. The X-men have such a focus on community. It’s “comics greatest soap opera”. It can be messy, complicated, beautiful and life-affirming all at the same time. They take the time to play basketball, go to the mall, and have birthday parties as they grow. Two of my favorite x-men comics aren’t about fighting at all. One is framed around a sleepover some students have, and another is about a wedding and framed around everyone filming their part of the wedding tape.

So I started thinking about the communities I’ve been a part of. A big core of the game is informed by my time and the people I met in these sort of spaces. As a native, as a queer person, as a disabled person I’ve been both someone who needed them and someone who gave back.

Which suited x-men just fine. X-men has cared about that sort of thing from about X-men #3 with the first appearance of The Blob, establishing it’s tone of sympathy and mutants as a minority analog.

I just kept going and I didn’t stop. And apparently I did a good job. Someone out there has been using my game as game-therapy and community outreach in a gender health center out in California. I got a lot of kind words for the game too (which is good, because I spent 3 years on it).

KUDOS

-As featured on; io9/Gizmodo, Kotaku, Listen to Theses Nerds, Team-Up Moves, Yes Indie'd Pod, Team-Up Moves, and The Voice of Dog -#1 Best Seller and Popular on Itch.io in both Analog & RPG Games, Sept 2021

Listen to the Team-Up Moves AP Here!: https://teamupmoves.com/runs/exceptionals "Exceptionals is a beautiful, brilliantly designed superhero RPG. It's truly a masterpiece, and if you haven't checked it out, do yourself a favor." -@PartyOfOnePod

"This thing COOKS, Sahoni doesn't just tap into the queer/minority readings of mutants, but also ties in the weirdness that really gets my mind racing when it comes to X books." -@froondingloom 

"A refreshingly different game, that strikes a good balance between unlimited player freedom and solid guiding handrails. Really gets at the full potential of what the ;mutant outcast heroes' genre should be about: found family, building communities, and lives lived to the fullest despite being lived in defiance." -@guywhowrotethis 

"The whole game oozes love for its inspiration while also going further than they dared...." -@Phoenix24Femme

"Astonishing! Uncanny! All-New! And all other X-Adjectives available. This book gets why one would want to play the Mutant Metaphor in an RPG. It cleverly weaves the power fantasy of powerful individuals with the drive to do good for one's community. It's well-researched, well-written and, well, so much fun to play! This is the superpowered game I've been wanting for a long, long time. I can't wait to tell an Exceptional story of my own!" -@Kokiteno Team-up moves even made a recommended comic reading list. It has some of the best x-men has to offer and then some. It even includes that  New Mutants comic with the sleepover. They read me for filth and I love it.

I hope you play my game too. I hope you like it. I hope you tell queer stories and build community around you. I hope it’s messy, complicated, beautiful and life-affirming all at the same time. Thank you for reading this. Please reblog if you can as well as share it with x-men and rpg fans in your life.

#exceptionals #Indie TTRPG #ttrpg #comics #X-men #pride #mutants

[bleeding-star-heart]

The more I think about DA:2 's ending and read people's thoughts on it here, the more it changes. I've come to the conclusion that while the Watsonian explanation for what Anders does is okay, I cannot say the same of the Doylist explanation. For those who don't understand what that means, a couple definitions. Watsonian: the in-story justification for why something happens or is. Ex. Luke's aunt and uncle are murdered in A New Hope because the Empire was looking for Luke. Doylist: The author's purpose for having something happen or be in a story. Ex. Luke's aunt and uncle die to move the plot forward and help make sure he leaves Tattoine. In other words: the in-universe reason for the Chantry being blown up is clear, but the writers' reasons aren't. Therefore, we are not discussing Anders's motivation. There's plenty of meta for that if you're curious. Instead, we are discussing the writers' motivation for writing it the way they did. One could simply say, 'they needed a conflict for the finale', and have done with it. But that only explains the most bare-bone plot-related reasons. It says nothing about how that plot point relates to the overall message, or how the writers intended Anders to be viewed by the audience. Specifically, I doubt that the writers meant us to view Anders positively. If that was their intention, they would not have written Anders murdering Elthina in a way that involved massive collateral damage and the death of innocents. Those things don't tend to generate goodwill. It's possible they wanted Anders to be viewed as a villain, but in that case, why doesn't DA2 end with an Anders boss fight? No, I suspect that the writers' intention were in the same situation as Marvel movies with politically progressive villains. Namely, the ones the audience ends up agreeing with to the point they're in danger of losing their status as villains. Only, instead of it being a single character, the writers had this problem with the concept of mage rights as a whole. Namely, modern people are generally against depriving people of their freedoms/rights. They're especially against doing so because of something the person can't control or doing it to a whole group because only some members of that group are bad. Therefore, most players will probably agree with Anders that the Circles are indeed bad. Especially players from real-life marginalized groups. It's the same deal as X-Men, except that X-Men understands and ANTICIPATES that the audience is on the side of the X-Men. DA:2, on the other hand...not so much. So, I suspect Anders blowing up the Chantry was the writers doing what Marvel writers often do: make the left-wing villain inexplicably do something nasty in order to have them retain their villain status. Or, in this case, have the most prominent activist do something bad so that the mage rights cause looks equal to the Templar point of view. And, like in the case of Marvel, it doesn't really work. Anders blowing up the Chantry doesn't make the Templars look right. As a matter of fact, the in-universe explanation explicitly relies upon the fact that it doesn't! And that is why I cannot say the writers' reason to write Anders do what he does makes sense. Mainly because I don't believe the writers had a reason. In other words, I believe Anders was done dirty by the finale.

#dragon age 2 #dragon age meta #dragon age #da 2 #watsonian #doylist #anders

[welcometogrouchland]

one thing i find interesting about Dana’s words about Caleb and Evelyn from the livestream is how she seems to center events from Evelyn’s perspective (she refers specifically to the "Evelyn and Flapjack" lore when the question prompting the discussion also named Caleb, tho I don't think that's like. A calculated decision, it might just reflect who she views as the most significant characters in the grand scheme of things)

it’s about what Evelyn was doing in gravesfield, why Evelyn liked caleb, how she first presented herself to him. it’s about her family that he married into, the Clawthorne family, blood members like Eda, chosen/adopted members, like King and honorary members, like Luz. That’s who the story really centers around, so it makes sense that when approaching this nugget of lore, they'd tackle it from Evelyn's POV.

But i just find it interesting bc it’s so unlike 90% of the fan content centered around that era. Like most of the things ppl make related to Evelyn and the Wittebros is usually set from one of the brothers perspectives (with a couple of exceptions! @/moonmeg’s comics and @/litfeathers various drabbles and dubs all have a good balance of Evelyn and caleb/philip perspective!). Obviously this is mostly bc we got the Wittebros lore first (all the way back in yesterday's lie) and because we know (marginally) more about them, people have been playing around with them for longer and with more material.

But I'm honestly really interested in Dana's version of the story! Especially considering it seems like Evelyn had much more agency in the story than we give her credit for. She's the one who went to gravesfield, reached out to Caleb, presumably taking either the romantic or platonic initiative and thus setting things in motion. Why? we don't know! Dana says Caleb seemed more reasonable than the rest of the population in gravesfield, that they bonded over flapjack like dog owners over pets, which is all very interesting when we know he was a witch hunter, implies a lot of interesting things about why he was doing that career and what his status in the town social climate might've been like, but that's where fan interpretation comes into play, so I digress.

(also, this is a tangent but I'm a big fan of Dana implying that Evelyn took initiative? We only have huntlow to go off of but generally speaking the show likes to subvert overdone or overly stereotypical m/f romance tropes- while not being too pointed about it and still leaving room for nuance and characterization- and I like the idea that if they had the chance, they would've done that w/ Caleb and Evelyn, with her being the passionate Romeo and him being the more longing, pining-maiden type in the relationship hehehe)

Point to all this being, I think it's very funny how we all got wrapped up in the mystique and intrigue of (Belos' biased, carefully crafted and incomplete) narrative of ~the tragedy of the brothers Wittebane~ bc he was our main source that we failed to consider that Evelyn, who fits the character archetype TOH likes to use as a focal/viewpoint character much more cleanly that either Wittebane (what with being a young woman, a 'weirdo' estranged from her home, a Clawthorne, etc), might've actually been the perspective we should've been looking at things from. Dana's based for this actually

#ramblings of a lunatic #the owl house #toh #toh meta #evelyn clawthorne #caleb wittebane #ehh i won't tag Philip cause he's barely mentioned here #anyway. Evelyn ''arbitor of the shows narrative via her insatiable passion for birds and quirked up white boys'' Clawthorne supremacy

[alpaca-clouds]

Why I have complicated feelings about the Witcher Games

I started my yearly reread of the Witcher books and it once again reminds me of how complicated I feel about the Witcher games. Because... well, they kinda focus a lot on the power fantasy over the story and characters.

Let me quickly explain: I read the Witcher books when they released in Germany and I loved them, because... it literally was the first time outside of manga that I ever encountered queer characters in media, which meant a lot to my queer little self back then.

However, when the first game came out I did not make the connection between the title and the books I read. Like, the names vaguely rang a bell to me, but I really did not make the connection at first when playing that first game.

Now, back then I was still in my late teenage stage, and so back then the entire "sex minigame" with the sexy card collection was funny to me. It was before my feminism arc, so to speak. I just did not think too much about it.

By the time however that the second game came out I had rediscovered the books. And I found that... It really icked me. The entire sex thing. And also that they made Triss all sexy, completely ignoring that in the book she had this big disfiguring scar over her chest which could not be fixed because of her ALLERGY AGAINST MAGIC REMEDIES! But no, the game ignored that.

It should be said, I have... complicated feelings about Yennefer, which probably has to do a lot with internalized misogyny. But yes, I always liked Triss a lot, while... Ah, I just always got annoyed a lot with Yennefer taking so long to be honest about her feelings in the books. But again, probably internalized misogyny, I am honest.

Now, I had a ton of fun playing both Witcher 2 and Wild Hunt. I did. But when I was there, reading the books again, I could not help but very much just headcanon that those were two very, very different things. Because... well, the Witcher games are a cishet male power fantasy, while the books are anything what.

Geralt in the books is disabled because of his injuries, and marginalized because of his status as a witcher. And while the latter is vaguely hinted at in the game, it never really becomes a main theme. Because it would of course go against the power fantasy of it. And his disability? Yeah, that gets just fully ignored by the games. He is just very fit and very... everything. He is a walking, talking male power fantasy.

And that does do his character dirty in my point of view. It really does him dirty. Because that is not what Geralt is or stands for.

There is also the fact that the game turns the "women wanting to fuck him" into a part of the power fantasy, while in the books this very much is about him being objectified and fetishized.

And again, Triss gets to be conventionally attractive and her feelings for Geralt get turned into this love story, rather than this very awkward and kinda tragic one sided love, that made Geralt feel shitty for leading her on.

And I cannot help but be very frustrated with it. Because... Look, the books are not perfect. They are not. But... Geralt is such a wonderful character in them. A character with a lot of nuance. And I just hate how the games kinda did away with all of that nuance, so that the character could serve a power fantasy for white cishet dudes.

#the witcher #witcher netflix #witcher books #wiedźmin #witcher games #witcher #geralt of rivia #geralt z rivii #fantasy #high fantasy #video games #feminism #disability

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #2 – He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

I’ve had this sitting on my bookshelf since it came out but, as so often happens, having it just laying around meant it faded to the background whenever I was deciding what to read next. Not the worst case of that (there’s a lovely of Cyteen that’s been sitting on my dresser and shaming me for at least a year now), but certainly long enough for me to regret it.

The story is a direct sequel to She Who Became The Sun, a low fantasy retelling of the fall of the Yuan Dynasty and the ascension of Zhu Yuanzhang to the imperial throne – though in this universe the ‘real’ Zhu Yuanzhang died a starving peasant child, and his sister assumed his identity and his destiny of greatness, willing to do anything and everything it takes to force the world into alignment with it. The book starts with her having lost her right hand, and only gets more emphatic about making her prove it from there.

Aside from Zhu, the narration’s split between several different points of view that fill out the struggle for the future of China. The book honestly does a better job with multiple POVs than the vast majority of epic fantasy I’ve read – every one is a thematic mirror of Zhu on one level or another, and every one has an arc dedicated to the book’s twin fascinations of what it means to be willing to do anything to achieve what you want on one hand, and gender nonconformity and queerness in an intensely patriarchal traditional society on the other.

The actual plot of the story is almost episodic – Zhu encounters some new obstacle on her way to victoriously marching to the Mongol capital at Dadu that can’t be defeated with the blunt force she has available, and she and some collection of the supporting cast goes on an insane adventure to snatch victory regardless. Then every so often there’s a cutaway to Wang Baoxiang (who, among all the other POVs, is easily the one that comes closest to deuteragonist status) scheming his way through imperial court politics in Dadu in his incredibly operatic and self-degrading scheme for revenge on his dead brother. The plots start affecting each other quite early, but I’m pretty sure it’s only in the last twenty pages or so that the two of them actually meet face to face (it is in fact a minor plot point that Wang can’t recognize Zhu when he sees her). It all manages to feel like it’s capturing a whole swathe of political intrigue beyond any one person’s understanding and feel fairly well plotted and cohesive as it comes together. Not that there aren’t plenty of points where you have to just run with it and not push back at what the book’s telling you but nowhere where it’s serious or blatant enough to actually be an issue.

I’m not sure it’s a complaint per se, but one thing that did take some adjusting to is just how, melodramatic I suppose? All the POVs in the book feel very profoundly and effusively, and also have absolutely zero awareness or understanding of their own emotions. This is particularly acute with Wang and Madame Zhang, but in every case there’s just a lot of characters being driven by emotions too large to be contained within them. It kind of feels like a musical, in that respect (but absolutely no other, to be clear).

Anyways, this is a book with absolutely massive amounts of Gender in it. With like, literally one exception, every POV is to some great extent defined by struggling against their position in the gender system of medieval China, and all the issues doing so their entire lives has left them with (Zhu is far and away the most healthy and well-adjusted about this.) Importantly, being oppressed and marginalized for being a woman/effeminate man/eunuch is in no way edifying or ennobling – it’s mostly left everyone involved deeply damaged and full of coping mechanisms that serve them poorly and everyone around them far worse. There’s basically no mention of even the idea of solidarity among the oppressed here – Madame Zhang tortures, mutilates and kills her own maids and her husbands’ consorts whenever necessary, Wang operatic revenge plot involves befriending and seducing a queer prince knowing it will get him killed in the end, Ouyang hates how effeminate his body is and deals with this by becoming a pathological misogynist – even Zhu doesn’t spare much to think about the cause of woman’s liberation beyond herself and her wife.Given the state of a lot of modern genre lit I honestly found this rather refreshing.

As both cause and consequence of the choice of POVs, the book has a rather interesting relationship with normative masculinity. There’s, as far as I can tell, exactly two examples of successful heroic/virtuous normative masculinity in the book – General Zhang and the Grand Councillor of the Yuan – and despite both being really incredibly competent and fearsome on the battlefield and legitimately selfless and honorable, both end up condemned as traitors to their respective lieges (both indolent, vicious, and generally contemptible men without anything in the way of redeeming features, themselves) and dying unpleasantly after being outmanoeuvred in court intrigue. Victory in the end goes not to those who are cherished by their society but the ones who are overlooked and brutalized by it but are willing and able to do whatever it takes and use anything and everything they can to claw their way to the top despite it.

Speaking of – the overriding throughline of the story is what it means to be willing to do anything to achieve your life’s ambition. Being willing to endure pain and suffering goes without saying, and while the book does put its leads through the physical ringer, that’s not really what it’s interested in. Are you willing to spend the lives of those who trust and rely upon you? Sacrifice those you love, or ask them to die for you? Betray those who have only ever shown you kindness? Are you willing to degrade and humiliate yourself, or lie and betray your own hard-won and precarious identity? And once you’ve done all that, and finally achieved your heart’s desire – well, are you really sure it was all worth it? Three cases out of four in the book, at least, ended up regretting it in the end.

This is a book that’s very concerned with sex and sexuality but, like, very nearly exclusively in offputting or unpleasant ways. There’s something like a dozen sex scenes (okay, ‘scenes with sex in them’ is probably the less misleading description. If you come looking for porn you’ll be disappointed) in the book and of them I believe exactly one that you could characterize as enthusiastically consensual and mutually enjoyable. Maybe three, if you count the incredibly toxic relationship which boils down to asking for help dong self-harm and it turns into a sadomasochist thing. Which never becomes/is never understood as sexual by the people engaging in it but describing it is definitely the closest the book gets to erotica. In any event, just somewhat surprising to see so much sex paired with so little romance, relative to most modern stuff I’ve read. Ties into how alienated literally everyone is from their bodies, I suppose.

Also I really don’t know enough about the historical memory of the early Ming dynasty to know whether all the stuff about how Zhu knows what it’s like to be nothing and how she’ll reorder the world to care for everyone is supposed to read as really darkly ironic or not.

#he who drowned the world #shelley parker chan #lesbian space atrocities #sff #tht #map fantasy #book review

[mallahanmoxie]

one thing about ham dani that nobody seems to get and why I'm always fighting for my life in the webtoon's comment section is that in all her fear and reticence around opening herself up with her friends, believing she belongs in this world, trusting in her place and relationships is that SHE'S NEVER WRONG ABOUT THE NEGATIVES. i think it's very easy to look at dani a hundred chapters in still going on about her place as a side character and what she can expect from them realistically, what she can allow herself to feel for them, and feel frustrated, like she's being deliberately obtuse. but dani. is. not. wrong.

one thing that many isekais do is that they will take the premise of "being transported to a novel" and use that simply as a vehicle for the FL to use her knowledge of the future to her advantage and turn the odds on their head. beyond the initial "ehhh why is the ML flirting with me??" which tends to wear off rather easily, there is little questioning about what being in a story means. and inso's law takes that question seriously. because dani IS inside a story, her friends ARE characters AND THIS IS EASILY PROVABLE SINCE THE BEGINNING. How? because she leaves.

it has happened to her before! It happens multiple times in the novel! that's why march 2nd is SO terrifying for her, because everything she's built can be taken from her in the blink of an eye and SHE will be called crazy and SHE will be left grieving and nobody else will remember what ONLY SHE LIVED. she is effectively, practically, tangibly separate from each world by this experience. when dani insists on the labels of main character, side character, the tropes and the narrative possibilities happening within them SHE'S NOT WRONG!! because those things are TRUE!!! I know it's easy to gloss over it bc we as readers just take everything in as a story, but the crazy plot points? they're insane to her too because SHE is a real person and others are not! They're characters! That's why it's called The Law of Webnovels because dani is making sense of the rules of a world which factually functions distinctly different from hers. she's not making that shit up, it's not (entirely) an emotional hold up. that's shit's fucking real.

the nuance is brought on by the fact that the characters are, in fact, also people. they behave like people (albeit inside the margins of wild webnovel logic), they feel like people and they see her as a person. but she does not entirely reciprocate, because to view them as people means assuming the hurt that will inevitably come when 1) she gets sent back into the real world and loses them all or 2) the plot to the novel finally kicks in and who knows if the guy she liked was the ML and will end up with her best friend and all her love and all her trying were for nothing. No matter what, dani loses.

there's also the fact, which i think is exemplified very clearly in her feelings towards her grades and being compared to yeoryung, that even outside the character/real person dichotomy, ham dani and the boys come from WILDLY different backgrounds. when they graduate high school, they will go to different colleges and they will get different jobs and the wide wide gap which dani had managed to bridge due to the magic of webnovel rules will be opened once again. in the social hierarchy of modern korean society, dani will be left behind. ban yeoryung is somewhat immune to this despite sharing similar socioeconomic status because she has 1) better social capital in the form of her beauty and intelligence and 2) plot armour immunity bc she's destined to be with one of the boys anyway (and again it IS destiny bc she's the FL and according to the genre clues dani's been gathering that seems to be the most likely outcome). yeoryung has resources and tools beyond the story that dani cannot access. even IF this wasn't the world of a webnovel, if they existed in the real world, yeoryung COULD feasibly climb her way up but dani? she's realistic about her prowess and she knows very well that being a good friend and a good person does not mean she will get to remain close to her friends who are much much much richer. my point here being that even if she weren't under the assumption (WELL TESTED!!! SCIENTIFIC, EVEN!!!) that she's in the world of a story ruled by story laws, she wouldn't be silly for guarding her heart against the possibility of drifting away from byr+the boys.

all of this is why i love dani's character arc and her as a person. she doesn't act irrationally. she only acts very, very humanly. it's why i loved the kidnapping arc and her confrontation with choi yuri. she has to learn to treat them seriously, as human beings, because despite factually being characters, they don't have the awareness of it and their lives are every bit as real as any other to them. it's part also of dani learning how to be a person herself, because she's still a kid growing up and learning what's what, and doing so in an environment much more stressful than the usual. i think people are being irrationally mean towards her simply because they do not make the effort to understand her.

#i love her. i love ham dani. favourite fucking girl ever. #inso's law #the law of webnovels #my life as a webnovel #my life as an internet novel #ham dani #and im tagging my meta so everybody knows HAM DANI IS RIGHTTTTT #SHES NEVER BEEN WRONG #I LOVE HER

[decolonize-the-left]

hey! if you don’t mind could you elaborate on why TLOU is racist and zionist? i kind of get the racist part but i’m really lost on why it’s zionist

The entire first game and first season of the show is to build up the relationship between Joel and Ellie and make you care about their relationship.

Why?

So that when Joel is murdered in the second game and (likely) the second season you feel so much empathy for Ellie that you don't even question her motives when she goes on a revenge homicide spree.

Why?

So you understand hate. So you understand the pull of violence when it comes to people who hurt you and the people you love. So you can understand "both sides" of the genocide happening in Palestine. So you understand Israeli soldiers who commit war crimes. So you understand why Israel keeps going and won't stop. So you understand that conflict can't end until "both sides" put down their arms. So you personally can feel & understand why peace can never be realized. To justify Palestinian genocide as an inevitable of human nature.

Which is absolute horse shit to any non-bigot of course, doubly so for anyone aware that Israel is definitely the country perpetuating a literal genocide and most violence commited against them is out of defense and self preservation.

The creator of the game and show Literally said this himself.

The real horror in zombie fiction is usually not the legions of undead, but the frailties and cruelties that they expose in the living. The differences between stories in the genre come from the specific fears and frustrations that they render into their metaphors. The Last of Us Part II fits perfectly within these genre conventions, but what's different here is its sources of inspiration.

The Last of Us Part II focuses on what has been broadly defined by some of its creators as a "cycle of violence." While some zombie fiction shows human depravity in response to fear or scarcity in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak, The Last of Us Part II takes place in a more stabilized post apocalypse, decades after societal collapse, where individuals and communities choose to hurt each other as opposed to taking heinous actions out of desperation.

More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.

The game's co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game's themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. Some of the gruesome details of the incident were captured on video, which Druckmann viewed. In his interview, he recounted the anger and desire for vengeance he felt when he saw the video—and how he later reconsidered and regretted those impulses, saying they made him feel “gross and guilty.” But it gave him the kernel of a story.

“I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”

Read the article. It's Extremely informative and lays all of it out clearly. It's a very well written analysis.

Personally I'm going to be side eyeing Anyone who agrees with Ellie's sentiment that "they deserve it at any cost, no price is too high for me" when season 2 is released. Season 2 will be serving as a litmus test tbh.

I had no idea about any of this until the show came out, I posted about it (cuz I used to love the game), and someone sent an anon. I googled it, looked through some tags, read this article, and decided the show nor the game are worth my time anymore.

It's inherently Zionist. To play the game or watch the show at all means consuming Israeli genocide propaganda. There is no way to avoid it and thus no reason to watch it "critically" as I assume people will try to say justify keep watching it.

Besides that most people who say they will watch it critically already analyzed the game and the Zionism went right over their heads. Which is case in point that most people who use that excuse simply do Not have the knowledge or skill necessary to do so in the first place.

#TLOU #asked #answered

[magz]

I’d like to add to one of your recent posts about how people deny transmisogyny with claims of “trans unity” etc. it’s very telling that when people who aren’t TMA call out transmisogyny, they are framed as evil infiltrators and attacked by TME people who feel called out.

Especially when these people are faced with the idea that a lot of other trans folks are simply not educated on basic feminism, and that they’re spouting MRA/incel/anti feminist ideas… it’s scary how violent they get.

Obviously when TMA people call out transmisogyny they are already not taken seriously, or framed with transmisogynic tropes. I just think the reactions are very interesting and says a lot about transmisogyny deniers, when someone who they consider as “one of them” calls them out on their shit.

(English isn’t my first language so I hope this is understandable)

It's because the people against basic transmisogyny criticisms when it targets them, are aware that "traitors to a cause" are a thing.

Their priority of cause, however, includes being at the center of discussions as much as possible. The center of considerations.

So anything and anyone that betrays that, is considered a traitor to the "overall movement".

Synonymizing their views and self and ego, with the movement.

Discomfort - which *can* be necessary for growth and solidarity in many contexts like broad movements for rights where you'll be around people you don't like - is not allowed in any circumstance ever.

Even people that acknowledge transmisogyny and disavow transmisandry, do this.

Because it's easier to say you're an ally and care, than it is to continuously do the things to apply that and make transfems feel safe. Of which transfems aren't a hivemind.

When it's a whole system of oppression and interpersonal stuff that stacks against doing that, thus requiring being active and always learning and messing up but owning up to it.

So even other TMEs doing even a modicum of unpacking or even just a bit more than they are, can be a threat. Because they aren't doing the work.

They're reifying assumptions and a different status-quo that "benefits" us. Of which we, even of other marginalized groups, are capable of doing.

Magz head hurts.

But yeah, TMEs pointing it out and backing transfems when necessary important. Even when you dislike the transfem in question. It rips part of the illusion, and double standard.

Weaponizing transmisogyny and transmisogynistic methods is never justified.

#anonymous #ask post #o post #response #transmisogyny #sij

[ajthebumblebee]

The new DHMIS season has an interesting look at the found family trope.

Like in Family, the guys are told they aren't a "real" family because they're not related. So Toddney and Lilly force them to experience their very specific idea of a family. When Duck Guy doesn't fit that mold, or just does something by accident, he gets thrown out. Red Guy literally gets taken out of the picture for not fitting in with his family for being happy and showing affection. Even if an outsider can see he's not really acting any different from them.

Yellow Guy is the most interesting, because with the inclusion of Roy at the end, I think the implication was that it was his "biological" family. And he's forced into a role that he didn't agree to, for the sake of everyone else's selfish desires and skewed beliefs. When he's given the opportunity to leave, he does, and goes back to the guys. All while the family literally eats each other alive.

All that seems like it would work for a found family story... But the guys don't really like each other. They constantly complain about the other, they insult and belittle, they enact physical violence, and outright say they aren't really friends. But it's weird, because they're also the only ones who care about each other.

The following episode, Friends, explores this further. Warren is right that it's not okay how Red and Duck treat Yellow, and friends shouldn't do that. But Warren is only doing this for his own self gain, and Red and Duck actually care about helping Yellow. They spend their only day on the computer they can to save him, before they end up insulting and beating the shit out of each other anyways.

I think there's an overall theme with the new season, is of returning to a status quo, even if it's bad for everyone. Like how TV shows frequently go back to a toxic status quo, and how that warps perception in its audience to view real life.

In this instance, a lot of sitcoms have the main cast be terrible to each other, but when push comes to shove, they do care. DHMIS shows that while, yes, it's better than the alternative- it's not a good place to be in either. A lot of abuse victims end up being in unhealthy friendships that are only marginally better. How TV sitcoms normalize it for the sake of entertainment, thus only makes it worse.

#don't hug me i'm scared #dhmis lesley #dhmis theory #dhmis spoilers #dhmis

[heartfulselkie]

Ik ik, the 9th chapter just came out.. but like...

Bell the cat? 🥺

Okay there is so much I could say about this fic since it is high speed spinning around my head like an out of control bumper car. But! I don't want to spoiler all the delicious things ahead.

But I can talk about what we already know! (and also maybe clarify things)

Ladybug and Chat Blanc's relationship will be truly starting from now as the are officially lumped together (thanks Chloe). Unfortunately the status of being Blessed has been thoroughly tainted by Hawk Moth's actions and Ladybug was only just about rising above that since she was literally the kindgom's saving grace.

But because Ladybug has decided that Chat Blanc is useful for her own goals, she's going to have to deal with the consequence of that. Because Chat Blanc is widely hated and also contributed to the stigma against those who are Blessed.

It's widely known that Chat Blanc is Blessed - because how else would he have such a devastating power? Although what Kwami would bless such a person is unknown, as the power Chat Blanc has shown doesn't match with any of the Kwami pantheon. His cat ears and tail are a very obvious sign of his Blessing, as animal features can appear with people who have a very strong connection to their Kwami - usually its animal ears or unusual eyes though, tails are generally unhead of.

He's not believed to be an Akuma either, because Chat Blanc seems to predate the first recorded Akuma. He also behaves very differently from Akumas. People who are Akumatised have a very defined obsession or grievance - Chat Blanc doesn't. He just performed very well as Hawk Moth's champion until Chat Blanc turned on his master.

So Chat Blanc has built up a lot of history and reputation for himself over the years - something that Ladybug is now going to have to deal with herself since she's now his keeper.

She's got a lot of her own growing and changing to do though. While she does show Chat Blanc kindess, her view of him is only marginally better than everyone else's. As much as people thought she was, Ladybug is far from perfect and as her own preconceptions to deal with.

And I've just rambled on a bunch there so I'll end with with a snippet from the next upcoming chapter:

Chat Blanc rested his head against the bars, though his blue-eyed stare remained fixated on her. The glint of his fangs were obvious in his crooked smirk. "You're talking a lot of big plans there, little mouse." "Ladybug," she corrected tersely, stepping up the the cell so that they were almost nose to nose through the bars - almost, because he was over a head taller than her. "Okay, Buginette," he chuckled.

[WIP Ask Game]

#a3thxr1sem0 #fic: bell the cat #ask selkie #ask game #wip game

[evesaintyves]

Ok long annoying question incoming: Whenever I read your remadora stories im always interested in how you portray lupin with his relationship with sex. I always got the feel that werewolves were looked as sort of sexual predators in the wizarding world. I mean the way greyback is written was very creepy, “specializing in children”, wanting to eat hermione because of her “soft skin”, yikes.

Because of that reputation do you think lupin views himself as a sexual predator when he’s feeling just basic lust? Not even specific to tonks, like do you think he has trouble with his feelings of attraction to anyone. How do you think puberty was like for him? How does gender play into this, does he feel like he’s objectifying whatever person he’s attracted to? Would he even have sex before a relationship like tonks? Is he jealous of Sirius and James because they can be more free with their sexuality? Lol so many questions sorry

hi anon! not annoying at all, thanks for sending an ask! i'm always happy to get them, even if i'm not great about answering them in a timely manner (or at all)

tbh i'm not really a meta-writer and i don't usually fw headcanons too much outside the context of developing a story - but here are some thoughts based on the characterization choices i've made in my work. they are entirely speculative; canon has very little to say about how Remus Lupin uses his dick.

TW for sex, violence, sexual violence, wizard porn, endnotes, Moonchaser*, stuff i wrote at 4 am

so to start there are a couple of much better metas out there by other authors that you might like:

@bikelock28 has a really good meta on werewolves as sexual predators that covers this really well and explores lupin's struggle with it.

@ashesandhackles also has a great meta on the psychology of lupin's lycanthropy/marginalization called the gentleman monster

so yeah, i think you're dead on about the sexual subtext of greyback. in canon we first see people disgusted by and afraid of werewolves¹ and eventually we find out about greyback's notoriety as a child predator². Lupin obviously expresses occasional self-loathing in canon, and my take on that is that he's internalized some of the responses he gets from people aware of his status and some generally-held prejudices against werewolves—he pushes back against Harry's assertion that he's a normal person with a problem³, he refers to himself as "dangerous⁴**," he speaks of himself as having "tried to live amongst wizards⁵," which to me implies that he thinks of other wizards not as peers but as betters who tolerate him. i think his carefully neutral, people-pleasing, equivocating tendencies are his attempt to build a self around the rejection of whatever people might believe about werewolves.

do you think Lupin views himself asa predator when he's feeling basic lust?

my feeling is that, because of all these ideas he's absorbed about what werewolves are like, Lupin might pathologize and abhor some of his own thoughts & behaviors, maybe even normal/typical ones, and have a difficult relationship with urge, impulse, and desire.

How does gender play into this?

he's a boomer who hangs out with a bunch of bros, he takes a kind of patronizing attitude with Tonks in their confrontation in the hospital wing⁶, and he was written by an author who went on to make gender essentialism her whole entire deal as a person, so i feel like he's probably at least a little sexist. i think, just because it's part of the sexist background radiation we all receive, he probably understands women as vulnerable and passive-receptive in heterosexual relationships - so my thought is that he probably has extra hangups about hooking up with women. i think he'd probably have hangups about any sex where the power dynamic favored him, and there are a lot of things about penetration, exchange of fluids, etc. that seem like they might trigger any internalized ideas about himself as violent, sexually rapacious, diseased, etc.

Would he even have sex before a relationship like Tonks?

I don't particularly headcanon Lupin as lifelong-celibate before Tonks, but I get why some people do and it's fine. My personal instinct is that if he experiences sexual desire, he probably finds an outlet for it one way or another***. I think one of Lupin's specific hangups with Tonks is that she's asking for a relationship, she's asking to love him and for some kind of commitment on his part - I think he'd struggle with those more than he might struggle with casual sex. Not just because of the risks to which they'd expose Tonks; some of Lupin's behavior in canon is pretty self-serving - specifically, self-protective against conflict or rejection⁷ - and I think being in any kind of serious relationship might expose him to an uncomfortable kind of vulnerability. personally, i think that's probably a key factor in his apparent misery in the early days of his marriage and his eventual ditching of Tonks—yes, he was trying to protect her, but my suspicion is that he was trying to protect himself too: from the permanent commitments of family after a life spent moving between places and jobs and societies, from the guilt of producing a werewolf kid, and from all the risks of pain and failure that a relationship would bring.

What would puberty be like for him?

Lupin's relationship with his body seems like it must have been pretty fucked up at baseline so starting to grow face & body hair and get physically bigger (and thus harder to control during full moons at home) was probably kind of rough. early sexual feelings and the realization that sexual relationships are going to be difficult and fraught at best for him probably sucked too

Is he jealous of Sirius and James?

so there's that line in the extracanonical Lupin bio where he says of Sirius "he always got the women." i really hate the incelness of this line, but if you want to consider it canon, then sure. tbh i think most of the Pottermore stuff is kind of trash

there's no interaction i'm aware of between Lupin & Sirius in book-canon that would give me the impression that he's jealous, and Lupin always seems to warmly & fondly remember James so... i think it'd be fine if a writer wanted to try and build a case for this dynamic between Lupin and his friends, but it doesn't resonate with me specifically. honestly, I think it'd be easier to make the case that he had a little crush on James than that he was jealous.

if you've read this far, hi, and also i just wanted to mention that i have a fic coming out in July that explores some of Lupin's struggle with—and terror of—his sexuality so stay tuned if you're into that

*god i fucking hate ship names how about "Rames" "Jemus" "Pupin"

** obviously, a werewolf is dangerous at the full moon and it makes sense to be afraid of encountering one. as a reason not to be in a romantic relationship, though, it suggests to me that Lupin thinks of himself as violent/untrustworthy/impure in a general sense

*** ok new headcanon Lupin is one of those guys with an absolutely massive and meticulously-organized porn collection. i bet wizards could make a pretty dope fleshlight. like remember that care of magical creatures book that's just like a weird hairy animal mouth? okay i'll stop

¹ PoA, pp. 336-337

² HBP, pp. 334-335

³ HBP, p. 335

⁴ HBP, p. 615

⁵ HBP, p. 333

⁶ HBP, p. 615

⁷ PoA, pp. 345-346; OoTP, pp. 719, 721

#remus lupin #remadora #hp meta #hp headcanon