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batrachised · 8 months

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inspired by the rubio quote on emily - I understand believing the LMM heroines leaving their ambitions behind is somewhat necessitated by the historical context, and I sympathize with those who would have preferred a different ending for Anne or Emily...but also (esp w Anne), I find it the line of thinking frustrating because (1) it's a false dichotomy that's (2) belied by the text imo and (3) somewhat dismissive of marriage as less than. Anne keeps writing after her marriage. She reads her poems aloud to her family and (iirc) inspires her children to do the same. Just because Emily is marrying Teddy doesn't mean she'll stop writing. The text gives us literally no reason to think that, and in fact explicitly states the opposite when Emily says that she has to write. No matter what, she has to write. If Anne, who doesn't demonstrate Emily's level of ambition, keeps writing, it's nearly laughable to think that Emily wouldn't.

What's especially frustrating is that repeatedly, LM Montgomery's stories focus on the importance of community and family in shaping, sourcing, and strengthening creativity. In Emily, it's explicitly stated that she couldn't have written her breakthrough novel if she had moved to New York and followed her ambitions as such. That's doesn't necessarily translate to romantic support, but romantic support is one form of that! Certainly, these heroines all have domestic endings; it's almost as if LM Montgomery's defining characteristic is finding beauty and power in domesticity, all while acknowledging domesticity doesn't exclude talent and ambition. Her thesis is that women can, and do, contain both. Anne can dream of handsome princes one day and publication the next because you know what--quite a lot of girls do! Emily can fiercely chase publication and long for companionship because you know what - that's the most human thing imaginable!

Acting as if marriage is an imprisonment or hindrance of some sort while LM Montgomery's heroes are marked by being supportive of their wives' talents and ambition (Gilbert is unthreatened by Anne's intelligence; Teddy understands Emily's ambition) ignores the major themes of the novels. It also fails to grapple with the historical barriers faced in a substantive or satisfying manner; it simply poo-poos the semi-requirement of marriage as the happy ending all while ignoring how radical the statements that first, women have ambitions and, second, their ideal partner would support those ambitions, were for the time.

The position also assumes that publication is the only legitimate form of success for writers, and similarly, "real" success requires recognition. It ignores the inherent value of creativity, inserts its own standards for success, all while ignoring what the heroines themselves state they want. Anne wanted marriage and babies; Emily is deeply lonely at the end of Emily's Quest and desires a companion who understands her. LM Montgomery actually directly addresses the idea that Gilbert stole Anne from her ambitions in TBAQ, and Anne laughs at the idea. For Emily, it's more understandable because she does value publication and is very ambitious, but that's where point number one comes in. Would the critics of her (admittedly rushed and slapdash) ending prefer that she stay alone surrounded by people who don't fully understand her? If anything, it's implied that Teddy will enhance Emily's creativity by providing the support she needs, and has in the past when he literally gives her the idea for her first novel, A Seller of Dreams.

I understand the cut and paste ending of "love husband marriage babies" can get to be tiring, especially when presented as the "right" path for women. I admit that the historical context - and pressure - here is impossible to ignore. After all, the examples I gave above are only legitimate to the extent LM Montgomery legitimized them; there could have easily have been a version of the story where Emily only succeeded because she moved to New York. Even LM Montgomery, as mentioned above, writes Gilbert explicitly saying that he regrets that he stole Anne's talent from the world. Sexism is definitely present in these novels. Still, the condescending tone when talking about these ending irks me. In the end, I guess I find the sainting of ambition as ridiculous as I find the sainting of marriage and babies as paths for women. One's as gross a simplification as the other.

At the end of the day as well, LM Montgomery writes slice of life novels based on the charm of rural PEI and local community. She focuses on the everyday purposefully. Complaining that she doesn't have heroines who move beyond domesticity (although really, she does with Sara Stanley) is like going to a pizza parlor and complaining when you get served pizza. Again, this only works to the extent that you agree with LM Montgomery's presentation - but there's something silly in complaining that her slice of life semi-romance novels from the late 1800s-early 1900s all end in marriage for the heroine.

#like sure some women love to stay single and chase their dreams and you know what that's awesome #i am literally one of them #not these women #there ya go #this has been my pounded out rant post i made on too little sleep so forgive any ridiculous logical holes #also women *can* have both #tho that of course opens a deeper can of worms about failure of support networks and unfair societal expectations #there's a whole watsonian and doylist discussion to be had here i know #as in on the watsonian level it's fine on the doylist you can question it more #but the implication is that a woman's character arc ending in marriage is inherently sexist with which i do not agree #emily of new moon #aogg #lm montgomery

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kingofthewilderwest · 2 years

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Weird question but: are the heads of multiple-headed dragons ( ex. Zippleback) different genders? Like is one head male and another female? Thinking about this bc Ruffnut and Tuffnut favor one head of Barf/Belch over the other, plus seeing that people seem to like having a dragon of the same gender as them (excluding Fishlegs)

Howdy howdy and good day to you!

If you want to look at dragons that way, all the power to you!

I take the view that HTTYD movie dragons are not on the same sapient levels as human beings. They're intelligent but not going to process life like humans. Just like goats won't be mulling over the biological sex / gender distinction, I don't imagine dragons doing that, either. I call a dragon "he" or "she" based on their physiological characteristics. So that means Barf and Belch is male.

Of course, how Barf and Belch get referenced is fun. One dragon, two heads! Woot! Based on speakers's perceptions and priorities, that means Barf and Belch is referred to as "the dragon" but also "they" in DreamWorks Dragons episodes. Verbs for singular or plural bounce everywhere. However, there are places where Ruffnut and Tuffnut put a gender to their dragon.

Dragon Flower (ROB Ep. 9)

Snotlout: If I find out who was holding back, I am gonna be so mad! Hookfang was so sick, I was up all night scraping dragon barf off our walls! Tuffnut: Yeah? Well, ours is dead! Just kidding. But he's really not that fun anymore. Ruffnut: He just sits there. He won't blow anything up!

Between a Rock and a Hard Place (RTTE S3 Ep. 10)

Hiccup: Ruff. Tuff. You're okay! Wait, is Belch? Tuffnut: Oh, he's fine. We Thorstons are known for our extremely thick craniums.

It looks like, canonically speaking, Ruffnut and Tuffnut consider their Zippleback (and both heads) "he."

People interpret fandom material differently, which is fun. I tend to stick very close to what I'm shown in canon for how I ground things. And if something isn't shown, I extrapolate as closely to creator intent, likelihood of something existing, and what I'm shown as I can do. I don't see the creation team of HTTYD treating Zippleback heads with different genders. Whether or not you want to go into headcanon territory that may or may not align close to that is up to you! And frankly, if I saw a Zippleback in a fanfic or fanart with a split gender, I'd find that fun!

As far as characters preferring dragons of their own gender and sex, from a Doylist standpoint I'd just call it an old trope to match that. But that's no fun when we're talking from a Watsonian perspective. From a Watsonian angle, yeah, you're right, everything matches a LOT. So you can totally ground your claim.

If I wanted, I could counter we have too small a sample size to resoundingly say characters prefer the sex of their dragon one way or the other. We don't know what Gothi's Terrible Terrors are, etc. And if we think about actually-existing-humans, people vary in their pet preferences (or lack of preference!). There's not a dichotomy between male and female dog owners. There isn't a giant division in horse riding communities between women riding mares and men riding geldings. So I think you could make a case for what you're saying, but personally, I don't perceive Berk as being different from my dog and horse examples.

True, that idea of sex preference could be argued in Gift of the Night Fury. Before characters like Fishlegs realized Meatlug's real sex, they were using pronouns congruent with their gender to describe their dragons. But if the teen riders didn't know their dragons' sexes when they bonded (probably the case given the circumstances of HTTYD 1), the fact they ended up with dragons that mostly matched themselves is a matter of coincidence.

Outside Fishlegs's Meatlug mistake, which could be excused with him not having had Meatlug long, I suspect many Vikings knew, physiologically-speaking, what was up with their dragons before GOTNF. And linguistically, with the characters speaking English, they're using the same English default assumption of "he" for an animal's gender, so that doesn't help us much re: rider preferences when most of the dragons in canon are male (Skullcrusher, Thornado, Barf and Belch, Toothless, etc.).

Anyway! I had fun discussing this. Thanks for chatting. It's been a long time since I've written HTTYD meta like this, so it was a nice treat. I hope you have a good one!

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bedlamsbard · 3 years

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I got a couple of different asks about Luke and Ahsoka in other side AU 10, so I guess I will just make it a regular post after all so I can answer all of them at once.

@slecnaztemnot:

Okay i just read your latest other side chapter and I wanted to ask about Ahsoka and Luke dynamics. I wonder what exactly where their heretics disagreemts about the jedi doctrine? while i can guess some of the stuff like attachements i guess i mostly see ahsoka as nonjedi and therefore someone who should not be attached to doctrine about attachements (haha) so i am wondering how you see her. i would actually love your take on how their first meetings went. continued in next ask, 1/2

1/2 continuation since most people write them as Ashoka immediately spilling the beans about the whole Vader situation to Luke and yours Ahsoka didn't. So I am curious what do you think Ahsoka feels about it. I got of course lot of it from the fic itself so i am mostly asking about how did you base your interpretation, if that makes sense and what led you to the narrative choices to portray their relationship in such way.

@comentter:

I'm most interested in what Luke and Ahsoka know about each other. Luke doesn't know much about Ahsoka obviously, but does he have any idea why she seems to hate him? He must be desperate lol. And how much does Ahsoka know about what happened on the DS2? And how much does Kanan know about these events? What was Hera able to tell him and what else did Luke and Ahsoka tell him? I always figure that everyone but Luke and a few people he told (like Leia) think the Emperor and Vader from the DS2 explosion.

I now have this image in my head of Ahsoka spending time with Rex and her laughing as Rex does something like tell a joke or a specific gesture. Then Luke walks by, does the exact same thing and Ahsoka is like "Of course, you'd do this stupid thing, you idiot!" :D

I think shortly before I started writing this sequence I had seen some cute art of Luke and Ahsoka hugging, which is a pretty common art trope and which has never sat quite right with me. I also have the tendency to want to do the opposite of common fanon, which I can’t leave out either. I also wanted to logic out what the hell was going on with Ahsoka’s charaterization in her Mando episode on a Watsonian level rather than a Doylist one (which I did a few weeks ago), even if other side takes place well before Mando and doesn’t intersect with it in any meaningful way.

When it came to the Luke and Ahsoka relationship (or lack thereof), it came down to three questions for me:

Who knows what?

What do they know?

When do they know it?

I made the decision early on in the chapter to leave Leia out of this relationship entirely, since the new canon seems to at this point in time (within a year of RotJ) be keeping it relatively quiet that she and Luke are siblings, and it’s not something that Hera would have a reason to know. (Note also that this entire sequence is told from Hera’s POV, which plays into the “who knows what when” angle.)

As per Rebels S4 (not the epilogue, because Mando’s thrown that out the window), Ahsoka knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader, Sith Lord

Darth Vader was directly or indirectly responsible for the genocide of the Jedi Order and the deaths of any Jedi who survived the Purge (”you and your Inquisitors saw to that”)

Padme Amidala is dead

Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead (Obi-Wan was not dead, but she has no way to know this)

no Darksider can return to the Light side

At the end of RotJ (not taking into account anything that happened in the comics or ancillary novels, which I’m not up to date on), Luke knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker

everyone Anakin ever knew is dead, mostly because of him

Vader returned to being Anakin Skywalker at the end of his life

(Leia presumably also knows all of this, perhaps with a few more details based on things her parents might have told her, but her feelings about Darth Vader are: Bad, Do Not Want, to be glib about it.)

Now, there’s one other factor here, which is Rex. Rex knew Anakin and knew Ahsoka and was in the Rebel Alliance -- we know that he was on Yavin IV prior to Luke’s arrival and we know that he fought in the Battle of Endor. (And turns up in a couple of scattered art panels from the comics.) If we want to take his brief appearance in Galaxy of Adventures with Han Solo’s strike force as canon, then he may have also known Han and probably Luke -- certainly his ears would have pricked up at the name “Skywalker.” (Okay, there’s one other factor, which is R2-D2, but Artoo never tells anyone anything despite knowing...everything. Or most things, anyway.) Rex doesn’t seem to know that Anakin became Darth Vader (I believe there’s an interview somewhere where Dave or Pablo or someone says that a meeting between Rex and Vader would be “awkward,” but there’s no canonical reason to believe that he knew about the Anakin/Vader connection), but he probably found out at some point that the 501st was the battalion involved in the assault on the Jedi Temple. He also, as of Rebels S3-4, assumes that Vader killed Ahsoka -- presumably Ezra would have told him as much as he could. (And Ezra does know that Vader is Anakin, so he may have told Rex that as well.) Rex also knows that Anakin Skywalker was having an affair with Padme Amidala, but presumably didn’t know about (a) the marriage or (b) the pregnancy, because how would he know?

Then we come to Ahsoka’s return and unfortunately the current canon gives us no time point for when it actually happened: presumably Ahsoka did not or could not return to the greater galaxy at the point she “left”, during the fight on Malachor (3 BBY), because as of Rebels S3-4 everyone still believes she’s dead. Maybe she’s still stuck on Malachor without a way to get off, who knows; maybe after S4 Ezra grabbed her into the World Between Worlds she decided to stay on Malachor until she ~caught up with the main timeline, which...you then have to believe that Ahsoka is going to deliberately remove herself from the war, which I can get to, but is not something I’m totally comfortable with. Or she pops out in the timeline at the same time that Ezra returns to the main timeline and is able to more or less immediately return to the main timeline narrative, plus or minus a few weeks. (There are, after all, still a couple of Advanced TIE fighters parked in the Sith temple, even if they were potentially damaged in the temple collapse. Ahsoka could have repaired them or used the comms systems to call for a pick-up -- this is, btw, what happens in Crown.) We don’t know when the S2 finale scene/S4 WBW scene of Ahsoka walking back into the temple actually takes place in the timeline; it doesn’t have to be at the exact same time as the rest of the S2 finale sequence (since obvs Vader dragging himself out, Maul flying off, and the Rebels crew looking sad doesn’t all take place at the exact same time).

Other side AU is deliberately vague about when Ahsoka returns from the World Between Worlds/Malachor/to the Rebel Alliance; it’s not stated in the story, but I made the assumption that she came back shortly after the (non-epilogue) end of the Rebels finale, but was still deeply messed up from her Malachor revelations. (Also, like, Sidious, I guess, but she was probably so messed up about Anakin/Vader that Sidious being around barely registered.) Since she never seems to have held a formal position in the Rebel Alliance, I assumed that after she returned and let everyone know she was still alive, she then immediately took off to try and figure out what the hell happened with Anakin at the end of the Clone Wars, since she saw him like a week before he snapped and at the time he seemed fine.

The problem is that almost everyone involved is dead.

Now, at this point (shortly before Scarif and ANH), a few people are still alive who then die shortly, but whom Ahsoka may have no reason to believe were involved. Bail Organa, for example, is still around, but aside from him being Padme’s friend Ahsoka doesn’t have a reason to know that Bail was there when Padme died -- and since they were in contact for the nineteen years preceding there’s no reason for her to assume now that he was keeping something for her. Back in the comics (before I stopped reading them), Vader did some digging to figure out what was going on with Padme and his child; Ahsoka probably would have done the same digging (without having to torture anyone), but without necessarily knowing that Padme was pregnant. Knowing the date of Padme’s death (same as the Republic, essentially), she may have had a previous assumption that Padme was assassinated on Palpatine’s orders, but knowing that Vader is Anakin probably moves that assumption closer to the truth, that Anakin was somehow involved in Padme’s death one way or another. Sooner or later Ahsoka will turn up the fact that Padme was pregnant, come to the obvious conclusion that Anakin was the father, and possibly find out the same thing that Vader does in the comics -- that the child was born before Padme died. (But also probably not that Padme was carrying twins, but even if she found that out, it wouldn’t make a difference.)

While Ahsoka is doing her digging (and there really isn’t much information out there to find), the events of Rogue One and ANH happen, and Ahsoka comes back to the Rebel Alliance to find out which of her friends are still alive. (Maybe Rex is with her at this point, who knows.)

Everyone in the Rebel Alliance is talking about some young hotshot named Luke Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker who has a very familiar lightsaber, who claims his father was Anakin Skywalker, and who had some kind of relationship with Obi-Wan Kenobi, who turned up on the Death Star, fought Darth Vader, and died.

Ahsoka has just spent the past few months trying to figure out what happened with Anakin, and as best she can reassemble the facts it mostly comes down to “Anakin did something dumb for Padme, that something dumb was ‘turn to the Dark Side and kill literally everyone,’ and then Padme died, the Republic was overturned, and the Jedi Order was wiped out.” Ahsoka presumably walks into a room, hears the name Luke Skywalker -- maybe sees him -- and is all at once face to face with the living evidence of just how badly Anakin fucked up.

This is just too much for Ahsoka to deal with at the moment, so she takes off again, and spends the next five years brushing in and out of the Rebel Alliance doing odd missions that can really only be done by a trained Force-user. Rex, who seems to have a more stable position in the Alliance, is always going to side with Ahsoka over anyone else; if she tells him not to tell Luke that she knew Anakin, he won’t. (And for that matter, he may have somewhat fraught feelings about Luke himself.) She may have the odd interaction with Luke -- who has heard that there’s another Jedi in the Alliance and wants to be friends/get real training -- but Ahsoka just does not want any part of this. It’s irrational! She knows it’s irrational! But this is the living evidence of Anakin’s failure, Anakin who last she saw him TRIED TO KILL HER, who was at least partially responsible for the deaths of everyone she ever knew. (And honestly, finding out that Vader topped it all off by killing Obi-Wan is not going to help.)

Ahsoka may also be feeling a certain amount of survivor’s guilt: if Ezra had not pulled her out of the Malachor temple at that exact moment, she came pretty close to bringing the temple down on both herself and Vader, and may have succeeded in killing him. She did not do so, and who knows how many people died because of that in the years between Malachor and Yavin? (Just because Tarkin was the one who gave the order doesn’t mean that Ahsoka may at least partially blame Alderaan’s destruction on Vader, if she knew he was on the Death Star then.) She knows he killed Obi-Wan.

The Yoda lineage is very good at going “yikes, I am going off to live alone and beat myself up over my failure for years” and Ahsoka is very much an example of that lineage.

She and Luke have a relationship of “Hi, I’m Luke Skywalker, do you want to talk?” and “I have to leave immediately,” maybe with the odd “please stop using that lightsaber grip it is physically painful for me to watch, do it like this instead, okay, bye.” Luke probably told all of two other people about what happened with Vader on the Death Star, Leia and Han; he has no reason to tell anyone else about it because it won’t matter to them. Why would he tell Ahsoka, whom he has no relationship with? He doesn’t know that Ahsoka knew Anakin Skywalker and would only know if one of four people told him: Ahsoka herself (no), Rex (no), R2-D2 (maybe), or Admiral Ackbar (would never have occurred to Luke to ask, might have occurred to Ackbar to say). (We also don’t know that Mon Mothma knew Ahsoka very well, or at all, for that matter; they never interacted in TCW.)

As for her swinging harder into overt Jedi-ness by Mando after her blatant “I am no Jedi” of Rebels, it reads to me as a response to the Anakin/Vader revelation (especially the attachment thing). She had made certain assumptions in the TCW period (see her saving Rex in the TCW finale) and prior to Rebels; Kanan’s method of Jediness was something she could accept in the time period and in those circumstances; the Anakin/Vader revelation shattered all of that, followed immediately as it was by Kanan apparently going full Jedi self-sacrifice despite his attachments. (Her reaction to Ezra being a trauma response about two very different circumstances.) All of a sudden what she thought might have been mutable based on the circumstances became something that had to be adhered to in case of dangerous results, which she had just had brought home to her in extremely bad circumstances.

I made a crack somewhere about Mando’s central tension being between “being Mandalorian” and “being doing Mandalorianness”; I think in the post-OT period with Ahsoka and Luke we’re seeing something similar with “being Jedi” and “being doing Jediness.” Even if Ahsoka isn’t actively claiming the title Jedi anymore (because what does that accomplish in most contexts?), she’s leaning far more into the tenets of the Jedi Order -- which Luke doesn’t know and doesn’t know he doesn’t know.

Thus the doctrinal dispute.

Ahsoka grew up in the Jedi Order. That’s what she knows, that’s how she knows how to be a Jedi; for her being a Jedi is being part of the Jedi Order, whether or not the actions associated with performing Jediness are being actively practiced. Luke doesn’t have that context. For Luke, being a Jedi is...being doing Jediness. (This is super awkward phrasing.) Performing the actions of a Jedi. Luke has a few holocrons, but I’m guessing that a lot of what is on those holocrons makes the assumption that whoever is opening with them has the context of being a part of the Jedi Order and doesn’t explain really basic stuff about the Order or what that means. Luke’s Jedi Order is not going to be the Republic Jedi Order made anew; it’s going to be something that has a resemblance to it and is based on a similar view of the Force, even arguably its heir, but is just not going to be the same thing. It can’t be. Luke doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Kanan, of course, is coming into all of this from a similar context as Ahsoka: he grew up in the Jedi Order, it’s what he knows, it’s who he is. Except Kanan never walked away from the Order, so while Ahsoka had been disconnected from her Jediness at the time of the Purge, he never lost his -- part of Ahsoka’s tension from TCW S7-Rebels was “I can’t be a Jedi because the Order is gone” and Kanan’s was “can I be a Jedi without the Jedi Order?” (Ezra is a whole ‘nother thing but is somewhat outside the scope of this.) The Jedi Order never factors in Luke’s Jediness at all. (There’s some lineage doctrinal dispute here as well -- the Yoda lineage seems to be very closely connected to the Order as the font of Jediness, the Windu-Billaba lineage somewhat less so. The Yoda lineage is like...the hardcore conservatives of the Jedi Order, though, and are probably not typical.)

Poor Kanan came back from the dead, after a week in another universe (which had its own problems; he’s been trying to very gently convince his counterpart that even after being an Inquisitor for months he can still be a Jedi), into Luke trying to build a new Jedi Order from scratch, Ahsoka firmly believing it couldn’t and shouldn’t be done and not wanting to be in the same room as Luke at all (not to mention that she really did not believe that they should have gone for “hey, let’s send Hera Syndulla to another universe” as even being an option), and both of them having essentially incompatible notions of being a Jedi at each other -- this is probably the most time Luke and Ahsoka ever spent in each other’s presence. They’ve probably never articulated their problems at each other, just assumed that the other knew them. And Kanan has his own “how to be a Jedi” approach, which is from a very different than either Ahsoka or Luke because despite originating from the same context as Ahsoka, he had a very different path to get to his present position.

As for what Kanan knows -- uh, pretty much only what Hera knew, and Hera knew very little? She was friendly with Luke and Leia, but didn’t have much interaction with them -- she states that she had a tendency to avoid Luke because even if she would never say it to Luke’s face, she silently believes that if any Jedi should have been in the Rebel Alliance, it should have been Kanan and Ezra and not this relative newcomer. If the Death Star 2 news about Vader and Palps was never common knowledge, then Hera wouldn’t have known it. Kanan’s in a position of having to play catch-up, but also having a completely different priority (finding Ezra). He sat through this meeting where after they’d finished grilling him on “you were in ANOTHER UNIVERSE and also you CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD?” they politely sniped at each other with a bunch of context he didn’t have and flat out decided that wow, he did not want to deal with this at all, whatsoever.

(This is also not stated in the story, but Luke and Ahsoka also disagreed about whether Jacen should be trained or not: Luke said, yeah, of course, when he’s a little older! and Ahsoka said nope, he’ll be fine, it will go away. Hera was just very “...I will deal with this later” about it since it wasn’t an urgent issue.)

#also thanks to reena-jenkins and isweedan for talking this out with me #other side au tag

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tonyglowheart · 4 years

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@imaginaryelle replied to your post:*me sipping tea* (x)

I would really enjoy seeing more of your thoughts on this, if you ever want to share them.

:’) a lot of my thoughts are salty rants and I’m TGCF on main right now so uhhh not at the moment but if you wanna hmu on like a chat thing of some sort I probably will eventually rant about my dislike of The MXTX Antis and the Problematic Culture people and the purity culture wank :’)

actually you know what, since I’m a parody of myself and I’m like always mood of "and another thing,” I’m just going to. go for it ig

so my biggest thing, is with the MXTX antis/MDZS wank/MXTX wank. is like....god it FRUSTRATES me so fckn much lmfao in so many ways and on so many levels. like listen. I’m not saying there isn’t stuff to critique in MDZS. But there’s people who are first off: critiquing the writing quality, when I’m like “there’s like a 90% chance you’re reading the EN translation, and probably from ExR, and honestly I know it’s not fandom etiquette to critique fan content bc we’re all doing this for free out of passion, BUT I do, in fact, have some major issues with ExR’s translation quality, and also I lowkey feel like they have a strong traditional yaoi bias and sometimes it leaks through in how they handle certain things.” Big mood of this twitter thread about how when you’re reading in TL you can’t be criticizing the writing bc you’re already reading it filtered and like. you gotta consider things like the TL’s own personal biases or takes, etc. Which I feel like some people don’t in their critique, or at least they don’t take the time to acknowledge it and instead start spinning off into more and more impassioned reactions to perceived slights or faults.

The other thing is like. I admit when I first read MDZS - which I did while simultaneously watching bc I was kind of using CQL as a vehicle to get into MDZS, I had the HARDEST time trying to read ExR’s translation when I was going into it cold many many many moods ago rip - I was also squicked out by the explicit scenes shown. It did remind me a lot of traditional yaoi tropes, and I wasn’t into it. HOWEVER I was also a psych major, and I want to point out that the T/N’s do read to me as having a strong yaoi bias, and also before ExR redid their site they had large “SERVING YAOI AND BL” banners on EVERY page lol. And I think that also primes people to see things a certain way. (I just. am :/ about ExR also bc like... their whole vibe as a “yaoi scanlator” and also I. can’t be sure the TL wasn’t 17 when they were tl’ing it lmfao,, and they did the whole rant - which fine they apologized for, but I think sort of reflects on a general attitude still w/ the team - about how some other TL had bad quality or something, but their existing TL has a lot of clunky English phrasing and actually a lot of editing issues, too, I was creating myself a back-up copy from their site and like google docs was already catching a bunch of typos and tense issues and such :’) and that’s beyond clunky EN translation phrasing. I just am like. they have a patreon lol, so I can’t say ExR is doing it wholly not-for-profit/dollars, and also like... it’s not like they’re licensed? I get that within scanlation circles, there’s an etiquette of “first come first serve,” but with translation, I think fans are only served with more translations? but I also care about the original work lol, I mean I get the vanity of “I want MINE to be the AUTHORITATIVE tl” bc I feel that mood too, but also I’m like. fam you didn’t bid for a license lmao.)

But yeah like. My petty gripes with ExR aside lmfao, I think when you look at WangXian, the whole “it’s yaoi tropes” gets really strawman. Like from a Watsonian perspective, I mean like... both WWX and LWJ really ARE useless virgins, lol, WWX’s first kiss was stolen by LWJ and his whole idea of sex comes from porn; LWJ is GusuLan and like. yeah. Who is teaching them about lube? certainly not porn. (but this also gets into the whole. like people saying explicit material is “problematic” because it doesn’t show “realistic” sex and I’m like. fam it’s smut, not a sex manual.) And like... they’re both kinky and WWX has a pregnancy kink, and like... good for them I guess?

From a more Doylist perspective..... I think for me, I’m like. well why not? gay media doesn’t have to be uwu to be “Valid,” and like, the people who start attacking mxtx personally because of the way she chose to write WangXian, or saying she’s homophobic because of WangXian or she doesn’t have the range... I already Know they didn’t read TGCF or SV lol. (and yeah SV is more “problematic” but I also think it’s VERY genre aware and both satirizes and also plays with and subverts some of the typical genre “problematic” things. not everything, but like. again the whole idea that non-mainstream media needs to be held to a higher standard to not be cancelled? I don’t hold by that). [But more on the Doylist thing: it’s dumb to me that people react like it’s a moral failing of non-straight works if they don’t fit EXACTLY their personal idea of what a thing should be. And this comes up EVERY time there’s some new thing. hell it’s not even just lgbt-related stuff; Hamilton, Crazy Rich Asians, etc all had nitpicking. Which again, isn’t invalid! but also like. :/ because we DON’T have enough representation right now to pick, and my take is always: the solution is to get to the point where we can pick and choose and can afford to have bad media just like the straights/whites do :’)]

The thing about WWX and LWJ is neither of them, as they’re written in canon, fit within “traditional yaoi” seme/uke stereotypes. The kiss I see people rail against as “dubcon” and also their sex scenes but I’m like. yeah I think it’s fine to say it’s not your cup of tea but to say that that makes them traditional yaoi rapey tropes I’m like. Fam that’s not it lol. LWJ is shown as being SO incredibly responsive and attentive to WWX’s wishes and desires. I mean that’s examples of his passion exploding out, but we consistently see LWJ being respectful of WWX’s wishes and autonomy even when it like. fucks him/them over :’) like when WWX was so hell-bent on hurtling down the mo’dao route :’)

plus also WWX literally fantasizes about them retiring as farmers and he’s the one out working the fields and LWJ is staying at home weaving lol, like c’mon, ya wanna talk gender roles, let’s talk about this.

the other thing is the whole mxtx anti stuff about “she’s homophobic” and “she’s a filthy fujo” and I think there’s issues that people aren’t considering, which I don’t know as much about but I feel like it informs my consideration of mxtx - such as like... not everyone’s internet is as wide open as, like, the West. I don’t know so much about Chinese censorship other than it exists, but I’m like. I think this would affect people’s access to resources which would inform them about how things work/where people are with LGBT thought? It reminds me of when young tumblr kids trash talk older queer people for using terms they see as “problematic” now, and I’m like “you really gotta pause a moment of (1) have some empathy (2) consider the person’s individual personal and cultural context.” MDZS wasn’t made for a Western audience in mind lol, it’s not going to reflect Western values! And China has a different history with its LGBT progression and it’s m/m media, which I don’t know enough about to comment specifically, but I think it’s incredibly disingenuous to judge it based on Western standards. A lot of people probably don’t realize they are! in that it doesn’t even occur to them, which is why they feel so free with their judgment! But also I’m like. lowkey THAT’s a problem for me bc of like. cultural imperialism lmfao. and also reflective of EN-language imperialism, when people are judging EN tl’s they’re seeing on face value without realizing or considering that they’re...reading... a translation... and that translations are NOT in fact direct one-for-one and that there’s a LOT of considerations that go into both translating and reading a translation of a work.

I think the points antis pull up against MXTX is like... stuff she’s said before in interviews - and I don’t know from when, but I imagine years ago at this point - where she was asked about shipping the other characters in MDZS, and she said something I think about how to her, she wants to write in a way that “preserves realism” or maybe she believes in (I only read a TL of it, so I hold the exact phrasing with a grain of salt), and for her, not everyone is gay so she doesn’t write all of her named characters gay. and I’m like. whatever that’s her prerogative as the author. And I think there’s also something that I don’t know if it’s an official “rules”/”guidelines” she wrote bc again I’ve only seen secondhand/thirdhand sources, but it’s something mxtx-antis also quote, where she said to not break up the main couples and also don’t “reverse” them. but again when we’re getting into the shou/gong dynamics, that’s where I don’t feel comfortable commenting because I don’t know enough about the sociopolitical implications of these terms and how they interact within that fandom/community subset. But I do think people need to be taking the stuff they read - ESPECIALLY if they’re only reading it in EN - with a grain of salt. or like a big ol pinch of it.

edit: I know more about this now lmao and I know exactly which question people use piecemeal of vilify her. Here’s a recent-ish translation someone did. Read it through - the WHOLE thing, and think about the wider context.

But also in general I just don’t think anyone is valid when we start getting into ad hominems lol. Especially when I feel like they’re not really taking a moment to consider what wider contexts and influences might be at play and instead are playing Tumblr telephone with outrage and virtue signalling

sidebar: I also fucking HATE CQL purists lmfao. I don’t feel like I’ve seen or encountered anyone saying CQL fans are less valid than novel fans except in the sense of CQL fans getting defensive about their dislike of the novel - which, whatever, people have opinions - or decision not to read the novel and saying anyone saying they HAVE to read the novel is gatekeeping - which I hold to less but mostly bc I think it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of fan language, some of us say you HAVE to read it not in a neckbeard way but in a I’m so desperately passionate and I want more people to know about this way, kind of like how the “I hate you” in fan language GENERALLY means “I love it so much and I can’t stand it”? - but I HAVE seen people say the novel “ruined” wangxian, or CQL people who seem to be like... purity-wanking, like idk if you were around but god after Infinity War and the number. of fckn ironstranges. posting in the tags. about “love how healthy our ship is” and I’m like. this is still anti culture/purity wank but the other side of the coin 8). I encounter sometimes this lowkey attitude of CQL (or other adaptations) “redeeming” MDZS from the author, and I’m like. y’all are wack lmfao. There’s people wiht MDZS or even TGCF main, and they hate mxtx? and they say shit like “mdzs was only good on accident”? and I’m like. can you just leave lmfao. if you hate her then why are you here. (bc they’ve mental gymnastics this into a virtue ethics thing about “o the work is good and therefore morally fine but the parts I don’t like are because mxtx is morally bad and unworthy and tainted it, and CQL with its Purity has Redeemed it” but I’m like. this is because of censorship lmao. The team did a FANTASTIC job working the character dynamics and story, but like it also is directly because of censorship.)

like I... have more thoughts than this lmfao bc ofc I do, but anyway, here’s... some of them lol

#imaginaryelle #replies #living la vida salty #*

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dabistits · 5 years

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1) Reading some of your meta on the Todorokis made me finally watch The Handmaiden for which I’m forever grateful so I hope you don’t mind me adding my thoughts. See, I agree on Horikoshi sucking at abuse/power imbalance narratives (to the point of living in fear of Dabi’s villainy being used to further “humanize” the Dumpster Fire) and Rei and Fuyumi’s forgiveness being particularly foul but from a Watsonian point their reaction makes a sad sad amount of sense because of a sad sad truth: no one

(cut for length and tw for discussion about fictional domestic violence)

2) ever believes the victims. Even before her hospitalization Endeavour had to have been the Number Two Hero for a long-ass time, meanwhile Rei was basically sold to him by her own family (of whom we never hear again even tho their only canon interaction is her begging them for help before her breakdown). But afterwards she was “that crazy woman who permanently scarred her son”. She literally has no other option that resigned acceptance and not rocking the boat yet. Meanwhile, the kids had lost

3) their mother, Natsuo was an understandably pissed child, Touya “died”, Enji continued to be neglectful to everyone but Shouto and Fuyumi was the oldest. Even tho they apparently had a butler madame too that’s a position that requires serving the head of the house or being fired and being no help anyway. It’s not hard to see Fuyumi trying to step up Katara-style to fill the hole their mother left; given the asshole’s indifference to their children I doubt he’d care enough to force her to live

4) with them, meaning she’s only doing it to stay close to Shouto. So of course after their mother starts feeling well enough to be part of their lives again she’d see it as a positive thing and support her. Nothing will give them back their childhoods but at least this would give her a chance to live for herself a little more. So yeah, they are narratively stuck on a shitty position and while Natsuo definitely has a point his outbursts aren’t of any real help to them.

heya anon! first i’m glad you watched the handmaiden it is a fantastic movie and it deserves to be on the lesbian movies canon forever.

second, i don’t disagree with you at all! of course abuse victims have complex reactions to their abuse and complex relationships to their abusers, which can be even further complicated by their material circumstances. my criticism of this as a narrative decision is two-fold: one is the fairly basic criticism that it’s more indication of horikoshi’s misogyny that he isn’t capable of writing women outside of merciful and nurturing roles (it’s not a coincidence that the tdrks who choose to forgive are the women, while the men seem to have—at the very least—complicated feelings), and the second is that while we may very much want to believe that rei and fuyumi have complex and fully fleshed-out reasons for feeling as they do towards their abuser, we simply don’t know because horikoshi has not shown us!

i get on hori’s case a lot for not showing, particularly in regard to the world-building, but in the case of writing abuse narratives i think it’s absolutely a matter of doing justice to show the complexity of emotions that come with the experience of abuse. without taking the time to show that complexity, especially if you want to write a non-resentful victim (but even if you want to write a resentful one tbh), the narrative very easily skews towards “forgiveness is the right way to deal with someone who wronged you” as a moral, rather than “abuse is often fraught and complicated and sometimes victims make decisions for their own sake that may involve reconciliation and forgiveness or may involve never forgiving.” i’m not the biggest fan of narratives that only choose to explore forgiveness+reconciliation, because i do believe that path is valorized undoubtedly because it’s more comfortable to abusers and their allies, but i can accept it as long as it’s well done and it prioritizes the feelings and motivations of the abuse victim without cutting the abuser any slack.

the problem with horikoshi is that… he doesn’t do any of the work that would make for a fully fleshed-out abuse narrative. as much as we might want to make up headcanons to explain it, the fact of the matter is that we don’t know why rei forgives her abuser. we don’t know why fuyumi wants to reconcile with him. the pro hero arc was all about centering the abuser and what he thought about his crimes and what he feels about them, inserting us into his perspective in order to stir up the reader’s sympathies for him. just because a character’s reaction to abuse makes sense and may mirror real peoples’ reactions to their abuse doesn’t mean that it’s written with good intentions.

we should always question why a narrative is written a certain way and whose purpose it ultimately serves. rei’s forgiveness was not written for her sake. it’s not for the sake of abuse survivors out there (who are surely salivating for yet another character who forgives their abuser for no apparent reason). hell, shouto’s breakdown while watching his abuser fight on television was not for his sake, because those scenes were shown in the context of the narrative trying to stir up sympathy for his abuser and showing him as heroic. that doesn’t mean shouto’s reaction wasn’t realistic; it means we should question why it was shown at that time, and why it was shown outside of the context of his abuse. couldn’t a better statement about abuse be achieved if we saw that scene from shouto’s perspective, coupled with his flashbacks of his childhood?

so anon, i totally understand the watsonian explanation for why rei and fuyumi are like that. i think it works as a fine explanation for people who want to flesh out those characters for their own sake, or who want to write about them in their fanfiction and needs those motivations. my concern and much of my criticism, however, lies at the doylist level, because i don’t believe in using my headcanons to do hori’s work for him. that’s why i very rarely involve headcanons in my meta and try to stick purely to what’s been presented to us in-text. i don’t want to end up in the situation where i say “rei and fuyumi’s characters are badly written and are basically there to advance abuse apologism, but it’s realistic!” because whether or not it’s realistic is sort of beside the point. the question for me is, as always, what purpose does it serve and why did the author put it there?

in this case, the answer to those questions doesn’t reflect well on horikoshi.

#ask #flaming shits dad tw #abuse #defs not saying ur wrong anon i just want to elaborate on why i approach this storyline the way i do

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phosphorescent-naidheachd · 6 years

Text

I was asked about my thoughts re: the political!Jon theory, but my thoughts ended up being WAY too long to go into a message.

I know the political!Jon theory is a somewhat incendiary topic in sections of the GOT fandom, so I’ve placed my reply under a cut. If you choose to read this, please be aware that these are just my personal opinions---no condescension or offense is meant towards anyone.

As much as political!Jon might help make sense of the clunky pacing and tone of Jon's decision to bend the knee in S7, I don't think that theory is going to be canon on GOT. IMO, what you see is generally what you get with GOT; if what you see doesn't make sense, that's just due to poor writing/pacing rather than it being a red flag for viewers to look closer. Keep in mind, these are the same fine people who brought us Season 5's "Marry Your Enemies for Revenge" plotline and who managed to utterly misconstrue who characters like Ellaria Sand and Stannis Baratheon are at their core in ASOIAF. You can’t look at GOT from a purely Watsonian standpoint when trying to make accurate predictions; you have to keep the Doylist factors in mind. And from a Doylist standpoint, I highly doubt that D&D would intentionally write political!Jon. Which is a pity, because that could make for such a rich, interesting storyline!

Beyond that, I can't decide whether political!Jon would be in character for show!Jon at this point. For one thing, I have a difficult time seeing show!Jon initiating sex with someone he doesn’t care about in order to manipulate them. (Going along with it, on the other hand...) For another, the people writing/directing GOT seem to believe that characters can’t simultaneously be clever/cunning and be kind or have a strong sense of morals. In the GOT universe, honor gets you killed, full stop, so obviously if honor=good, then good=always stupid. (Don’t get me started on the nihilistic way in which The North Remembers plotline has been implemented on GOT lol.) The writers have been hammering home that Jon is honorable but occasionally thick-headed because of it for several seasons now... it’s possible that this is just a misdirect to make political!Jon seem all the more ironic and/or shocking in retrospect, but I rather doubt it. See again: when in doubt, I generally assume that what you see is what you get on GOT, and that goes double for anything that would have required planning across multiple seasons. (Note: big book plot points like R+L=J are an exception, and even those don’t tend to be foreshadowed very consistently on the show.)

As a general rule, I think the GOT writers/directors have a difficult time crafting character arcs that feel organic and earned, and that this weakness was exacerbated once they lost the scaffolding of GRRM’s books. For instance, take a look at show!Sansa, whose character has been jerked this way and that over the seasons according to what’s most convenient for the plot. In some episodes, she’s reasonably intelligent, whereas in others she’s clearly carrying the Idiot Ball rather than merely making mistakes that would make sense for her character. (And this situation, I hasten to add, isn’t unique to her character.) Of course, that’s not getting into the show’s tendency to have important developments occur offscreen... and I’m not just talking about huge developments like Sansa and Arya learning the truth about Baelish, I’m talking about smaller things too, like Arya actually being shown learning how to fight rather than just being constantly beat up by the Waif until suddenly she wasn’t. Obviously we don’t need to see everything---viewers can be trusted to intuit a fair amount and can put pieces together without being constantly spoon-fed them---but we do need to see a certain amount onscreen in order to find a character arc believable and satisfying. Headcanons are all very well and good, but they should be an added bonus... not a necessity.

Though it may not seem it, I have a fair amount of empathy for the people running/writing GOT. Intelligent characters are incredibly difficult to write, especially if their strengths are different from your own! And not only has it got to be hard to try to wrap up this massive series from just a handful of plot points from GRRM, but what works well in books doesn’t always translate well to the screen. I don’t think the writers on GOT are always bad at their job... they’ve added some good original scenes to the show (ex: Ned saying goodbye to Jon in S1) and they’ve made some good changes (ex: book!Sansa says “Maybe my brother will give me your head” in response to Joffrey’s taunt about gifting her with her brother’s head; show!Sansa says “Or maybe he’ll give me yours”, which is a much snappier retort, IMO). That said, they’ve also become increasingly lazy over the seasons and are far too fond of shocking “twists” that exist merely to be “shocking”. I enjoy GOT for what it is, but when people create clever theories about what’s happening on it and genuinely believe that those theories will be borne out in the show, I think that they’re usually setting themselves up for major disappointment. (Having said that, I’m certainly not some arbiter of How You Should Fandom. As long as you aren’t harming anyone, do what brings you joy, y’know?) And hey, I love reading all the cool theories that fans come up with! This is a creative, talented fandom, and it’s much enriched by all of the theorizing, regardless of which of those theories end up being true.

When well executed, I enjoy political!Jon in fanfic, as long as it doesn’t become too mean-spirited towards Daenerys. I’m not much a fan of show!Dany---she’s another character who has been rather poorly served by GOT, IMO, especially with Tyrion taking on so much of her role in the show’s adaptation of her ADWD plot---but the level of vitriol that some fans have towards her makes me extremely uncomfortable. Once again, I’m not saying fans can’t write what they want to, that there aren’t a lot of legitimate criticisms to be made about Dany and her decisions, or that dark/antagonist!Dany can’t be written without bashing her... just that some people really hate her and want to see her utterly humiliated and destroyed to a degree that I simply can’t wrap my head around. (I think that some of this has to do with the usual fandom shipping wars and that some of this has to do with the usual societal unconscious sexism/misogyny, but YMMV.)

As far as ASOIAF goes, I’m not ruling the political!Jon theory out, but I don’t feel like I have enough information to make a decision one way or the other. Dany hasn’t even heard of Jon yet in ASOIAF, after all, and Jon has only barely heard her alluded to, IIRC. Whether political!Jon ends up being a thing in ASOIAF or not, however, I suspect the pacing and tone of Jon allying with Dany will be significantly different (and more nuanced) than it was on the show. This is because book!Jon and book!Dany are different characters than their counterparts on the show; because books are a different medium than TV and allow for both more detail and more internal character development; and because, quite frankly, I think GRRM is a better writer than the people writing GOT. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hope this rather long-winded reply answered your question!

#phos replies #anti got #3~~#4~~#5~~#jon snow #fan criticism #fan theories #GOT meta #well sort of #game of thrones #meta #anti d&d #long post

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