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goldkrone-struggle-tweets · 11 months

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If you haven't already, could you elaborate on Mythos being similar to Dios?

@acetaminophriends oh my friend

(warning for utena and princess tutu spoilers, some princess tutu ending negativity)

others have said a lot more on this topic, and really I don't have many new thoughts on it, exactly. but I am so extraordinarily Normal about it that I'll take any slight opportunity to talk about it again. SO BASICALLY. compare and contrast utena duel 34 with the opener to tutu episode 24. you have a couple of archetypal selfless princes, who love everyone and whom everyone loves...

...to the exclusion of all else.

they try to save everyone with no regard to their own health or happiness, because that's what you do as the prince archetype/christ allegory/male hero figure. unfortunately, though, that doesn't go too well if you're a real person trying to embody the archetype. both of them drive themselves to near death (for dios it's before anthy seals him, for mytho it's losing everyone he cares about and getting stuck fighting an endless battle) trying to embody this ideal and defeat the evils of the world. and they earn only the hatred/jealousy of the people in the process, because even with all that, dios and mytho still couldn't give them what they wanted! they still couldn't suffer and die for enough people, or couldn't love every person exclusively and suffer and die in a special way for each one of them. which is unreasonable, especially because every time, this is just some kid. literally a teenager. but even so, it's Oops! All Swords (until anthy sacrifices herself) or Oops! All Birds (until mytho sacrifices himself, because he has to be both the dios and the anthy in his own story arc, I guess. can't have shit in goldkrone).

and being used for the selfish ends of others for so long gives them a lot of built-up resentment and a bit of a warped perspective on love! dios obviously has his corruption arc into akio, becoming purely self-interested and seeking to regain the power of dios for the sake of power itself. obviously, that's not justified, but justifying the actions of a Fictional Character and an Allegory is really a futile pursuit. he serves the purpose of examining toxic masculinity and the prince archetype and how aspiring to that ideal can warp someone's mind, and other such things that have been said before by better posters than me, and that's Interesting to look at. and as a character, that's all you really need to be. mytho thinks that "people only love because they want to be loved", stemming from everyone wanting to monopolize his love and Just Get In A Romantic Relationship With Me Already (for more information, profile picture), only thinking of themselves and not really him at all. imo, that's really similar to how "[anthy] was the only one who truly loved [dios]." the show straight up did not let him be mad about it, though, even with the raven's blood, but that's a post for another time. but it sure does hint at that resentment and those feelings on the topic being there! princess tutu hints at a lot of interesting things, really. just doesn't do anything with them.

is it possible for people to be happy without the attention and love of this one figure? is it possible for them to live for themselves? nope! in fact, fuck you for even implying it, we are going to stab you to death with one million swords/turn into birds and try to peck out your heart. this is also why I think prinz und rabe is a time loop even though Rue Exists, because the people still haven't changed. and the last time someone claimed a prince for themselves alone...

...this happened.

anthy and dios are both really important and interesting characters to me. rose crest changed my brain chemistry when I first watched it. and it's so fucking disappointing how tutu took a dios who was still, ostensibly, a decent person. a dios who has a character and screentime and established relationships with others. a character that was poised to formulate a proper response to duel 34. and then said "k, go back to that same fate. it's what you're supposed to do." when we ALL KNOW WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME. BOTH IN THE STORY AND OUT OF IT. EUGH. this isn't to say that I think mytho is going to become akio, just... this isn't healthy, or good for him, even if it is what he originally was. they really could have let him move past the archetype, now that he's a fully realized human being and has been changed by his experiences outside the story (heron and schaf have made a lot of good meta on this topic). they could have looked at utena and the tragedy of the rose and said "okay, that was self-sacrifice and performance of gender roles to the bitter end. it didn't work. here's what you actually do about it," especially since princess tutu already portrays self-sacrifice negatively and is a show, supposedly, about defying fate and challenging established narratives. but they didn't, because as always, Show Hates Mytho. and I'll die mad about it. or write a fanfic, I don't know.

sorry, this was only a little me answering your question, I just have a lot of Feelings on this topic. tl;dr: the real villain of princess tutu and utena was society. who would have thought.

#princess tutu #meta #asks #utena #mytho #dios #pt negative-ish #also they both have extremely silly names #mytho = myth/mythos and dios = god. enough said there really.#this took a bit because anthy kept psychic blasting my phone every time I tried to take an utena screenshot #doesn't want me to diospost. I'm so sorry girl I'll make a post about you later I prommy #acetaminophriends #mysterious and transmutable #I FORGOT to update the tag on maybe my one good post

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waheelawhisperer · 2 years

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I'm a boring basic bitch, so who would you ship with Jaune?

Full disclosure, I think Jaune is bi (or at least bicurious) and hasn't quite figured it out yet. With that in mind...

Arkos is my number one Jaune ship, no contest. It's a classic, and never mind that Pyrrha was done dirty.

I also really like Guard Dogs, Jaune and Marrow's dynamic throughout the Atlas arc was cute and funny and I enjoyed their interactions. The only problem is that they're both subs, so determining whose penis opens up to accept the other one's penis can be difficult at times.

I'm actually quite partial to Dragonslayer as of Volume 8, I wasn't really a fan of this ship beyond aesthetic appreciation at first but their scenes in Volume 8 really convinced me that these two have a genuine bond. Yang's been remarkably supportive of Jaune ever since, like, Volume 2, and I think their personalities are pretty compatible. Can't say their chemistry in canon is explicitly romantic, given Yang's focus on Blake, but they obviously care for each other and I think a writer could build on that in a very believable way. Also, I'm a huge proponent of bi Yang, let her have a hot boyfriend and a hot girlfriend.

I know some people don't like the actual ship name, mostly because it carries connotations of Jaune taming/owning/conquering Yang, and there are definitely people who really buy into that and portray the relationship (and Jaune's relationship with other girls, for that matter) in really gross ways, but I actually think it's funny in an ironic way because anyone with a functioning brain cell who's spent five seconds thinking about their established characterization knows that Yang would run Jaune over like a locomotive. If anyone's getting conquered, it's our resident himbo.

Also, if you capitalize the wrong (right) letter, the ship name turns into a sex joke, which is important to me because I have the mental and emotional maturity of a middle schooler.

White Knight was arguably my least favorite Jaune ship early on, and Beacon-era White Knight just does not do it for me, but I'm actually coming around on Atlas-era White Knight. Part of it is a "pair the spares" thing that comes from the emphasis on Bumbleby and the way it parallels Renora in the Atlas Volumes, as well as the hints of Nuts and Dolts we get in that same Kingdom, but also I feel like Weiss and especially Jaune are a lot more emotionally mature now. Jaune had a lot of stuff to work through, what with the whole toxic masculinity and not really knowing how to talk to girls thing, but he's come around and they feel like people who actually trust and like each other now as opposed to people who happen to be in the same friend group.

Martial Arcs (I think this is the name for Jaune x Ren?) is also very nice, even if I don't particularly like splitting up Ren and Nora. They're clearly very close, we get some nice angst and conflict in Volume 8, and they have a deep heart-to-heart discussion while Ren is naked and wrapped in a towel, thus making it impossible for me to view any of their interactions as anything other than homoerotic. Adding Nora into the mix is also a nice option, she deserves two boyfriends who will love her and each other.

Jaune x Neptune is inherently funny to me because I think having the two characters voiced by the main writers kiss would be funny and would probably make a lot of people mad for a lot of different reasons.

Not a big Lancaster fan, Jaune and Ruby have always just felt like friends to me. I like their relationship in a platonic sense but they just do not seem to have chemistry to me.

Knightshade is another one I'm not particularly partial to, given that Jaune and Blake have so little interaction in canon, to the point where seeing Blake hug Jaune when they reunited in Volume 6 genuinely shocked me because they've never seemed like anything other than people who happen to run in the same circles. I can't even test whether they have chemistry of any kind together because that hug was genuinely the first time I could remember them directly interacting, and by that point CRWBY is clearly gearing up to make Bumbleby canon. Like, they seem compatible, based on their personalities, but who the hell even knows because the writers seem to have an aversion to letting Blake just interact with her friends unless they're part of her specific plotline or her love interest of the day. No, I'm not still upset that it took us 8 Volumes for her to get a meaningful conversation with Ruby, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Still think the Gigachad Jaune shit does a disservice to his character.

#rwby #ask game #jaune arc #pyrrha nikos #marrow amin #yang xiao long #weiss schnee #lie ren #nora valkyrie #ruby rose #blake belladonna #neptune vasilias #arkos #guard dogs #dragonslayer #white knight #martial arcs

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whysojiminimnida · 2 years

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Welcome To MiniMoni, or Jungkook Is Just Screwed Isn't He

Because let's be honest...

Cameron Phillip as Jungkook is not entirely wrong. But before we go barrel-rolling off to some toxic Jeonlous narrative that, well, okay, in this case it kinda DOES exist but only a little bit and it's not toxic, it's normal; Let's all enjoy twelve minutes or so of a nice compilation of some sweet and fun moments between Namjoon and Jimin:

youtube

Edited videos are always suspect to me unless I am (A) watching them for fun and not for evidentiary findings; or (2) they're not really trying to prove anything. But let's be reasonable here - nobody honestly thinks that MiniMoni are a thing, do they? Plus it's a really cute video with a lot of great moments. Props to the creator.

(photo collage cr. @sherwynphilip)

Cute boyfriend-looking guys in couple fits, okay, I guess I could see it if like a Jeon Jungkook didn't exist. They do look very pretty together. And there's nothing they love more than a good selca.

Honestly, I could ship it if not for the existence of the Jeon half of the Jeon-Park household. And the possibility of Namjoon just not being into guys.... BUT WAIT I STILL THINK HE KINDA IS THO. The Jimin effect also exists and I really don't care who you are, it's pretty obvious that Joon enjoys Jimin's visuals, his intellect, his emotional support, his friendship and his ass affection.

Jimin has an ability to find the emotional center of people around him. He is reportedly highly emotionally intelligent and is a caregiver, a gift-giver, an encouraging, kind presence (when he isn't being a total Slytherin) to his friends. And I think Joon appreciates that about him. Meanwhile Joonie stimulates Jimin's brain, his artistic side, his sharp wit and his need for affection and praise. Namjoon has no problem giving Jimin what he needs in any of those areas. That they also happen to find each other attractive is not necessarily a bad thing, and in this case, a little chemistry goes a long way. They kind of provide each other a safe flirtation outlet, if that makes sense.

It is very normal and not weird for two close friends to also be like "yeah, would possibly hit that if it wouldn't gank up the friendship and/or if I wasn't already otherwise involved." Happens all the time and it's not exclusively masculine.

WHICH BRINGS US TO WHY JUNGKOOK IS JUST SCREWED OKAY.

Jungkook's first real guy crush was, apparently, Namjoon. This is based on stuff Kook has said about joining BTS specifically because of Joon, and about his thighs, and his basically spending 2012-2014 just following Namjoon around like a puppy.

So Jungkook admires/crushes on Namjoon and Namjoon admires Jimin who flirts with the world but is in love with Jungkook, this actually does read kinda like bad fanfiction. Or maybe good fanfiction. IDK y'all I just show up here and make observations and post shit. I can't be held responsible for what these grown ass men do in front of a camera. Or behind it for that matter.

The upshot is, Namjoon is aware that Koo crushed on him first. He is also well aware of the Jeon-Park situation having been thoroughly exposed via my personal favorite show, Namjoon In The Middle, for well over five years now. Six, really. Maybe seven. Whatever, HE KNOWS OKAY. They ALL KNOW. Nobody's hiding from anyone in BTS. These guys got their boundaries all trampled on before most of them were out of their teens, they don't even know how to act most of the time.

And Jimin is also aware that Jungkook liked Namjoon maybe better right at first and he is not above caressing a wow-thigh here or there if he needs to get a point across. And sometimes he do. I don't know what the point was on this day but something was going on.

But let's please notice, Jimin is not the only Slytherin in Bangtan. Not by a long shot. Y'all got to stop villainizing Jiminie when Namjoon knows exactly what's up and he's just letting this ride and encouraging it if not openly initiating. And it's not the only time.

Maddest I've ever seen Kookie was at this fansign, please ignore the overt misspelling of "avert" and understand that I have an image limit I'm working against here, anyway, boy was PISSED OFF. Namjoon just triggers him when it comes to Jimin. And I don't find this "toxic" behavior. This is normal behavior. Normalize the idea that sometimes in relationships, especially as-yet unestablished ones, insecurities happen. Doesn't make him toxic, makes him human, get off his dick okay.

Maybe he knows something we don't or maybe Jiminie kinda uses Joon to rile up his man or maybe, maybe, Namjoon is also sometimes a Slytherin. To be fair Joon is owed certain compensatory enjoyment for having to be the Jeon-Park Police but somehow he lets Jimin get by with shit and kinda dishes it Koo's direction, historically, and I haven't figured that out yet.

But ...

In the last couple of years, as the Jeon-Parks have grown up a bit and solidified their own bond, Joon has also grown up a bit. Because I don't think it really damaged his and Jimin's friendship, but I do think he and Jungkook realized that while they are never gonna be the tightest duo in Bangtan, they do work together, they do both love and care for Jimin, and they are friends. Just, not Jinkook-level friends. MiniMoni are always going to be one of the closer pairs, and Minkook is kinda... a little on the side-eye side. But still cute. So things have mellowed a lot. Jungkook in particular has mellowed a lot. And as of late 2021, MiniMoni are still MiniMoni-ing and the Jeon-Parks are still Jeon-Parking and all is well (including Namjoon, I hope, he should be testing negative for COVID like, soon, right?) So that's my take on those guys. Cue the cannons. I'll be behind the sofa if you need me.

#Youtube #minimoni #namjoon in the middle #it's my favorite show #fetus jeon-parks jeonparking #jeon parks jeonparking again #jikook #kim motherfucking namjoon #namjoon #also a whole park jimin exists #jimin is a bit of a slytherin #namjoon is also a bit of a slytherin there i said it #fight me #jungkook is just trying to breathe over here damn

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elliepassmore · 3 years

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The Winter Duke review

4/5 stars Recommended for people who like: fantasy, magic, lesbian characters, power struggles, political intrigue, mysteries, LGBTQ+ representation I really enjoyed We Rule the Night and so was excited to see this author had published another book, albeit not in the same world. Unfortunately, I didn’t like this one nearly as much as I liked Night, even though it did follow through on its wlw potential. For starters, Winter Duke starts off very slowly. I really struggled to get into the book despite its premise and despite the fact that there is some action in chapter 2. However, chapter 1 and many of the chapters that followed were rather slow going and involved a lot of discussion and not a lot of action. Even the parts when Ekata gets to travel Below were somewhat meh (though I will say that the worldbuilding was fantastic and I very much enjoyed the descriptions of Below). Nevertheless, I feel like even with the tension in some scenes, most of the action occurs in chapter 2 and in the last 1/3 to 1/4 of the book. Another issue I had is that Ekata lets people push her around too easily. She is grand duke and, yeah, sure, maybe she didn’t want the position, but she was still raised as a princess or whatever the duchy equivalent is, yet she lets people bowl over her like its nothing. Ekata then complains that people don’t listen to her and do things without her knowledge, but she barely stands up for herself. Maybe the things that happen in the book would have still happened if she had asserted herself, maybe not, but she wouldn’t have been so passive about it at least. Further, though she admits she’s unsuited to the position of grand duke, she allows her ministers to not tell her things and doesn’t even read the documents she signs about trade agreements and what not. If she wants to at least be a good provisional grand duke and get people to listen to her, you’d think she’d put a little effort into making herself knowledgeable. To be fair to her, she does start trying to remember the dignitaries present, but that’s only halfway through the book. My third issue, which is also still kind of my second issue, is that Ekata doesn’t like her family and wants to be better…but then she tries to act just like her father and brother as soon as she becomes grand duke, even when people suggest to her that maybe she shouldn’t try to replicate them. She uses her brain to try and sort through the curse, but she doesn’t use it to try and rule and instead attempts to mirror her despotic father. Her behavior even impacts how she interacts with the people Below, who she’s long wondered about and loved and wanted to study, and the people she loves, and not in a good way. I get making mistakes and mirroring the behavior of people we know, and I get using stuff like this for tension, but my issue with this comes in when so many of Ekata’s problems would’ve been solved if she used her own brain for five minutes instead of trying to be her father and brother (or even looked over the end of her own nose). Like, she’s complaining that she doesn’t want to be grand duke, then refuses a parliament. Like…why? Just why? She’s afraid of the absolute power her father and brother would have to kill her and believes in her family’s right to rule instead of ‘peasants,’ but she doesn’t see the irony in how parliament would take away that absolute killing power and in how the woman she says is more a mother than her own is a freaking peasant. So many of her issues and tensions in this book would’ve been avoided if Ekata had just stayed herself the entire time. For things I do like, I enjoyed the focus on science + magic. Bartlett does a good job combining the two in a way that makes sense and doesn’t contradict one another. Magic in this world is less understood than science, but there are still rules and ways to study it alongside more concrete things like anatomy and chemistry. There is a more heavy lean on magic in this book than there was in Night, but I liked the different balance and found the exploration of it interesting. In this same vein, the worldbuilding was excellent as well and I enjoyed the little details that didn’t have much to do with the plot, but made it feel more real. There’s good LGBTQ+ rep in the book as well. Ekata is, obviously, gay and Inkar is as well. Sigis, one of the antagonists, is at least bi, if not pan, as is Lyosha, Ekata’s oldest brother. Several other named characters are nonbinary and at least one or two is asexual. There are also unnamed characters who are gay or bi as well. I think there’s also probably a lot of fluidity allowed in the world in terms of gender representation, since there are some women in the book called ‘prince’ and Ekata herself is called a grand duke, not a grand duchess. I also really liked some of the side characters. Aino, Ekata’s nursemaid and quasi-adoptive mother, is an absolute powerhouse. That woman manages to not only take care of Ekata and protect her from literal dangers that may creep into her room, but she also manages to fend off some of the ministers and dignitaries, steal Ekata’s mother’s jewelry, and plot to help herself and Ekata escape. Truly a background hero. Aino clearly cares for Ekata and wants what’s best for her, and she seems like an excellent person to have as a friend and defender. Further, Aino often provides some snippy commentary that I enjoy. Inkar, Ekata’s trial wife, is also a character that I enjoyed, but she, like Ekata, is stuck up in certain ways from being raised royalty, which causes some issues between her and Aino. To Inkar, the world of Kylma Above is completely foreign to her and her interactions with everything are as new as ours, making her one of the vessels for worldbuilding. Despite her view on servants, she doesn’t have the same problems Ekata seems to sympathizing with more common people and she gets on splendidly with the guards of the palace. Actually…aside from Aino, PM Eirhan, and Sigis, she seems to get along swell with everyone around her, even those who were once held hostage by her or her father. Overall, Inkar’s a very enjoyable character to read about. As for the main character, Ekata, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I listed a lot of the problems I have with her above, which led to me thinking I just wasn’t a fan of her character until around the last fourth or so of the book. On the other hand, she has some very funny lines throughout the book and I enjoyed how she was focused on science and used it to calm herself. I also liked her obvious love for Kylma, even if a lot of her thoughts about it are coated in ignorance or memories of her family. Overall I don’t think I entirely like Ekata, but I definitely don’t dislike her. I feel bad for her, honestly, since, as mentioned, a lot of her problems could’ve been circumvented if she’d just decided to be herself the entire time (and maybe extend herself a little to learn about the duchy, the dignitaries, and the agreements she’s signing). There are a lot more bad guys than good in this one, and it seems like one is around every corner. Eirhan is perhaps the most slithery of them, and it’s hard to tell whose side he’s on, though it largely seems to be his own. I found him to be an infuriating character, but didn’t hate him the same way I hate Sigis. Sigis, Ekata’s foster brother and a king in his own right, is just downright horrendous and deserves a sword through his back. Slimy and conniving, Sigis revels in others’ discomfort and is the picture beside the dictionary term ‘toxic masculinity.’ He does not, I believe, know the meaning of the word ‘no’ and simply thinks the world is his for the taking and by right. Overall I feel pretty much the same way about this book as I do about Ekata: I don’t dislike it, but I don’t entirely like it either. The worldbuilding was good and I really enjoyed the two main side characters, even if I didn’t like a lot of the other characters (though with them being antagonists, I’m going to say that was on purpose).

#book #book review #claire eliza barlett #the winter duke #fantasy #ya fantasy #political intrigue #mystery #magic #lesbian characters #lgbtq representation

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linskywords · 5 years

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Why Hockey RPF?

Hey friends! This is a question I've been thinking about for a while, and I finally put together a list of my answers. Caveat that this is me attempting to analyze my own psychology and so may be very incomplete and/or wrong. :)

First, the general "why slash?" bits. These apply across fandoms (though I think some are extra strong in hockey, as I'll get to below).

One. Going against the script. I cannot stress enough how important this is to me in a romance. You know that thing where a man and a woman are in the same room together in a movie, so you know they're the love interests and they will kiss at the end? I hate that. It makes me feel like their love is probably fake. If they feel like they're supposed to be attracted to each other, and then they are attracted to each other, it probably isn't real attraction at all. Says my brain, anyway. If they feel like this person is not at all someone they could EVER be attracted to, and they're attracted anyway...it is instantly, like, fifty thousand times hotter to me. Works way better with gender for me than with other stuff that's traditionally been used in romance, like social class.

Two. Freedom from typical romantic gender roles. This has been said a lot, but: gender roles in romance SUCK. (They suck in most places. But romance really has a lot of them.) It's hard to grow up in a Western culture and not have an extremely conflicted relationship with them: you've been trained to find certain behaviors romantic, but you've also learned enough about feminism to question whether all of them are healthy or smart, and it's hard to write a satisfying romance when you're caught in the tangle of being drawn to the thing but also wondering if maybe you shouldn't be. It's so much easier for me to indulge my idtastic desires when I don't even have to think about whether I should be having the woman be the one taken care of, or if that makes her weak, so I should swap their roles, but then if she takes care of the guy does that mean she's doing all the work in the relationship and he's a giant man-baby...you see how that would bog you down. If both characters are men -- or women, or nonbinary -- it's easier to give them whatever roles I want without having to think about whether I'm furthering my own oppression.

Three. Getting to live in bodies that aren't our own. The previous point about gender roles can apply to femslash, too, and as a bi woman, I can get into that -- but sometimes it's better not to have to think about my own gender in the equation at all. There's so much crap associated with being a woman in our world, especially when it comes to sexuality. It can be liberating to write sex scenes when no bodies like mine are part of it even a little and you just don't have to negotiate the crap at all. This isn't an absolute for me -- I do write and enjoy femslash -- but I write way more slash than femslash, and I think this is part of it.

Four. Humanizing men. This is a big thing in a society (such as mine) where the best men are supposedly the ones who most embody a toxic masculinity where they don't experience normal human vulnerability or feelings. We're supposed to admire these men, and fall in love with them, and raise children with them (some of us), and it's so easy to resent and fear them instead. It is both satisfying and healing to portray men who are full of need and hurt and longing and love. Like, you know, humans are.

Five. Giving our desires power. In my culture, and in many others, men are the ones whose desires have power. A man wants a woman who doesn't want him back? He just needs to pursue her harder; she'll come around in the end, and if she doesn't, she's a heartless bitch. A woman wants a man who doesn't want her back? She's pathetic. Her desire makes her ridiculous. If you're a women who desires men, or who desires anyone at all, it's so humiliating to see your own desires minimalized and stripped of power like that. So if we want to write about our desires -- our desires for men, in particular -- it can be very satisfying to give those desires to another man. Those desires have POWER, then. They're legitimized. They have agency. We can revel in them without doubting our own right to have them.

So that's slash in general. Wow, there was a lot in there about cutting through the tangle of internalized patriarchy, wasn't there? Funny, that.

Hockey, though. Why hockey, amidst the many possible slash fandoms? Why did I start reading hockey RPF without ever having seen a game and fall for it so hard?

Six. The heteronormativity. And to take it a step further: the pressure in general to present yourself to the world as a certain type of person. I've written before about how a huge part of the appeal of the hockey world to me is the immense pressure it puts on its players -- which plays into the thing above about going against scripts, because the heteronormative script is extra in effect when it comes to professional sports, but it's not just that. These guys are under such a spotlight, and in exchange for their privilege and wealth they not only have to keep performing at an elite level that's hard to maintain, but they also have to force themselves into such a narrow, publicly acceptable mold. I'm not an athlete, so I can't relate to that specific set of pressures, but that makes them even more satisfying to write about. I can write about my feelings about the pressures that are on me -- the unwritten societal expectation to be important, successful, happy in easily recognized ways -- without having to think about those specific pressures, because I can substitute these ones instead.

Seven. Validation. I wrote above about giving our desires to men so that the desires have more power. In this case, it's giving the desires to successful, competent, famous people so that the desires have validity -- because the people who hold them have validity. Hockey players have the kind of prestigious, easily-recognized-at-cocktail-parties-and-high-school-reunions type of success that so many of us feel on one level or another than we should have, and they have it so unquestionably. When someone like that experiences a type of neediness I might feel -- the desperate longing for another person to notice them, the extreme obsession that comes with a crush, the miserable sureness that the person they want won't want them back -- that feeling is automatically valid, because THEY are valid. As someone who has felt a lot of longing in my life, I really enjoy exploring it in characters who have an automatic get-out-of-worthlessness free card.

So those are the navel-gazing ones, where hockey does the same kind of thing your average slash fandom does, but sometimes to a greater degree. Then there are the amazing storytelling benefits of the setting:

Eight. Team. Oh, team. Friends to lovers is my jam. I love writing characters who've spent so much time with someone, they don't even realize when their feelings for the other person cross the line from friendship to something else. This must be what friendship is, because it's what I feel for X person, who is my friend! And then the joy, of course, of having to see that person every day once you realize it isn't just friendship, and you're being tortured by knowing they'll never want you back (or so you think). Add in the thing where you and this person are fighting for something together every other day, where your successes bolster each other's, where your chemistry can mean the success of the team, and if you have a falling out (say, over someone's inappropriate crush) it could ruin your careers and the team's success...I mean, how do you resist a setup like that?

Nine. The flexibility of the setting. One of the wonderful things about hockey is that there's so much of it. If you want to set a story during a homestand, you can. If you want a road trip, you can find one. The season is seven months long, plus playoffs, and during those months you can set a story anytime and know that your characters will be seeing each other every day, creating lots of opportunities for interactions and relationship progress. And the hockey games themselves can feature -- but they don't have to. They can be just as important or unimportant as you need them to be for story purposes. Need your character to be down about something? Throw in a loss. Anxious about something? Mention a point drought. Sharing a happy moment with their person? Give them a win. If you're strictly following game schedules -- which I try to for the most part -- you might not be able to put those things exactly where you want them, but you can usually find a way to make your timeline match up with actual events. Unlike so many canons where there are specific, exciting adventures that have to be accounted for or worked around, hockey is years and years of fertile ground for whatever you want to put there.

(Corollary to the last one: this is a big part of why I find it so much easier and more fun to write fic than original fiction. When you write a novel, you usually need to create an actual plot, where external events impact each other and build to a conclusion. You can include a romance, but it has to be woven into these other events, and that gets complicated. Need a bonding moment? You'd better hope you designed your external plot to give them one. On the other hand, when you write fic, especially hockey fic, the hockey season can just march on merrily in the background, impacting your story only as much as you want it to, and you can pick and choose the parts of it that most strongly shape your romance. SO much easier to build and maintain a line of romantic tension that way.)

So those are my reasons. Put them all together, and they go a long way toward explaining why I write so much hockey -- and not just stories that borrow hockey players as characters, but stories set in the actual hockey world, with maybe an AU element, but hockey definitely present. There's just so much that the setting does for me and for my ability to write the stories that matter to me.

How about all of you?

#hockey rpf #fandom meta #slash #the patriarchy #my navel-gazing

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moonlit-maiden · 5 years

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11/again!

tagged by @kaatiba again~! Thank you so much <3<3<3 Please check her out guys, she's wonderful and uber talented!

What is the biggest change that’s occurred so far with your WIP?

Well Gali became Disaster Bi so I consider that an improvement over Just a Trash Mess when my friend played her so.... XD But in seriousness, I'd say the 3rd book. For a long time I struggled with how I'd end it. It came super slow but luckily as I pinned down the first 2 books is came to me finally. I was very very stressed over it.

Was writing something you eventually picked up or was it something you’ve always wanted to do?

A friend of mine in 7th grade English was writing her own story (as 12 year old girls do) and she turned to me one day and said "You should write. You'd be amazing at it, you read so much!" I'd never considered how books came to be until that moment. So I started writing! So it kinda just... happened.

Any fandom related things that inspired your work?

Not really. I actually actively avoid fandom. I tend to have Controversial opinions on Things and even back in my youth (bitchyouarenotoldbutokay) people would NOT be happy and chase me out. So I've kinda always done my own thing. Floated on the edges of fandoms for books and video games I love. That's all.

Do you use face-claims?

Generally no. I always have in my mind how they look and rarely does a face claim match up. Chernolo is one of the few exceptions. I had a vauge idea for him, found a pic of it to-be face claim and it clicked. I'm pretty sure he was going "That's how I look mom. That. Nothing else will do." Tenshi I already knew how he looked. When I stumbled across his FC I was genuinely startled it was so eerie!

What is your main issue with the books you dislike?

8D Who has 2 hours? For everyone's sanity here be the highlights:

Women are only strong if they're masculine, reject traditionalism or refuse to be in love. This is bullshit. Stop it.

Stupid male characters in order to "empower" the female character. Stop it.

Homosexual love and romance being treated as something different then heterosexual romance. It's the same thing; love. Stop it.

Killing off parents. Stop it 8D

Making parents stupid and uninvolved. Stop it. 8D

Making siblings horrible or absent all the time. Stop it. 8D

Not drawing inspiration from non-Western mythos/lore. Expand your horizons.

Shoving in diversity just because. Stop it. Either write it in to start with or don't bother.

Making the villain dumb and predictable. I'm not scared by that.

Either sexualizing only the guys or only the girls. Stop that; equal fanservice if you're gonna do that nonsense.

Equating love to sex. They are not mutually exclusive. Stop it. 8D

Making daughters hate their fathers. Stop it.

Toning down scars, trauma and torture experienced by female characters despite it being applicable to the situation (such as being in a war, being a fighter). Stop it. 8D

Making authority evil. This is boring and untrue.

No chemistry between love interests. Better no romance then poor chemistry PLEASE. And yes, this applies to gay romance too. Being gay doesn't automatically make the romance interesting.

Being afraid of having religion in your work. PUT IT IN THERE YOU COWARDS!

Mary Sues/Gary Stus. Yes, they exist. And NO it's not when the character is OP. It's when the whole world bends to the will of the character to the point of ridiculousness. THAT is what a Mary Sue/Gary Stu is. OP characters just run a higher risk of falling in here if not handled well.

Not showing friendship between boys without it being homoerotic. Please don't put your fetish into the book and just show guys giving a shit about one another and caring.

Villainizing mothers. PLEASE STOP IT.

Promoting HeroxVillian pairings that are abusive/toxic. Stop. Hard. It's nasty.

I got lots more but we'd be here all day.

What message do you hope to deliver with your WIP?

Lol, like the above we'd be here all day. So here are the highlights.

Do not be afraid to ask for help.

Love in unbelievably powerful in all it's forms

You parents try VERY hard to raise you. Cut them slack and forgive them for their mistakes.

Women can be strong no matter what path they choose.

Racism is horrible, degrading and demeaning. And no, it doesn't matter who's doing it to which race. It's not an excuse.

The line between a hero and a villain is paper-thin.

Reality is huge and strange and terrifying.

If it's not human, don't trying to put human logic onto it.

Learn to forgive. Your own hatred will kill you.

Don't give up on a dream, even when the world is telling you to stop.

We always want what we don't have. Learn to take comfort in your own skills and beauty.

It's okay not to know your path when you're young. As long as you keep looking around.

It's okay to like the pre-laid out path your family/parents recommend. Don't feel ashamed if it feels right.

Consensual polyamourous marriage should be legalized.

You both make your own fate and are bound by it. It's a messy look with no start or end.

Stories are powerful.

Love is at the core of all motivation.

The world is not what it seems.

Favorite song to write to, if any?

sljd my music taste is so all over it's stupid. I've literally listened to Baby Metal while writing romance/smut scenes. There is no logic here. The only consistent is Lo-Fi/Vaporwave/Future Funk playlists.

Do you have the ending plotted out? If so, can you remember when you came up with it?

Yes, thank gods. I think it happened in 2017/2018, near the end of my brainstorming.

What is your strongest point in your writing?

Worldbuilding, character relationships, horror and smut. One of these things is not like the other.

What do you do when writer’s block rears its ugly head?

Okay. I'mma be real here. I don't GET writer's block. I legit don't. But I DO get "lazy brain". I'm sit out 20-30k words in a couple weeks and then my brain will check tf out for a few months. Rinse and repeat. This is a bad way of writing things. don't do it.

Would you travel to research your wip?

*packs bags* So who's paying for my trip to Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seol?

tagging: @the-ichor-of-ruination, @ivonoris, @ikilledmyocs and anyone else who wants to do it!!!

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a-deep-ocean-of-secrets · 5 years

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Is there one thing that every couple you ship has, like a similar trait that draws you in?

Huh! Very interesting question. Honestly, I’ve never sat down and thought about why I love the ships that I love and if there is a common thread between them all. Wow. Well, now seems like a perfect time to try it out. I’m going to outline the major ships in my life (right now) and describe why they appeal to me, and we’ll see what - if anything - they have in common.

Stydia: Classic slowburn. Stydia is a beautiful ship because it developed slowly and thoughtfully over six seasons as we watched both Lydia and Stiles grow individually and together. It began as Stiles obsessing over her from a distance and Lydia having no idea who he was. Stiles had a crush on her since he was a kid and he simultaneously knew things about her that no one else did (her intelligence) but also had her on a lofty pedestal as his dream girl. It isn’t until season 3 that we could see a real shift in their dynamic. They become friends. They’re the brains of the pack and often do the detective work together. They lean on one another. They are vulnerable with each other. It becomes established that they have such a strong connection, Lydia can bring him back from the brink of death. They gain so much momentum in Season 3 and then the brakes are halted in Season 4. Stiles dates someone else. I’m not the biggest fan of Stiles/Malia, but I can absolutely see the necessity in them as a couple. Stiles needed to date someone other than Lydia. He needed to experience a real relationship so he could determine if what he felt for Lydia was fantasy or real. Season 5 did a great job of slowly intertwining Stiles and Lydia back into each other’s orbits. He goes to extreme lengths to save her from Eichen House. Then she does the same in 6A to bring him back when he’s taken by the Ghost Riders. I firmly believe that the reason she didn’t forget him the same way the others did (including his best friend and father) is because of the emotional tether that exists between them and was established in Season 3. That’s why she was so sure he existed even when she couldn’t remember him fully. I really love Stydia because they are such an epic love story. And it was such a delight to watch throughout the seasons. By the end of Teen Wolf, they were the only reason I was watching.

Staron: I will preface this by saying that I have not read the comics, so most of my love of Staron comes from their MCU depictions. Wild, huh? So many people seem to hate MCU Staron, but I love them. They were definitely short-changed as a couple, but they land as well as any other pairing in the MCU. Let’s face it, the MCU kinda sucks at romance. What do I love about Staron? First of all, I think they’re a great team. Even when apart, they seem in sync with one another. Sharon is so loyal to Steve. She’s the first to fight back against Hydra - really, against SHIELD - after Steve makes the announcement through the building. And let’s face it, Steve would have been royally screwed in Civil War if he hadn’t had Sharon there to feed him intel, help him realize Zemo was a person of interest and smuggled out his gear. Steve needs Sharon’s help. And that’s saying a lot because the guy is nearly indestructible. And I love that Steve is awkward and sheepish around Sharon. We saw that on display in the hallway scene from the Winter Soldier. He reverts back to the Steve of the 40s offering that girl peanuts. As much as he is a hunk, he still has no idea how to talk to women. It’s so endearing. And with Sharon, you can see that he wants to be more than Captain America. He just wants to be Steve Rogers. He is cool, calm, and collected with all of the other women in his life (Natasha, Maria, Wanda) but Sharon gets under his skin and causes him to stumble over his words. There’s something very human about their interactions. They feel like a real world couple trying to figure things out. I don’t know, I just find the two of them so wholesome when they’re together. They have so much promise and I am bummed that AE will probably be the end of Steve, and therefore the end of Staron in the MCU. A girl can only hope we’ll see more of them. But I’m not holding my breath.

Winterpanther: I’ll admit, a lot of love for this ship is based off headcanon and fanfiction. I am a sucker for enemies to friends to lovers (shoutout to Mara and Luke from Star Wars) and Winterpanther has the potential to be this. Obviously, they may seem like an unlikely pairing because T’Challa wanted to kill Bucky. Seems kinda hard to move past that. But yet, by the end of Civil War, T’Challa has seen how poisonous revenge is to the soul and has offered asylum to Bucky in Wakanda. It’s really from there where Winterpanther grows as a ship. One reason I love them is because I’m such a big fan of the White Wolf storyline. Bucky at times never feels like a fully formed character, more like a foil to Steve and motivation for Steve’s character. As important as Steve and Bucky are to one another, I think it’s fair to say that Bucky lives in Steve’s shadow. Putting Bucky in Wakanda gives the character a whole new dimension that is sorely lacking in the MCU. When I think of the two, I think of how they have both dealt with darkness in their lives. Both physically and metaphorically, these are two characters who have fallen from great heights and had to claw their way back up. They both lived such promising lives that were torn apart by tragedy and then had to adapt to their new circumstances. Having so much in common, I can easily see the two leaning on one another, sharing their stories. T’Challa is a man willing to be vulnerable and isn’t bogged down by toxic masculinity. He’d be someone Bucky could confide in, someone Bucky isn’t afraid to let down, like Steve. They are both so strong, T’Challa is a warrior by choice and Bucky was forced to be a soldier. But yet I think they could bond over such upbringings. They know sacrifice and defeat. When written well, Winterpanther is such a compelling ship.

Athos/Sylvie: This couple gave me all the feels when I watched The Musketeers. A lot of fans of the show ship Athos/Milady, but I could never get behind them. They are so toxic to one another that they could never make each other happy moving forward. Too much had happened, they had hurt each other too many times to ever be a couple. Honestly, they would have ended by one killing the other. That was the only way Athos/Milday would have ended had they actually become a couple again. But then Sylvie was introduced. She knows who she is and what she stands for. She doesn’t compromise her ideals or goals for other people. And she really shakes up Athos’ world. Before her, he was a man completely closed off to the world. He was a drunk and was only held together by his sense of duty to the Musketeers. He had sworn off love, marriage, children, etc. He really was a shell of the man he had once been. But when he meets Sylvie, and really opens himself up to her, you can see that he wants things out of life once again. He realizes there is more to his existence than just duty or leadership. He starts wanting things and letting go of his tightly wound up control. He gives in to Sylvie, lets her take his burdens. Athos and Sylvie are a bit like a roller coaster, constantly up and down as they fight to understand one another and be a partner to each other in a way that doesn’t completely erase who they are as individuals. But by the end of Season 3, Athos is willing to step away from the Musketeers to begin a family with Sylvie. He realizes that there is more to him than just being a soldier. He has hope again. He believes in love. He’s looking towards the future. The Athos at the end of the series is miles away from the Athos we were introduced to in Season 1. I loved watching his story with Sylvie. And I am so glad that he was given a happy ending with someone like her. Also, the sexual chemistry these two had? A-MAZ-ING.

#stydia #staron #winterpanther #athos x sylvie #my own personal thoughts

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murphystartedthefire · 6 years

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can I just... unpack that Memori breakup talk for a minute because wow.

The thing I keep coming back to did not happen in this episode. It happened last season. It was, immediately and for good reason, one of the most Iconic Memori Scenes in the entire show.

Emori is hurting about being shut out of the bunker (oh honey, you don’t even know the bullet y'all dodged) and thrown to the wolves again, not knowing how they’ll survive another day. It’s a very vulnerable moment; she confesses to Murphy that she felt safe for the first time, “like I had a home.” That’s a new, addictive feeling for her. It’s profoundly sad she’s never experienced it before. She looks very small and tired.

Murphy - also tired, also vulnerable, Murphy at his absolute best - tells her your home is with me, okay? It’s not quite what she was talking about, she already *had* him and this was something else. But it’s a comfort, and it’s SUCH a powerfully loving moment, and they hold hands in the back of the rover.

Memori fans love that line a lot. *I* love that line a lot.

That line is now the root of the damage between them.

Don’t get me wrong. “Your home is with me, okay?” is still such a beautiful moment but now it also breaks my heart in hindsight, because goddamn they played that all the way through to the unhealthy conclusion that John liked it that way on some level. He liked being that for Emori. It made him feel needed by someone in a way he never did in his life, and it hurt him and hardened him when he wasn’t that anymore. When she made her home bigger than him, when she let in other people who loved her, he couldn’t figure out what else to be for her.

And they’ve been TELLING us this all season through the mouths of other characters - that he felt inadequate, useless, etc. But it was somehow different to finally hear him say outright that he was angry she didn’t need him anymore, the way he still needed her.

And you see Emori *register* that and feel sorry for him, but also not apologize for it at all. And I don’t know... to me that’s a monumental thing to see on television, and something I wish more people were talking about. Emori looking him in the eyes and telling him that she felt like he was punishing her for having a life and a purpose for herself. He took something *good* for her and made her feel shitty about it, and that broke her heart.

Neither of them are bad people (I mean, BOTH OF THEM ARE DEFINITELY BAD PEOPLE but not for this reason). But Murphy is way more in the wrong than she is, even if it makes sense why he reacted how he did. It’s not just a toxic masculinity thing, even if there’s echoes of that. I legit think that everything he thought he was and wanted to be for Emori -- her savior, her dashing hero -- is something she used to be for him, too. There's a deep well of isolation and trauma and whatever’s going on in his brain chemistry that told him if he wasn’t everything to Emori, he wasn’t anything to her. Certainly the wall she’s put up post-breakup only confirmed that for him.

If there’s a future for them (and I think it’s really apparent there is at this point), it needed to start with this level of honesty about the root of their problems, and Murphy especially needed to hear how much it hurt her. Which he does not seem to have comprehended before now. Not in a general ~of course it’s my fault and I blew it up because I am the family disappointment~ way but specifically, what it felt like on the other side of that slow-building irrational resentment of her happiness.

“When we were on the ring, I was part of something bigger than myself. I didn’t know I needed that, but I did. And you punished me for it.“

Not being her home anymore is why he thought she ~left him, when in fact it’s that he thought that was necessary. The idea that she couldn’t evolve and have another Home and need things he couldn’t give her by himself, but still just *want* him and love him as much as she ever did, was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It just meant a whole lot to me to hear her say those things, for her side of it to be *so valid* and painful and taken seriously. I love Emori to pieces and I love these crazy kids together, but I’m so glad it’s not happening in a way that compromises or shames her for Treating Him Badly the way some of the audience seems eager to do.

We finally got our Memori Honesty Hour, guys, and I gotta stop before I cry over it. <3

#the 100 #the 100 meta #emori #emorisquad #john murphy #cute for a thief #meta

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lavendermanna · 6 years

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quick edit: i put this under a readmore bc it turned out way longer than i expected. follow on through for a lot of thoughts on why some trans people begin to understand their own gender as children while others dont

for a long time i've been deeply curious about the question of what exactly it is inside my brain that makes me identify so strongly with one particular position in the social gender binary and not the other (or, more broadly, why do i have dysphoria and what is gender?) but im beginning to suspect that this is the wrong question to be asking. i was thinking about this earlier, and about my history with my understanding of my own gender, and i started to wonder instead what exactly it was that made me fail to realize that i was uncomfortable with performing masculinity for so long. what was it that prevented me from taking action w/r/t my discomfort?

whenever i talk to trans people who remember having a clear idea of their actual gender as children, their stories sound so strange to me because my experience was just fundamentally different. i was in denial for so long, even after my dysphoria and depression had started seriously ruining my life. i considered myself "non-binary, but basically just a man" right up until i started transitioning, because when i realized that i could be a girl i started moving as fast as i could. my conception of gender was so closely tied to my conception of body shape and genitals that i didnt consider the possibility that i could be trans until i started to consider going on hormones so that my body would change.

so why is it that for many other trans people, the shape of their body did not prevent them from understanding that they wanted to be a different kind of person than what their surroundings were trying to make them into, but i just followed along obediently and didn’t question it? if other trans people tend to realize as children that there is another way to exist (or don’t realize that the way they want to exist is not the way that others expect them to be) why do some of us get so thoroughly trapped by the burden of assigned gender that we can’t even imagine a way out?

in retrospect, i think i can definitely say that my inability to understand or take action wasn’t rooted in the belief that i was a boy and not a girl, but rather happened because i believed that i couldn’t be a girl, so i had to be a boy. i think that this may be the key difference between people like me and people who have some understanding of their real gender as children, in which case the question becomes: how does one account for this difference? was it a difference in my upbringing, culture, or education? is it something related to mental illness, brain chemistry, or the autism-spectrum? am i just better at doing mental gymnastics to avoid my problems than most? i think the answer is probably some combination of these: social influence, individual brain function, and individual personal response to stress stimuli.

one of the things that confused me the most when i first started talking to trans people about their memories of gender as children was the fact that so many of them received far stricter assigned gender socialization than i did. i never had masculinity thrust upon me as such; i was never told i could or couldn’t do some specific gendered behavior, i was never placed under any particular gendered pressure by my family, and my friends and schoolmates didnt start exhibiting really toxic or violent behavior until we all started to hit puberty. although i did get picked on/bullied somewhat, and i did get in a couple of fights, i was never really beaten up, ganged up on, or made to feel powerless, and i always tried to give back as good as i got.

it now seems obvious to me, of course, that physically and emotionally violent gender socialization has never been an effective way to make someone believe that their assigned gender is what they should choose. abusers are not trying to convince you to act a certain way, they are trying to scare you into conforming. they dont care what you think, only how you act, so while many trans people with childhood trauma learned to perform their assigned gender very well in order to avoid violence, that same hostility probably only made it more obvious how and why they were different from cis people (this is an assumption on my part, please lmk if its not accurate). i want to note here that im not claiming that trauma is what makes someone realize that they’re trans, but rather refuting the idea that gendered socialization makes a person more likely to believe that their assigned gender is accurate. this is definitely a belief i used to hold, and im glad to understand why its wrong.

so that leaves me with this, my best theory: whether or not a person realizes that they’re trans as a child is heavily influenced, although not defined by, the social factors of the environment in which they grow up. in my case, i had so little gender pressure put on me that for a long time i was free to simply not think about it and carry on with my childhood. my memory is fuzzy, but i think that i always knew i was “different” from other kids, i just never managed to figure out exactly how until i was like 21.

the next part of this theory, still under development, is blaming my father for severely stunting my emotional development because he himself has the emotional capacity of a walnut.

#lav's gender theories #im gonna try to go back and tag some of my old posts about gender with that tag so i can find em all #lavender manna

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gaiatheorist · 5 years

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“Male role model.”

I allowed the ex to make me angry again yesterday, I need to stop letting that happen, letting him push my buttons and pull my strings, I need to ‘find and fix’ the filters I managed to put on my emotional responses, because his behaviour is entirely predictable. He mentioned one of his nephews, who had ‘played up’ at school, but now seemed to be settling, and stated with absolute confidence “It’s because he didn’t have a male role model.” I contested, that it was a combination of genetics, adolescence and wider socialisation, but the ex was having none of it. “No, his Dad was never there, no male role model.” I’d made my point, and the ex had dismissed it, repeating his original assertion. There are hundreds of possible reasons that the boy in question was behaviourally challenging at school, I used to work in ‘additional needs’ in a secondary school, but the ex must have heard the phrase ‘male role model’ somewhere, and parroted it at me, trying to prove himself right.

He does that. It’s partly his own insecurity that makes him feel the need to belittle other people, he’s always surrounded himself with misfits, and weakened people, so he can be king-of-everything. It’s also partly the way he was raised, little prince, he was ‘better’ than his sister, because she was just a girl, he was used to being praised, and adored, and right-about-everything. (Uncharitable side-chuckle, there, he was going to be a superstar, she was ‘just’ going to work in a shop, and pop out babies, but she was the one who appeared on Top of the Pops, not him.) I’ve always claimed that I was relieved to have had a son instead of a daughter because I wouldn’t have wanted to produce another creature as fucked-up as me. Thinking back, I wouldn’t have been able to tolerate the way the ex’s family treated girls, either. I confused them, because I didn’t like flowers, or shopping, or soap operas, I had a sort-of career, rather than a job-in-a-shop, their-girls wanted to be admired, I wanted to be respected. Their-girls panicked if they broke a fingernail, I walked around with a broken bone in my hand for weeks. Their-girls would phone the Father-in-law to come and change light-bulbs, or plug-fuses, I fix my own issues, ‘Bob the Builder with Boobs.’

It was a conscious choice for me, not to play the traditional ‘female’ role, I never saw any reason why I should, I’m an anomaly to my generation, and abhorrent to the ones before. My half-sisters do the hair and make-up things that never appealed to me, and I damned-well will ‘answer back’ to my father and step-father, kowtowing isn’t in my nature, they’re not ‘alpha’ or better.

I witter on a lot about how girls and boys are conditioned differently, and I did what I could to break that cycle with my son, to give him an option other-than tits-and-football. (I did also tell him, when he was about 15, “Not all women are like me.”, after he’d witnessed yet another instance of his Dad throwing a tantrum over nothing, and me totally ignoring the stomping man-baby.) Of course, he still had the tits-and-football, from his Dad and Granddad, but I gave him an alternative, and space to express his emotions. I didn’t treat him as ‘a boy’, and I didn’t behave like ‘a girl’, we’re both just humans. (Playing right into the “Women talk about feelings, men don’t.” stereotype, there.)

Feelings, emotions, I’m not a particularly ‘emotional’ creature, stimuli cause chemical changes in the body, which map-out a range of possible actions, from the most basic “That’s hot, stop touching it.”, to the utterly intangible “I wonder if I’ve upset so-and-so?” At work, we went through a phase of focusing on Emotional Literacy, before Ofsted decided on the next focus. (I’ve had that Bernard Cribbins ‘Digging a Hole’ song on a loop in my head for days, Ofsted were very much ‘The bloke in the bowler hat’, with their ever-shifting targets.) Some of the students had no emotional literacy at all, some had learning disabilities that impacted on their ability to articulate, and some had never been allowed to acknowledge their emotions. I’ve lost count of the number of students I worked with who only had ‘OK’ or ‘mad’ in their emotional vocabulary. Mostly boys, but not entirely because girls are conditioned to be more open about discussing emotions, it was more the case that the boys ‘acted out’, whereas the girls tended to internalise issues. By the time a female student started appearing on the behaviour-radar, the issues were usually highly complex, and deeply embedded. Social conditioning, again, the boys would have an argument with a mate at morning break, throw a couple of punches, and walk home together at the end of the day, all-done. The girls, Gods, they were more difficult, not just the insidious whisper-campaigns, and battles for status causing no end of staff time taken up trying to repair fragile friendships. You’d never really want to intervene in a girl-fight, either, boys were easier to split up than girls, girls just kept on going.

That lack of emotional literacy was reflected in an article I read earlier this morning, about an ‘All Male Retreat’, there was a section on acknowledging emotions, and the writer pointed out that all some-men have is “I’m pissed off.” (Like the ex’s frequent outbursts of “I’m not happy!”) Are you ‘pissed off’? Is that really it? What are you pissed off about? Why is it pissing you off? Is there anything you can do to address it? Is there anything I can help you with? The ex was raised very much in the style of boys-don’t-cry, stiff-upper-lip, man-up. His male role model didn’t acknowledge emotions, any stress or distress was brushed off with “Worse things happen at sea!”, and attempts at distraction were made, with sweeties, or ice-cream. That repressive-regressive approach led to the ex only being able to identify two emotional states, we had King-shit-of-turd-mountain, when he was being praised and adored, and “I’m not happy!” when he wasn’t the centre of attention, oh, and he did cry. He mainly responded to our son displaying any kind of emotion by running away, quite quickly, possibly afraid it might be infectious. (Also unable to name that uncertain-anxiety, that there was something he wasn’t able to ‘fix’ by jangling his car-keys, or buying a Cornetto.) I didn’t want to replicate that in our son.

I allowed him to cry, I taught him that always-OK isn’t an achievable state, that there are names for these feelings, and reasons behind them. (I probably didn’t help very much by rarely outwardly-displaying emotions myself, by the time the boy was old enough to have a conversation with, I’d already started concealing my emotions, refusing to give the ex the response he was trying to elicit.) The ex’s side of the family carried on with the “Don’t cry, have a biscuit!” nonsense, his Dad and Granddad were misogynistic, girls-were-weak, and displaying emotion was ‘girly.’ He’d come back home, to his ‘Concrete Bear’ of a mother, who wasn’t weak-or-girly, and the tears that weren’t allowed at Granddad’s house would flow. (I’m really good at passing people tissues, I’ve been in enough complex-stressful meetings where everyone else avoids eye-contact with an irrational or distressed person to know that the eye-contact acknowledgement matters.) I allowed him to express, and then I’d offer an explanation, as he matured, we evolved from “Yes, that dinner-lady is treating you unfairly, speak to one of the others instead.” to more in-depth discussions of brain chemistry, and the complexity of interpersonal relationships. My kitchen was a safe-place for him, neither of us ‘had to’ behave in a specified way because of our biology.

The ex’s idea of a ‘Male role model’ is skewed by his own experience. The nephew in question had a father who was largely absent, he wasn’t particularly involved with the child, he was distant, physically and emotionally. The boy’s mother spent a lot of time at the in-laws’ house, so the boy had the ‘male role model’ of Granddad, who taught him to play cricket, and kick a football, and not-cry. They skipped a generation, the boy was being part-raised by a man who didn’t believe in anti-perspirant or hair-products ‘for boys’, and was completely detached from the reality of the world the boy inhabited, computers, mobile phones, and the experience of being an adolescent in these times were totally alien to him. Going through the chemical maelstrom of puberty, the boy started to ‘play up’ at school. The ex wants to hang the blame for that on the absent-father, but Granddad is in part responsible, for instilling ideologies in the boy that are incompatible with his lived experience. The ‘absent’ father wouldn’t have made a particularly good role model in any case, but, in conditioning the boy to the ‘traditional’ view of masculinity, Granddad hampered his emotional development.

The world-view of gendered roles is changing, albeit slowly, females aren’t ‘naturally’ any more expressive than males, it’s social conditioning, not a left-brain/right-brain difference that encourages boys to behave differently to girls. Toxic masculinity is being challenged, there really is no place for ‘Man up!’, it kills. While-ever parents, and society in general continue to perpetuate these assumed differences, boys will be taught to suppress emotions, and they will grow into men who can’t articulate feelings. Five years ago, we were still using the phrase ‘positive male role model’ at work, I don’t think that’s right, and the few male staff we had in the female-heavy external services were over-subscribed. We’d have been strung from the rafters if we’d suggested a pairing based on ethnicity, or religion, but that reductionist approach based on gender was still seen as acceptable.

I don’t think we need ‘male role models’, against the hundreds of referrals we made for a ‘male role model’, I can’t think of more than a couple where we specified ‘female role model’. We didn’t say ‘female role model’ at all, it was usually more the case that a female student had reoccurring head-lice, matted hair, or wasn’t managing her menstrual hygiene. While we look for ‘male role models’, however excellent they might be, we’re continuing to feed into the myth that ‘Boys do THIS, and girls do THAT.’ We need human role models.

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