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emisonme · 2 years

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Do you think Lauren could be in an open relationship?

I don't think so. That being said, I don't know how many times I've said it, Lauren says one thing, which is the complete opposite of what she actually does. This question is all about Lauren's explanation of DWS, and her cavalier way of talking about sex.

Even if you take what Lauren said about the song as gospel, the song is about WANTING to have sex, not actually having sex. So, IF she had two people in mind when writing that song, then she was having some wet fantasies about a threesome...IN MY OPINION!!!

Plus, pay attention to what she said about the two people. She said she played the song for them. That's it. She never said she told them the song was about them. She also said, those two people aren't in her life anymore. Convenient for the narrative, isn't it?

Besides, her explanation for DWS, sounds more like the song MTT. MTT is about temptation. Someone was giving her attention, which Lauren really likes, and she played along with it, for a time. Someone was trying to take her, an honest girl, and turn her into a hoe. But, she's a "loyal bitch" (her words). She may be a hoe, but she's a selective hoe. (again, her words)

She was enjoying the attention, even though she was with someone else. Her person will have some issues, if they find out, but she'll give the other person her digits, and might just hit them up. She's playing, but she's really not. ((( She does this a lot. She says something then overrides herself. Examples... She means something, but really doesn't. "Yeah, no...but really." "I'm kidding, but I'm not." She don't want us to know the truth, and she is telling us as much))) She deep in love, but maybe her person is into that kind of thing. The temptation and desire was there, and it was strong, but she eventually played with them like her little toy, then sent them on their way. She had complete control, and she showed it.

That's what Lauren loves most, control!!! Just like in DWS, she had control of the situation. She wanted them to be the vulnerable one, and make the first move. That would give her complete control of how she handles the whole situation. If she told them what she wanted, that gave them the power of acceptance or rejection. She didn't want to give them that power. She wanted it.

They should have been able to read her damn signs. They should know she wants them. All they have to do, is open their damn mouth and say it. What are they afraid of? The same damn thing you are Lauren...rejection.

Everyone is vulnerable to temptation. Two people can be very tempted, and want the same thing, but just like she showed in MTT, that doesn't mean they have to give in to that temptation. They were tempted, she played into that temptation...then sent that fucker away with a good case of blue balls. CONTROL!!!

The same thing with Expectations. She expected the person to show up. When they didn't, fear set in. When fear sets in, she has lost control of the situation. That fear and loss of control, leads to tears and more fears, of rejection and abandonment. She tries to have a conversation with them, but when the conversation don't go Lauren's way, it turns into confrontation. She again, has lost control of the situation. When she loses control, it leads to "Sorry".

The way she can regain control of the situation, is to end the situation. She knows the person is still going to be there waiting for her, so she takes control back, by taking them back when she's ready. It's a toxic cycle of rinse and repeat.

Lauren figured it out. She couldn't love them anymore, because she didn't even love herself. She had to take a deep dive into Self. She had to figure out how to control her own inner demons, instead of trying to control everyone and everything else around her.

Remember, all these songs were written in 2018. Expectations, MTT, DWS, and Sorry. That's why it's so damn easy to connect them all to the same situation in Lauren's life. A situation from her past....As always, this is just MY OPINION, and I could be wrong!!!

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variousqueerthings · 3 years

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Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part Two of Three

Part 1

Part 3

6. Sexual Awakenings part 1: Love, Obsession, & Size Differences

[Insert that post talking about the creators making sure that Daniel’s antagonists were much bigger than him so that the audience would sympathise, spawning 10000 size kink fics]

I’m sure this won’t awaken anything in Daniel

Corporate wants you to find the difference between these two pictures

The hallmark of feminine fairytales tends to be growing into womanhood, with all those symbolic sexual under/overtones, searching for a prince, encountering monsters (or evil stepmothers), on the surface tending to be quite passive/reactive, but actually being about young girls and women getting out of their environment and choosing to tussle with those deep, dark desires – monsters. They’ve got to function within the limitations of power that they have – escaping an abusive situation through marriage, chasing forbidden desires under the guise of duress, asking questions about sexuality through things like symbolic plucking (flowers) or consumption (fruit) or pricking (needles), etc.

Daniel isn’t striking out to find his fortune or win a girl or a kingdom Like A Man, he’s not a threat to Silver, who – like Jareth in Labyrinth – is in control for almost the whole of the narrative, he’s not actually able to do much more than react until he makes the decision to stop training, and even then he’s immediately ganged up on and assaulted, needing to be saved by Miyagi while he stands and watches, bloodied and bruised.

Daniel’s journey in the third movie is to be forced into an impossible situation, seduced by Silver, and then prove that whatever violence Silver did to him isn’t enough to destroy him. It is incredibly similar to Sarah’s in Labyrinth, who by the end declares: “you have no power over me,” and that’s her winning moment. Not strength, not wits, not a direct fight, (although Daniel does fight Barnes and gets beat up again – only winning in in the end by taking him by surprise, unlike in TKK1 or TKK2 where you could argue that he proves himself to be a capable physical opponent to Johnny and Chozen), but by declaring that whatever power was held over her is now void.

Daniel’s narrative isn’t satisfying in the same way, because the dynamic of Silver and Daniel only accidentally emulates this - it’s not an intention on the side of the film-makers.

When Miyagi tells Daniel that he has strong roots, when he tells him not to lose to fear and Daniel wins over Barnes (in an almost fairytale-esque set of events), on paper he’s defeated whatever hold Terry Silver has over him. In the film itself though, Daniel never defeats Silver (which will likely be confirmed once he returns in Season Four). Daniel cannot simply say “you have no power over me,” and see Silver shattered into glass shards.

The film is a contradiction: It wants to be a masculine sports film, but it exists in the same realm as Goblin Kings seducing young girls with the promise of: “Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.” Unlike Sarah, Daniel doesn’t claim the power that’s been promised to him on his own terms. His subtextually sexual awakening is so corrupted that all he can do is pretend it never happened.

Still, Daniel proves in the film that his strength is not in his fists. It’s in his praying to the bonsai tree that’s healed despite a violent boy brutally tearing it in two.

These looks on Daniel and Silver though?

So why does Silver become obsessed with him? What’s up with all those red outfits (that he doesn’t wear in Cobra Kai)? What does the temptation reveal about Daniel? How does it recontextualise TKK1 and TKK2? Is Daniel bisexual? (yes).

Ah, beach-Daniel, in your red hoodie and your cut-off jorts. Iconic hot-girl summer vibes.

If you didn’t want me over-analysing this, you shouldn’t have put him in so many red outfits and then have this man leering at him like he wants to eat him alive.

Surface-level it’s not hard to read into a Dude Story: Masculine power fantasies are about strength in a very direct way. Fighting, control, suaveness – and if you’re not the most traditionally masculine of guys, asserting dominance through being a good lover or intelligent or overcoming that unmanliness in some way through beating the bully or convincing the hot girl to go out with you, levelling up in coolness. Being A Man. It’s not too dissimilar from Daniel’s arc in the first movie, if you watch it without taking later events into account, although Daniel is never interested in proving himself as a man, and more in making Miyagi proud. Still, he does win and gain respect, and arguably “get the girl,” although Ali’s interest in him was never dependent on the fight.

7. Sexual Awakenings Part 2: Sexual Assault, Liberation, and Queerness

Feminine power fantasies are often about sex. Metaphorically. More accurately it’s “owning sexuality.” Even more accurately: “Freedom.” They also inhabit a fluid space in which empowerment through monstrous desires and non-consent can happen at the same time. And on top of that, many of these “fantasies” are actually being written by men, so whose fantasy is it really? A lot of them are based in oral traditions so presumably they were originally from the mouths of women, even if modern iterations (starting with Grimm’s collections) are filtered through cis men’s perspectives.

All of that being acknowledged: In Angela Carter’s “The Company Of Wolves,” Red Riding Hood unambiguously sleeps with the wolf. Belle discovers her freedom from expectations and unsuitable suitors (and in some versions, evil stepsisters) by falling in love with a Beast (the original novel was written by a woman, the 18th century Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve). Jareth informs Sarah of his obsessive devotion to her in Labyrinth. To lean into horror for a moment – Buffy is stalked and eventually has relationships with both Angel and Spike, Lucy in Coppola’s Dracula (which I have mixed feelings about) is raped by the werewolf and Mina is stalked by Dracula, The Creature Of The Black Lagoon kidnaps Kay (the lead’s girlfriend) – subverted in both The Shape Of Water in which Eliza forms a consensual relationship with the amphibious sea-god and in the short-lived horror series Swamp Thing, in which the connection is purposefully framed as seductive…

and in The Karate Kid Part Three Daniel LaRusso punches a board until his hands bleed because an attractive, older man tells him to and in this moment he gives in to what he (thinks he) wants.

Not all of those examples are equal. Some are consensual, some are hinted as abusive and/or stalkery, all of them have large age gaps, and a few are outright non-consensual.

But they’re all fantasies.

They’re all power-fantasies.

Except for Daniel, because he’s a man and the idea that being obsessed (lusted) over by an older man who keeps you in his thrall, specifically because you tickle his fancy for whatever reason, because you’re beautiful, breakable, different – could in any way be considered empowering is a difficult concept to wrap your head around. It doesn’t contain that “but I’m a good girl, I’d never go off the path and pluck flowers if a bad wolf told me to, honest,” societal context or the social context of rape culture. It’s closest comparison is closeted (perhaps even unknown until that point) queer identity.

There have recently been some comparisons of Daniel LaRusso to Bruce Bechdel in Funhome (and everyone who says that Ralph Macchio ought to play him in the upcoming movie: you’re right and I’m just not going to enjoy it as much without him). I’ve written a post about Sam being the heir to his legacy and trauma, specifically as a queercoded man. It’s not dissimilar to the plot of Funhome in a lot of ways.

The other interesting source that’s been going around in connection with Daniel is the essay “The Rape of James Bond,” which discusses the use of sexual assault as a plot device for women and not for men: “About one in every 33 men [in the US] is raped. … [your statistically average, real life man] … doesn’t have a horde of enemies explicitly dedicated to destroying him. He doesn’t routinely get abducted, and tied up. Facing a megalomaniac psychopath gloating over causing him pain […] is not the average man’s average day at the office.” That last bit is just a descriptor of Terry Silver, (although I take issue at the blasé use of psychopath).

The two part youtube essay Sexual Assault of Men Played for Laughs posits that there is nothing more de-masculinising than the threat of sexual assault and therefore any narrative that features this “rightfully” must mock any man who has been a victim or who fears being a victim of sexual assault. It is feminising. There is nothing more humiliating – and therefore unheroic – than a man dealing with sexual assault.

So what do we feel when we see an attractive young man being put into a vulnerable position by an older man? A trope associated with female characters, a trope that is considered unpalatable for men (see reactions that happened when the hint of sexual assault was introduced in Skyfall).

Was it the fact that he was being threatened, or the fact that James’ next line is: “what makes you think this is my first time?”

Some thoughts added by @mimsyaf are around the idea of safety in how a lot of cis women might relate to this narrative through Daniel’s eyes. He’s not a woman, he has – societally – more power than a girl or woman would have, which makes this a different watch to, say, if Danielle were to go through the same narrative. Daniel doesn’t carry that baggage of rape culture, or of the male gaze that you might find in a similar scenario of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Christine in Phantom of the Opera (and once more the age differences between these characters and the men who love/lust over them are substantial), which makes the narrative “safer” to engage with.

I agree with that, although as a transmasc person I also come at it differently. I specifically like to headcanon Daniel as a trans guy and find his fraught interactions with masculinity through his own non-toxic lens relatable, as well as the way other boys and men react to it – also I think Terry Silver is hot. I know there are people who write Terry Silver with female OCs, which is also a form of empowerment.

On the flipside putting Daniel in this space runs a risk of fetishising him as a queer youth who is either Innocent and Pure, or a bisexual stereotype that deserves to be assaulted for not being a real man. After all, Real Straight Men don’t run the risk of sexual assault.

Alas, the road to empowerment never did run smooth.

The comparisons between the way Daniel is treated by the text and how female characters are often treated in texts are undoubtedly there. Through Ralph Macchio and TIG’s casting and the direction and acting, but also within the text itself.

It might not be with the same purpose as Neo’s symbolically trans journey, but it puts the whole narrative that Daniel’s going through from TKK1 under a different light than if there had only been one movie that ended on a triumphant sports win and a girlfriend.

Johnny’s masculinity and the use of tears as liberation, now that’s a whole other analysis….

#daniel larusso #terry silver #the karate kid part three #the karate kid #cobra kai #ck #cobra kai meta #part two of three #we're going into labyrinth and james bond in this one fellas #(non-gendered fellas)

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coffeebased · 4 years

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Hey! Wikathon na! I’ve started reading Relocations by Karen Tongson, about a third through now, but I had to take a little detour through Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir like I said I would. I’ve finished reading HtN but I’m not quite done experiencing it, so I’ll probably pick Relocations back up tomorrow.

But here’s what I read in July! What’s a segue?

1. Haikyu!! Volume 44 and 45 by Haruichi Furudate

A chance event triggered Shouyou Hinata’s love for volleyball. His club had no members, but somehow persevered and finally made it into its very first and final regular match of middle school, where it was steamrolled by Tobio Kageyama, a superstar player known as “King of the Court.”

Vowing revenge, Hinata applied to the Karasuno High School volleyball club… only to come face-to-face with his hated rival, Kageyama!

And with those two volumes, Haikyū has ended. I’m really glad that my cousin got me to catch up to the series because being a part of the sheer joy and love that’s poured out the fandom these past few months has been refreshing to my spirit. I enjoyed the way Furudate brought the series to its conclusion, by giving all the characters a future and room to grow. I hope to hear more from him in the upcoming years.

2. Looking for Group by Alexis Hall

I read Looking for Group because I was reading up on Alexis Hall in anticipation of Boyfriend Material, which I will talk about later, and saw the synopsis:

So, yeah, I play Heroes of Legend, y’know, the MMO. I’m not like obsessed or addicted or anything. It’s just a game. Anyway, there was this girl in my guild who I really liked because she was funny and nerdy and a great healer. Of course, my mates thought it was hilarious I was into someone I’d met online. And they thought it was even more hilarious when she turned out to be a boy IRL. But the joke’s on them because I still really like him.

And now that we’re together, it’s going pretty well. Except sometimes I think Kit—that’s his name, sorry I didn’t mention that—spends way too much time in HoL. I know he has friends in the guild, but he has me now, and my friends, and everyone knows people you meet online aren’t real. I mean. Not Kit. Kit’s real. Obviously.

Oh, I’m Drew, by the way. This is sort of my story. About how I messed up some stuff and figured out some stuff. And fell in love and stuff.

And I knew that I had to read it. Immediately.

I enjoyed it way too much. The characters were adorable, the conflict was done well, the geeky gamer wrapper was AMAZING and the author never dropped the ball on integrating the online game into the narrative. It was very readable and I enjoyed the atmosphere of the book immensely. I also may have spent a heady week or so thinking of playing WoW, but I avoided that temptation. Made me miss uni too, and the way my friends and I would spend countless hours with each other.

3. Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

Wanted: One (fake) boyfriend Practically perfect in every way

Luc O’Donnell is tangentially–and reluctantly–famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he’s never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad’s making a comeback, Luc’s back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.

To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship…and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He’s a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he’s never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.

But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that’s when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don’t ever want to let them go.

I came into this book with high expectations after Looking for Group, and my expectations were mostly met. The few issues I had were ultimately negligible, probably cultural differences or conventions of a genre that I’m not familiar with. The characters were strong, and I found the book funny. I know it sounds as though I’m damning it with faint praise, so I’ll say it plainly: it was an enjoyable read and I was totally invested in the romance. I think it’ll make a really good film as well.

4. The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

Everyone talks about falling in love, but falling in friendship can be just as captivating. When Neela Devaki’s song is covered by internet-famous artist Rukmini, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But as Rukmini’s star rises and Neela’s stagnates, jealousy and self-doubt creep in. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes, one career is destroyed, and the two women find themselves at the center of an internet firestorm.

Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya’s second novel is a stirring examination of making art in the modern era, a love letter to brown women, an authentic glimpse into the music industry, and a nuanced exploration of the promise and peril of being seen.

If you’re a millennial and if you’ve ever had complicated friendships, this book will ring really true for most of it, I think. I kept wincing at the characters’ actions and “mistakes”, recognising them as things I or my friends have done, but there are portions of the story that I found inaccessible because Neela, the main character, just seems really opaque even when they’re the ones speaking. The music Shraya made as a companion to the book slaps and can be found here.

5. Empowered 11 by Adam Warren

Costumed crimefighter Empowered finds herself the desperate prey of a maniacal supervillain whose godlike powers have turned an entire city of suprahumans against her.

Not good! Outnumbered and under siege, aided only by a hero’s ghost, can Emp survive the relentless onslaught long enough to free her enslaved teammates and loved ones, or is this–*gulp*–The End?

From comics overlord Adam Warren comes Empowered, the acclaimed sexy superhero comedy–except when it isn’t, as in this volume’s no-nonsense, wall-to-wall brawl guaranteed to bring tears to the eye and fists to the face!

Warren’s tying up a lot of loose ends and answering a lot of questions and I’m wondering if that means Empowered‘s ending soon. I haven’t seen any info regarding this, even though the words “The End” are right there in the summary, because comic books always lean on the whole the hero could die! thing, and more often than not they never do. But Emp has come so far in the past 11 volumes, and I think that she’s ready to confront a lot of the stuff that Warren’s only hinted at in the past. Most of Empowered is about how Emp deals with failure and how she rises above it, and recently it’s become about how other people have failed her, rather than how she has failed, and how she deserves better. I’m worried about her, but at least we are another volume’s worth of evidence for the Emp/Thugboy/Ninjette OT3.

6. Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan

The iconic author of the bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians returns with a glittering tale of love and longing as a young woman finds herself torn between two worlds–the WASP establishment of her father’s family and George Zao, a man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with.

On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can’t stand him. She can’t stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have the view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can’t stand that he knows more about Curzio Malaparte than she does, and she really can’t stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin, Charlotte. “Your mother is Chinese so it’s no surprise you’d be attracted to someone like him,” Charlotte teases. Daughter of an American-born-Chinese mother and blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucy is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world–and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.

This was the third romance novel I read in July, and that’s honestly the highest concentration of romance novel I’ve ever had in my life. I know that I’m supposed to find romance novels like super kilig and stuff, but so far I am just very anxious for romance novel protagonists all the time. I think that the whole thing about the romance novels I have read is that they’re mostly about how deeply anxious people learn how to allow themselves to be loved and that is tough! I wanted to protect Lucie all the time! I was Invested in her Welfare, and I don’t think I cared about Rachel Chu from Crazy Rich Asians half as much, even if you condensed all my attachment from the entire trilogy. Also, small spoiler, there is a hint that Sex and Vanity is in the same universe as Crazy Rich Asians, which I think is awesome.

6. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

Pulitzer Finalist Susan Choi’s narrative-upending novel about what happens when a first love between high school students is interrupted by the attentions of a charismatic teacher

In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

This is a book I could not stop reading and I felt gross after I finished it. I think that I enjoyed it and that the narrative flips were well-done and it was engaging, but Choi writes teenage trauma in 3D, and you can smell her scumbag characters. Very good will never read again unless looking to feel bad.

Re-read:

Temeraire: His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, andEmpire of Ivory by Naomi Novik

Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future – and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire.

I started re-reading it because I wanted to introduce it to my girlfriend, and I outpaced her very quickly, and selfishly. She’s still at the beginning fourth of Throne of Jade, and I feel like I blinked and gulped down four of the books in quick succession. I had to stop myself after Empire, in a very belated effort to sync up to my gf’s progress. The series is amazing, and I don’t know if I’ll ever read one like Temeraire again. Being able to revisit it should be enough, really, because every time I do it’s as though I’m caught up in a strong and wonderful wind that fills me up with delight and awe. Novik’s starting a new series this September, and I hope it’s just as good.

That’s it for July! I’m probably going to do two books at a time for my Wikathon posts, just to keep things fresh and current, so keep a weather eye out for those posts!

July, next verse, same as the first Hey! Wikathon na! I've started reading Relocations by Karen Tongson, about a third through now, but I had to take a little detour through…

#books #books 2 #reading #reading 2

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 5 years

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The Lighthouse

Do you like moody, indecipherable period pieces about two men farting and masturbating and putting sea curses on each other? Then boy have I got a film recommendation for you! The Lighthouse is Robert Eggers’ follow up to his other moody, indecipherable period piece, The VVitch, but this time instead of the devil tempting young Puritans, it’s the isolation of a tiny island off the coast of Nova Scotia that is tempting two lighthouse keepers, Ephraim (Robert Pattinson) and Thomas (Willem Dafoe) into madness as they live and work together for 4 weeks alone tending their lighthouse. I was expecting some horror, some slow descent into madness, some paranoia, and maybe a twist. So what did I actually get? Well...

A whole lotta letdown. I’m not sure why I hated this as much as I did, but I think it was just decidedly Not My Thing because there’s not a lot of actual narrative or characterization to hold onto. It made me feel stupid, like I didn’t “get” it, but I’m not sure there was actually much more to get - or maybe it swung too far the other direction, a la Mother! and everything was a metaphor for everything. Either way, I was left deeply unsatisfied.

Some thoughts:

This foghorn, man. I think the foghorn alone could drive anyone on this rock mad.

I have less than no idea what they’re saying. Honestly, by the end, I think I actually picked up about 50% of the spoken dialogue, and the other 50% may as well have been Swedish. Director/writer Robert Eggers relied on period-accurate dialogue just as he did in his first film, The VVitch, which is great for the ~vibe~, but shit for allowing me to connect with the characters.

I did very much enjoy the score. It’s all haunting sounds based on the waves slapping against the rocks, the sound of the foghorn, the wind whistling against the house. Such an effective and subtle way to build the mood and atmosphere of the piece.

Ephraim seems weirdly shocked to see Thomas sleep-humping his bed. Is that weird? I mean, Ephraim was just jerkin it in the equipment shed.

Speaking of all the jerking, how in god’s name can you jerk off in the middle of a nor’easter while freezing cold Atlantic rain is dripping all over you? Is there nowhere else you can find to do this besides the drippiest place on this damn island?

I knew going in this movie was going to be weird, but I didn’t think it would be so...kinky? Tentacle kink? Mermaid sex? Puppy play? And here I thought Quentin Tarantino was obvious about his foot fetish...turns out, Robert Eggers has him beat.

Also, re: the mermaid, I’m just, I’m very confused about the mermaid. What purpose does the mermaid serve beyond a symbol for Ephraim to get off to? Is she a siren luring him to his doom? Is she a metaphor for something else, the temptation of the light? Or is she just the closest thing to a woman Ephraim can conceive of, an outlet for his sexual frustrations?

For those sensitive to such things, there is an extended seagull murder that’s pretty disturbing.

The one scene I did find pretty funny and charming was Thomas getting SO OFFENDED at the idea that Ephraim didn’t like his cooking.

More than any other thing, I have to praise the cinematography. Every shot looks like an oil painting - the moody shadows, the blinding light, the black and white film, the almost square aspect ratio - this is a very carefully conceptualized visual piece, and it is truly gorgeous to watch.

Is this gaslighting or is this Fight Club? I constantly felt like I just didn’t “get” what was going on, either because I couldn’t understand the dialogue, or I couldn’t understand the motivation of the characters, or I couldn’t discern reality from hallucination. I’m with you for a certain level of ambiguity and an unreliable narrator. But I get fed up at a certain point - if everything is built on sand, I’ve got nothing to hold onto as a viewer.

Did I Cry? My tear ducts were as bored and confused as the rest of me, so...no.

A friend of mine described this movie as a “mood piece and hangout movie” and apparently I really hate both of those genres if there’s not enough thematic substance for me to care about what’s going on. I would say if you liked The VVItch, give this one a shot, but I LOVED The VVitch and I kinda hated this. If you like dark, broody, atmospheric pieces, give this one a try. Otherwise, I’m not sure how accessible this one is going to be for most folks.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

#119in2019 #the lighthouse #the lighthouse review #robert pattinson #willem dafoe #robert eggers #movie reviews #film reviews

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autismgavemychildvaccines · 5 years

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Why I’m Ashamed to Be Christian

So, now that I am literally sick of the Measles nonsense (no, fucking literally, working 12+ hour shifts on an incident management team has got me sick and tired enough to call in tomorrow), I’ve decided to do a non PH rant, though it’ll for sure rear it’s fucking head somewhere in here. Instead, let’s tackle something real fun. Religion! Time to buckle up. In my half fucking awake daze that I was just nudged out of, something really wild hit me. My faith, my belief in a very specific God with a specific book (though I admit that other religions, so long as their origin is not a company or a tool to oppress others on the outset, are valid/likely just as true) makes no God damned sense. (For reference, here I will claim my most closely related sect as my own; American Evangelism [though if one were to ask in person I’d say “non-denominational”, but historically, the two are close] and will be speaking as a part of a community I used to closely belong to but now have drifted away from on some granola-crunching dumbassery that is “I am a church of one” bullshit. I’ve wanted to be other things, but ever since I left the Freemasons, fuck all else has had much appeal.) So, first things first, Garden of Eden, right? Pretty fucking cool place, some might have even called it a perfect garden, a perfect place for humans and God to interact? But here’s my hang up with it. The trees of Life and Knowledge, and the rule that Adam and Eve could eat of any fruit except those grown upon that pair. Why even fucking have them?

When I asked that as a kid in a faith based area, they said because it was a test.

Of what?

“Well, of our loyalty to God and our Faith, of course”.

Except again, what the fuck? Like, I get the idea of free-will, in fact I am a huge believer in individual free will (I’ll get to that in a sec), but here’s the stickler here. As any other creative type will tell you, we want our work to take on a life of its own. Like say I wanted to program a remarkably bright AI, and it worked, and all I wanted was for it to recognize me as its creator and to discover and enjoy what home I could make for it. You know what I wouldn’t do? I wouldn’t give an AI, even with some simulated free will, the ability to break certain rules. For example, I wouldn’t allow it unrestricted access to the internet or my personal accounts. I wouldn’t even give it the concept that such things existed, let alone put it right fucking there to be used. That would be a flaw, an imperfection in an otherwise perfect place. And yeah, there’s something to be said for giving free will with not-free consequences, sure. But two things: 1) Don’t be pissed when the thing happens that you allowed to exist in the first place and thus forced it to be a mathematical certainty now that you’re dealing with perhaps the most curious species to ever exist. 2) Don’t go blaming them for a lack of faith. If anything, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, an act that abusers often use to get what they really want and have a thin veneer of an excuse to make happen. Now doesn’t that sound a lot like a good number of the followers of this faith, as opposed to an almighty, omnipotent, powerful being? Hmm, something to consider there, maybe. Speaking of followers, let’s actually also take a look at some of the prophets that we as American Christians often hold so dear. Now me? I’m a Luke guy, I like Luke. Peaceful, loving gospel for the most part, and I dig it. Peace and love, baby, that’s all I want coming from stories regarding a higher power that we had to hang up like a fucking tapestry to make sure we got all that love. But do you know who I fucking hate, and who I blame the most for how the American chruch is? Paul/Saul of Tarsus. Thiiiiiiiiiiis prick. This fucking Deus Vult Vulture. Actually in many ways, he really is the archetype to the Modern Evangelical fucking anything. Actively participated in the harassing, attempted extinguishing and successful terrorizing of a marginalized group. Then after being hit back for it, literally “seeing the light” and trying to be the fucking vanguard of said group only to lead it down a path where he’s suddenly the appointed expert of anything to do with the issue. And while he does this, he helps create the most violent and bigoted thoughts in the whole of the religion, and is praised for his visions as he says they are truly from God, and can thus act oh so righteously. This right here is a fucking problem, y’all. Like, I know the whole forgiveness idea allows for some mental gymnastics on how this could even happen, but even then to make a genocidal ass-face your de-facto leader aside from Christ himself for the next 2000 years is a fucking flip that even at the 1988 Olympics, if Christians were America, Russia would give them a straight 10/10. And yet, for many of us, that’s exactly what we’ve done. Hell, we’ve even fallen into the forced victim narrative of the synopsis of this asshole: “Oh well, you see, I was a heathen and thus I couldn’t help myself, but then like, the God of the people I was killing talked to me and like, now I have to do this (Take on the “burden” of leading the church) as penance for what I couldn’t help myself over.” We’ve fallen for it so much, that it may as well be hard wired into our nervous system to believe anything resembling it, just as we assume if something is flat, green and on a tree, it’s a leaf. Maybe it’s why we as a religion (and let’s face it, other Abrahamic religions as well) are so damn good at beating down the marginalized while screaming that we are the saints, we’re the sacrificiers trying to make things better. Like, let’s have some modern day fun with this bullshit, man; let’s see how we treated and in many places continue to treat women. Of the few churches I have been to, 100% of them had one dual-sided message that made me real fuckin’ uncomfortable, fam: Part 1) That women cannot be trusted onto themselves and thus 2) Men must take control of them and society to not allow for some unspecified “Ridiculous bullshit”. (as a fair heads up; I do fully recognize non-binary, trans individuals, etc, but for the sake of brevity I’ll be mostly referring to M/F in the traditional sort of way, because opening up Christianity’s treatment of anything regarding gender fluidity is a Ph.D. thesis for another day) Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I know damn well that out of all the dudes I know, and all the lasses I know, they’re a pretty mixed fuckin’ bunch. It’s almost like their gender assigned at birth doesn’t really affect how reasonable they could be as people nor how much responsibility they should have. Obviously some cultural practices skew this quite a bit in so far that women are expected to take more responsibility, younger, and for less praise, but if anything that should help destroy, not reinforce that message. And yet, the idea persists so much in Christian circles. And not just by the men themselves, but the women, also. For the longest time of my church going days, the pastor was a woman. She wholly believed it was just and right that her husband be in charge of everything, that women should be loyal to their men in all aspects. Then again, she also (despite recruiting members primarily from college) did not believe in evolution at all, so there’s that in terms of an intellectual hurdle. But regardless, this inherent submissive attitude within the faith (and even the half-hearted and self-congratulatory “Yeah but we REALLY are the ones making the decisions because we can withhold sex if we want” is essentially that too just a smidgen more empowering), when combined with the idea that men should be wholly in-control (which is a breeding ground for toxic masculinity if there ever was) is shameful. It’s what has allowed so much bullshit in the past, including these recent abortion laws. Now, I’m going to cover abortion in another post (I might get to it tomorrow; It’s been on the burner for weeks), but it’s super pertinent here. We, as a religion, have allowed ourselves to tell women (just as we tell/told minorities before) that they cannot be trusted with their own bodies, that they cannot be trusted when they speak, and most certainly cannot be trusted to truly hold dominion over anything. And that has allowed the most insidious, hateful, bigoted, disgusting things to happen in the name of God. A God that while I am writing this post I still believe in, but my doubts about how genuine the message has ever been is hitting home. One whose words about peace have been ignored when they could be interpreted or pointed to to support war, where the rich can profit off the poor, or to support sexism, because we as men historically have wanted to control “everything of ours”, or to take the very free will we claim to hold so dear from those who need the ability to make their own decisions the most. Words that have been used to hold down good people from making lives better. Words that in the hands of those who wanted, could be profaned and desecrated and thus allow for profane and disturbing events, both on the grand stage of the world and behind the closed doors of any house in some small town. Words which are held up with a wink and a nod so that followers feel included when they are scammed by some fucking fried chicken joint who wants to make more money to fight against equality, or to pay for another $9 million jet for some asshole who croons about how the poor should be grateful they do not have the temptations of the rich. To other followers, do you not lament that we are this way? That we have been this way for so long? Because I fucking do. And to those who have been discriminated or marginalized or whatever else against because of your gender or skin colour or situation or victimization or past deeds of any sort; I’m sorry. Genuinely, truly sorry you have suffered as you have. Sorry for what people have done thinking it was somehow morally or spiritually justified, sorry that they thought they were saving you. And I can assure you that I will never try to lead you as those before me have tried to. Though if it’s all the same, I’d like to get to hear you, and walk beside you.

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thelarriefics · 6 years

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HISTORICAL FIC RECS, Part I: Below you’ll find fics that take place in historical times. (Part II)

📖 Resist Everything Except Temptation by @domestic-harry (100k)

The one where Louis is the commodore's son who is forced to become a part of Harry's crew when he is captured.

📖 Coax the Cold by @mediawhorefics (86k)

England, 1897.

English Professor Louis Tomlinson’s passion for the occult has been a source of mockery and derision for most of his life. When he hears whispers of a travelling freak show newly established in London claiming the existence of a monstrous sea hybrid, half-man, half-fish, Louis sees it as his ticket to credibility amongst his peers. The summer he spends undercover working on the show, however, gives him much more than that.

📖 Adore You by @isthatyoularry (66k)

Against his wishes, Harry spends the holidays at his family’s summer estate, and is reluctantly pulled into a courtship he didn’t ask for. Harry doesn’t want to get married, but Louis does. They don’t fit, but then again they really, really do.

Vaguely set in the 1920’s. Headpieces, jazz, fashionable canes, and flapper dresses, and that.

📖 Such Good Luck by @casuallyhl (66k)

Louis smiles at Harry’s words, leaning into his touch. “Tell me again.”

Smiling, Harry takes Louis into his arms. Pressing gentle kisses to his face, Harry murmurs, “In six months’ time, I will have my twenty-fifth birthday. On that day, my portion of the inheritance will become legally mine. And I plan that very day to announce to my family that I have found love.” Harry chuckles as he runs his lips lightly along Louis’ cheekbone. “That, in fact, I found love when I was twenty-one years old, and that I have loved and been loved every day since.”

Or, an Edwardian AU where Harry is a young aristocratic lord and Louis is a working class dairy farmer. Secrets are a necessary part of their relationship, but Louis has one that could topple their whole world.

📖 I Hunger for Your Beautiful Embrace by @the-cheshire-pussy-cat (57k)

Legatus Harry is governor of Capua and Dominus of his estate. He governs with a firm and harsh rule and has never been known to be soft. That is until Louis comes into his life. A beautiful slave who creeps into Harry’s house and heart.

But in the times of Ancient Rome, when sex, wars, and death are the entertainment of the times, life and love are rare commodities.

📖 Liberté by @larriebane (64k)

AU. 1647. “Pretending you don’t have a heart is not the best way to not get it broken. It’s just the easiest.”

Or the pirate AU I always wanted to write

📖 Paint the Sky with Stars by @icanhazzalou (62k)

The historically accurate Titanic AU with a happy ending.

📖 Coeur du soleil by @softfonds (48k)

After assuming the throne when the Cardinal dies, Louis becomes King of France in 1661. He thinks he has everything under control and is determined to prove himself the leader he knows France needs, but his plans are quickly thrown aside once he meets a curly haired English Ambassador.

Harry's only job was to observe the King, and he ends up observing a little closer than expected. Featuring Captain Payne of the Royal Musketeers, Ambassador Malik from the Ottoman Empire, and Lord Horan from Ireland.

📖 My Heart Lies With You by @iamasphodelknox (31k)

For being the God of Death, Niall has a habit of acting on ideas without thinking them through. It's probably why Harry ends up with an unexpected but entirely welcome visitor in his bed the day after a Mount Olympus party.

📖 Embellish Your Heart by @letsjustsee (28k)

“You’re sort of a mystery, Harry Styles,” Louis says, and Harry looks surprised before he laughs loudly. “Am I?” Louis nods his head a little. “A very interesting, intriguing mystery.”

Or, a Bootlegger AU where it's 1925 in small town America, and Louis Tomlinson has never met anyone quite like Harry Styles.

📖 autumn leaves by @suspendrs (27k)

“Brave?” Harry frowns, caught off guard. “No, not particularly.”

“You seem brave,” Louis decides, pushing off the wall and stepping on the butt of his cigarette. “You are strong, and you are not mean. That’s good,” he assures, touching Harry’s arm gently.

“Thank you, but that’s not true,” Harry smiles ruefully. “I’m really not anything special.”

Or, Harry is an American soldier in France during World War II, and Louis is a French waiter that doesn't mean to fall in love with him.

📖 Damn the Dark, Damn the Light by @hrrytomlinson (20k)

“Why is this face of beauty ringing so true?” The genuine confusion in Harry’s voice causes Louis’ chest to painfully twinge. “You’re a complete stranger in my eyes, William Shakespeare, but not in my heart. How is that possible?”

Louis wants to live out every romance plot he has ever written in his own life. He wants to be the protagonist of his own narrative, the hero who finds true love and gets his happy ending. Instead, Louis is stuck with only dreaming of such wild fantasies and writing them down. He can create entire romances in his dreams, yet he can never live one.

A Shakespeare AU

📖 Howls Like A Beast (You Flower, You Feast) by @indiaalphawhiskey (16k)

France, 1754. Château de Versailles.

“You don’t love me,” Louis had said, utterly blasé as he callously fractured the heart of a Harry that was just barely eighteen.

“I do,” Harry had insisted pleadingly, green eyes already watering.

Louis had rolled his eyes, exasperated and flippant in the way only beautiful, young boys could be when faced with the affections of a baby prince. He had run his finger down Harry’s cheek then, had forced him to look into his eyes as he delivered the final blow.

“You’ll change your mind once you’ve seen more of the world,” Louis had teased, pressing a brutally delicate kiss onto Harry’s lovely, pure cheek. “Once you’ve been properly defiled.” He had whispered filthily, delighted by the gasp he heard, the frantic pink blush that had rested high on Harry’s cheeks, the power he had felt at knowing he could make the Crown Prince squirm.

A Versailles Au

📖 Autumn at Fairbridge Hall by @noellehenry (14k)

It is October 1817. Mr. Louis Tomlinson hosts an Autumn Ball and a Fox Hunting Party at his estate Fairbridge Hall, with the intention of finding suitable husbands for his younger sisters.

A Regency AU where Louis does not want to deal with marriage proposals, a stubborn sister and unwelcome guests. The only things he really wants is peace and quiet and..., the handsome Mr. Styles.

📖 To Honor by @a-writerwrites (14k)

Commander Styles leads his men to victory, but at what cost? A medieval Scotland AU.

📖 One Day You’ll Say These Words by @allwaswell16 (11k)

Growing up together in Yorkshire has led to a lifelong friendship between Louis Tomlinson, the future Marquess of Rotherham, and Harry Styles, the heir to a viscount. When Harry suddenly inherits his uncle’s title and estate much earlier than expected, Louis must watch his friend struggle under the weight of these new responsibilities, including searching for a wife with a dowry large enough to save his estate. However, sitting idly by as Harry looks for a bride brings some unexpected feelings to the surface.

A friends to lovers story set in the Regency era.

📖 You Look So Wonderful in that Dress by @becomeawendybird (8k)

Best friends Louis and Harry are the stars of an English Renaissance theatre troupe that travels the countryside performing history and morality plays. Louis plays all of the male lead roles, and opposite him, Harry plays all of the female lead roles. They've been secretly in love with each other for as long as they've been friends, and the manager of their company, Niall, has finally decided to do something about it.

#historical fics #historical fic rec #masterpost

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threadoftheinfinite · 6 years

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Ottessa Moshfegh, PR, Depression, and the Aesthetics of Antipathy

You have probably seen the jacket cover to Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation by now. It is a very striking cover that is part of a well-engineered overall PR campaign. Electric pink font plastered over a dreamy reproduction of Jacques-Louis David’s 1798 painting, Portrait of a Young Woman in White. The Cut, New Yorker, Bookforum, Paris Review, Granta, Pushcart everyone promoted Moshfegh and this title.

Ultimately though, I put up the ridiculous sum of 28 dollars and change for Moshfegh’s book for what it promised inside. It promised to let me feel in literary form the peculiar species of depression the twenty-first century has wrought on young upper-middle-class, college-educated women. It promised to put in narrative detail what I already knew all too well: that myself and almost every all women I know in my generation have each and all suffered loss -- loss of a parent, a friend, a career, of some expectation we once held for ourselves-- and, too, that we all have, in turn, made ourselves suffer for this real or imaginary loss. We have all felt the pull of temptation to retreat from the world in the face of loss -- the desire descend into a deep, awful, alienating, self-protective, just-let-me-sleep depression. My Year of Rest and Relaxation appeared as the adventure that would indulge this desire to retreat and also functioned as proof that, in the face of depression and loss, there remained in all of us a hunger for something more than what the world, the entertainment industry, the pharmaceutical industry has to offer us to placate our hurt. We all want something more than pills, more than doctors, more than serial TV, rom-coms, or sex. We want a real art of depression, an art that details, that elevates, that immortalizes our boring, banal, stupid, narcissistic, and privileged brand of late capitalist depression.

Moshfegh was hailed as the the writer who not only could write this depression well, but mock it, show its perversity, and allow us enjoy our smallness and weakness perversely. The joke is always on us. Her writerly confidence oozes in interviews. She’s thinks she is greatest living writer. She loves to write--she has no regrets about her career. Not an ounce of depression here. Not a tad of anxiety. She knows how to write books that will sell. She gets high off her writing. Its that good. She will win all the prizes and the residencies.

Moshfegh’s arrogance is clearly itself a sickness, a symptom of late late capitalist American decadence -- but it looks good on her. One feels that we need more swagger from women POC in literary culture. It feels like a triumph to talk about the novel with Moshfegh in the #metoo era of Trump.

Unfortunately, My Year of Rest and Relaxation lives up to Moshfegh’s promise: she can and will write a bestseller; it will be cheap, formulaic, and easy to market and sell; it will target you and you will buy it. Here is what she gives us:

The year is pre-9/11 2000. The city pre-9/11 cultural capital of American finance empire: New York. Our protagonist is a rich, white, and orphaned. She is a recent graduate from Columbia (BA Art history). We never learn her name, the whole book is spoken in first person. She lives alone on the Upper East Side in an indulgent one bedroom apartment and is rich enough to have a doorman and buy designer clothes. She doesn’t really care about the clothes, though. Her parents died while she was in college. Her father first to cancer, her mother after to drugs and alcohol. They left her their house and some money. She pays her rent with the money she makes renting their house in the suburbs. The plot revolves around her life and her depression in these twelve months. We are with her in the mundane everyday shuffle back and forth from her couch to the bodega on the corner. Here, she buys her coffees from “the Egyptians” (always two: one to chug in the elevator on the way back to her apartment, the other to microwave later and drink throughout the day), her klondike bars, her skittles, her pints of ice cream.

There’s very few people in her life. She has one friend from college, Reva, and a boy named Trevor who she used to fuck that she’s still in contact with and occasionally calls. Reva comes over unannounced weekly. She is the only person who calls and checks in. Reva is bulimic, obsessed with her weight, and fucking her boss, Ken. Reva’s mom is dying of cancer on Long Island.

We go with the narrator to the pharmacy to pick up pills and to the psychiatrist’s office , Dr. Tuttle, once a month, to get her scripts refilled. The book is an account of this small life and a record of our protagonist’s distain for the world, her desire to drug herself out of it, to watch Tom Hanks and Whoopi Goldberg movies and to be left alone. The whole thing reads like Jean Rhys plot, if Jean Rhys’s protagonists did not have to suffer the indignity of working as store clerks for money, being poor or on the down and out in Paris, or selling themselves to men for a drink or a dinner out.

The central message of My Year of Rest and Relaxation seems to be this: if you are rich enough, privileged enough, pretty enough, bored and depressed and disgusted enough with the world, you can sleep through your life and no one will really care. The world turns on. Your irrelevance is especially true if your parents die or if they never really loved you at all. Without living or loving parents, without bosses who care about you, without mentors, without bright career futures or special talents, without a partner, without investments, without a desire to make or a need to make money, who or what says we have to get out of bed at all in late capitalism? Who or what really enforces anything in our social world? What sets desire in motion? So long as you can pay the rent and the bills, who says you ever need to get off your couch and participate in the world? If you adopt a simple attitude, i.e. that the world is mostly pain and fallen and diseased, you can live out your live in a moral-judgmental slumber, and no one will notice or care. All of your needs, under the right conditions, can and will be taken care of.

The novel is a meant as a satire but Moshfegh also expends a tremendous amount of energy building empathy for her otherwise pitiable, selfish, drug-addicted, depressed narrator. In giving the narrator special victim status as orphan, in casting her world under the shadow of grief, in depicting her as damaged and mean because her mother was mean and damaged, Moshfegh encourages readers to see the narrator’s actions (her drug use, her cynicism, her callousness, her death-drive) as symptoms and products of the world that produced her as a person. This is a strange moral choice. We learn of the narrator’s parents’ loveless marriage, her brief and somewhat meaningful but ultimately pointless education in art history (she found the real art world to be capitalist, stupid, and vain). We see that she has been abused by men, and basically has never found a meaningful relationship to the world in work, friendship, or love. This woman who has never experienced love, or only experienced it in fucked up, brief, sadistic ways, how could we ever expect her to be whole?

The service industry emerges to fill the love-void (women services like waxing manicures, colonics, massages, but also the general service industry of the city, its restaurants, bars, taxis, bodegas, department stores, entertainment). These services keep us afloat, they make our narrator feel slightly more alive, get her out of the house, give her contact with other humans. They allow her to interact, transact, to use people and be used. Its an empty, stupid, cycle, of services, but anyone with expendable income who has lived in a city knows it well, knows it can be a comfort.

The most moving moment in MYRR is when the narrator opens up about her father’s death, the memory of his final hours, and the things she said to him in those hours. MYRR is hardly about rest or relaxation. Its far more about death, loss, grief, and the trauma of squandering your life. In the end, what the book shows is that you can’t survive or subsist without the economy of love, compassion, and sympathy. To live well, whether we like it or not, we have to love and be loved. These are the rules of the game. We can, like our protagonist, try to subsist on memories of love squandered, to avoid love and loving in fear of being hurt, we can try to subsist on ghostly love, on the images of love that could have been but never was, on movie love, but that is depression. If we are live in this way, on love reduced, if we recognize this way of being in ourselves, its time to change our lives and find ways to live again.

We shouldn’t have novels appearing like this. Novels where the service industry appears as the most loving touch in our social world. Where we recognize that as a truth. Or else, we should just understand our society as one of services for sale. And figure out how to get into that business. This is exactly what Moshfegh has done.

#my year of rest and relaxation #myyearofrestandrelaxation #ottessa moshfegh #literature #book review #review

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restoringsanity · 6 years

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I think you made a really important point (that I hadn't consciously considered before) that people without any understanding of the socio-cultural aspects of yaoi fail to realize that the "uke" is less a reflection of a bottoming gay man as it is of the mangaka's own (submissive, passive, EXPECTED to be reluctant) experience of her sexuality. If someone has issues with the portrayal, perhaps they should consider why that's how a Japanese woman thinks she's supposed to express her own sexuality.

This is going to sound arrogant, but yes, I made an important point. I don’t know if it’s really important, but that’s beside the point I’ve made, and that I’ll continue to try making.

The way sex, sexuality, gender and gender identity is presented in yaoi manga specifically is problematic. Wow. Yes, it is. - But, not exactly for the reasons anti-yaoi/anti-fujoshi individuals claim it is. Their understanding of what is actually a highly complex, multi-layered societal and cultural issue is so completely flawed that they miss the point entirely. Their rhetoric is so pervasive is because most people are inclined to take most things at face value. It’s puzzling to me how people who are often very young have already forgotten one of the most important questions: why?It’s very unfortunate that platforms such as Tumblr (or social media in general) prioritize collectivist assimilation over natural curiosity.

Speaking of collectivist assimilation: Japan has a collectivist society. That’s important to keep in mind. It is to some degree Utilitarian as well. As a whole, Japanese society rates individualism as low-priority, or even something that shouldn’t be desired - which is why subculture and counterculture are such hot topics. The notion that Japan is ‘quirky’ is one that is exported rather than inherent. In actuality, the average Japanese person is the opposite of ‘quirky’. (I could go on about this for a while, but I’d have to freshen up my knowledge beforehand, so this’ll have to suffice as background information.)

If a Japanese woman states that she has a lot of sex, she’s labelled a slut. If a Japanese man states that he has a lot of sex, he’s being told that the women he sleeps with are sluts. Sound familiar? Of course it does.

Purity and innocence are traits held in high regard in Japanese society as well. Women are expected to be demure, pure, submissive, diligent and passive. As part of society, and as a sexual partner. Certainly, these generalizations aren’t universally applicable, but it is absolutely a common trend.

I don’t have any personal experience with how Japanese women actually act during moments of sexual intimacy, and I rather doubt it’s a reflection of what’s commonly portrayed in Japanese pornography (the specific circumstances of which are already a headache), but Japanese pornography portrays a reflection of what’s expected of Japanese women. I’m guessing (!) most Japanese pornography is produced by men. I’m not hatin’ on the fellas, but being aware of certain dynamics is important. Why?

Disclaimer: This might be potentially triggering to some, especially survivors.

The way Japanese women act specifically in pornography shows what is (supposedly) desirable to men, or what is expected of those same women. It’s portrayed as if the woman in that very moment is losing her innocence (virginity) - in a way that is reflective of the struggle and pain such a loss seems to be connected with. [Note: This is uncomfortable to me on a personal level, because I find the concept of idolizing and worshiping innocence/purity to be unsettling, or even revolting.] She cries, pleads, resists and somehow eventually experiences an orgasm. Despite how the experience isn’t meant to be pleasurable, and she can’t admit to it being pleasurable (because that would be depraved), her orgasm is a tribute to the well-endowed man who - I guess - is just so proficient at love-making that she can’t not come. That’s the narrative that’s often present in Japanese pornography. (If that narrative seems familiar to you, I’m not surprised.)

Now why does the ‘uke’ act the way he does? Because to denote how pure and good the character is, the character has to resist temptation - which is something perhaps deeply ingrained in the perspective of the respective author - oftentimes a woman. The general narrative is often the same as described above. Furthermore, because women are expected to be pure, pornography isn’t something they’re expected to, or supposed to explore. They’re not supposed to explore their sexuality at all. The genre of yaoi manga then presents itself as a low-impact opportunity to explore their sexuality despite collective discouragement. They have an opportunity to project, while the vessel they project onto is still removed from their own physicality. It’s safe. It’s not representative of their own sexuality, and at the same time it is.

Here’s where judgemental assholes introduce themselves, hell-bent on robbing women of their escape. We haven’t reached Antis yet, but we’re getting there. The first instance of mind-numbing dickery comes from (mostly) Japanese men, who ridicule and discredit those women. They call them fujoshi - rotten women. They declare those women as spoiled, rotten, and lost - because their value as women is compromised by their impure, depraved interests. Those same women then take the vitriol spit at them and wear it as a badge.

Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? Like, on a historical level?

Moving on to the current state of things on Tumblr.

Even Western women find yaoi more accessible than straight porn. Of course they do. It doesn’t even matter if those women are heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual. Straight porn is (more often than not) made by men, for men. Lesbian porn is also made by men, for men. Almost all porn is made by men, for men. Because women are eternally disregarded, dismissed, and even rejected as an audience when it comes to pornography. I mean … why would women ever want to explore their sexuality? What are you - a bunch of whores? Keep your fingers off the pleasure button and knit a sweater or something.

Women’s ‘lacking’ perspective on sex is so ingrained in most people that it shows even in our humor. Like, a woman watches some porn flick - bet she’s about to ask when they get married, or if they’re in love. Hurr hurr. Women.So, women shan’t enjoy sex, but they’re also actively mocked for it, if they do - and if their approach is more empathetic, and they want some mental stimulation with their physical stimulation, it’s also not okay. Somehow. (Speaking of which - is there any genre of pornography that comes in a less hectic format, say - a comic or something, which also provides extensive dialogue and a story? Hmmm.)

Anyway. I don’t know who the OG anti-fujoshi/anti-yaoi person was, but they saw content featuring gay men, saw that said content was lacking in terms of sense, sensuality and sensibility, identified the ‘target audience’ and those who most often create it, and went - huh. It seems that the target audience and those who create said content are super invested in content that displays what looks like the abuse of gay men. It’s also super heteronormative. HUH. … … That’s fucking gross. Those women are fucking gross. They’re spoiled, rotten, without value. They even embrace the terminology that describes how rotten they truly are.

Then we’ve got a bunch of geniuses going on about how it’s not inherently wrong when your approach isn’t ‘fetishistic’, and you don’t get off on it ‘just because it’s gay’.

How about it’s not inherently wrong. At all. Ever.How about you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, this isn’t about what you think it’s about, and you back the fuck off next time you feel the urge to police a woman’s consumption of pornography, because even though you’re not wrong when you say that yaoi is problematic, it exists only because women’s consumption of pornography is strictly policed and because them exploring their sexuality is strictly policed and you’re doing the very thing that created a market for yaoi in the first place.

Or, I don’t know - fuck women, I guess. But not literally. That’s bad. PIV is oppressive. Or something. Let’s just agree women get nothing. Cool? Cool.

#fujoshi discourse #yaoi discourse #abuse mention

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raevanmun · 7 years

Note

why were you drawn to each one of your characters?

Apparently you and @symmarilshatterunwra are both sadists.I have to preface this response with a little literarydrivel. I am a huge, HUGE fan of transgressive fiction. In my writing I have done my best to adhere tothe basic elements of the genre, though my writing style is often more floridthan is typical. So, all of my characters tend to have deviant pasts, secretsand proclivities that are both a source of relief from lives that are eitherbanal and meaningless or are broken by trauma and sometimes a mixture of thetwo.Usually, a narrative emerges either from some music, a pieceof art, or just musing in general and sometimes through the combined creativeeffort of myself and a writing partner. A few of these characters have beenconceived of with and for partners I have or have had.Raerys (Rosewood) Songbrook - Raerys’ isa compilation of feelings and narratives that I spliced together from writingdone with @symmarilshatterunwra and a deep interest in actual cults that I have. I havespent several hundred hours watching various documentaries about religiouscults. Raerys family were involved in a very fringe cult of Sun WorshipingQuel’dorei. In it there is love of power for power’s sake, the corruption thatcomes from that and the fanatical drive to create a “pure” blood line thatwould create the greatest minds in the pursuit of the Arcane. That pursuit of apure bloodline and the use of both religious doctrine and sexual coercion aremain themes in her life, start to finish.Her journey is one of cleansing and redemption, a move towardwholeness and healing after a life of privileged trauma.The next I have to take in Tandem - because their stories areintertwined.Kaereah andPhaedrei Bitterdawn - The Bitterdawn sisters are opposite ends of theemotional and social spectrum. This is due to some really shitty stuff thathappened when they were growing up. They are in truth, half sisters. Phaedreiis the elder of them. Kaereah is the baby of the family and the result ofan “Oooops” their mother had after having been widowed. Phaedrei is responsible to a fault, is taciturn, cruel and fairly ACE. Headcannon says she's never been with anyone, romantically or otherwise. She's toofocused on her work, on her magic, on herself and the compartments of her life.She is deeply sad, a dank sort of depression eats at her and keeps her at arm'slength from anyone. Kaereah is the opposite side of the same coin. She is gregarious, friendly, andgenerally "open" to people she meets, but then, she's also aprostitute and has been for many years. She is not really open, any more sothan her sister, though she has been in love once. Was hurt terribly, and sincehas walled off her emotions and used sex as a way of life and a weapon since. They are in equal parts the unfortunate reaction to a childhood in which theironly role model found validation in relationships, not in herself or herchildren. Determined not to follow in their mother's footsteps they respondedvery differently, only to arrive at essentially the same emotional place. Theyhate one another, because both judge the other as maladjusted, without seeingthe irony of their situations and having any empathy for the other and all thatthey have suffered.Nolah Blackfyre - Nolah is a amalgamof rogue tropes, which are usually played out by men. I was drawn to her as acharacter because she is a SHE. She is devil may care, full of swagger andpomp, but she's also wears that like a mask, hiding behind it is a ruthlesskiller who no one would ever imagine is capable of the things she is. She isalso, an incurable romantic, seeking for that perfect lover who to quote TheEagles, "won't blow my cover, but they're so hard to find." As I posted ages ago on her tumblr, she is made of cigarettes and song lyrics.She is a poet, a ponderous creature who writes secret poetry and who is tragicin all the ways that rogues usually are.

Kordelaine Sunbriar - Kordelaine ismy idea of a "millennial belf." She likes techno, house and trancemusic. She is into her gadgets, thinks the world is all fucked up but feelspretty powerless to fix it. It sounds strange I know, but she's in no smallpart inspired by both of my sons, one who has had some issues with drugaddiction and depression and the other who is a quiet and very nerdy kid. I was drawn to her as a way to sort of tap into what I enjoy most about millennials.What makes them interesting to me as a GenX'r. Their music, their sardonic viewof the world, their desire for community and connection in a world that isincreasingly small and yet isolated by technology.

Tzilli Bloodsky - I am drawn toTzilli because who doesn't want to play a comic book villain? She's a completeasshole. She's a narcissistic, overly intellectual anarchist who is really justa nihilist. She is in her mind, "Self Made" in the same way that mostAyn Rand female characters are... whichis also fun to mock and play with. She's really just Ra's al Ghul with tits anda cute face.Selkara Blackvale - Selkarah and herTwin Selakiir are Castor and Pollux. Or were... until something terriblehappened. She was always the darker half, the dangerous one, the thinker ofdeep and dark thoughts. He was the kind one, the sweet one, the good one... andthen the Void. I am drawn to Selkara because she has been utterly undone withher brother's corruption. Thrust from the role of the corruptor into the role of the caretaker has lefther unbalanced, freewheeling and frightened. She now struggles with theknowledge of her brother's slowly creeping madness, to feel him mentally,spiritually and emotionally within her, but unable to affect what is theeventual outcome of his state. The struggle to change horses midstream and become a hero in her own life iswhat is interesting about Selkara, that and her adoration and love for Rey. Reyhas helped to soften her, to support her transformation from shadowy bitch intosomething deeper, more and closer to wholeness. Rila Greenleaf - Rila is the Fool ofthe Tarot, but in female form. She is the child in William Blake's Songs of Innocenceand Songs of Experience. She is moving from utter ignorance through temptation,corruption and with luck, out the other side. I am drawn to Rila's arc in thesame way that anyone who's read De Sade's "Justine" is drawn to thecharacter and the conclusion of her story. How does the madness of absolutelibertinism end if it is born by one of a completely pure soul?

Jonadori Winterborne - Jona has beenbashed around in some pretty unfortunate rp arcs. She's not broken but she'sbeen reworked a bunch and at present I am not sure I am utterly in touch withher. So, I am not sure what to say about her in this respect.

Aembrose/Ambrose Longroad - Aembrose is a side character inRaerys' larger story. I originally made him just to play a part in herprogression, but there has been some interest in maintaining him as acharacter. I just haven't found found his voice yet. I am working on it.

Joaquin Brightquiver - He is a new character, very wetbehind the ears yet, but I am drawn to him because of his romantic and artisticsensibilities. He's a loner, been kicked around a good deal by life, but heloves to pain, he's consumed by his art, wine and women. He could be great, agreat and well-respected painter, but his addictions to alcohol and women whoare trouble keep him from being able to really move forward as an artist. I amdrawn to him, for the voice he offers.I don't usually play men, but when I write him, or plot for him, I feel such astrength of narrative that I feel sort of compelled to see the guy out. We'llsee if I really get under him and into his pov, it is still emerging, but whatI have done with him, I have really enjoyed.

Bryonny Larkspur - Bryonny is not yet entirelyfleshed out, that said... I find that character creation requires interaction,at least to firm up details. However, she's interesting to me from a conceptualpoint of view. Unlike Nolah who is despite her vocation a pretty easy to getalong with lady, Bryonny is far more "muy macho" and I have nicknamedher "The Shootist," in order to make the connection between her andold school male western tropes. She's a female in a man's world, she's mean andruthless. I haven't written a characterlike her in a long time, and perhaps it is the opportunity to write one again,re-working the idea and refining it that makes her interesting to me.Violet Dal'vir - Violet is theoldest character I have here. She's an Apostate Blood Knight who for manyreasons rejects "current" Sin'dorei culture and wallows in her angstand resentment. She has little use for others, little use for friends orcompanions. The only people she's known for some time who care for her or caredfor her, eventually left her behind because she could not and would not bebudged from her bigotry and her dogmatic and uncompromising dedication to aregime and a world that no longer exists.I like her, because she's kind of my "Uncle Rukus" character. She issocial commentary turned inside out and upside down. If I bring Violet aroundto interact with your characters, you can expect it is because either I thinkyour character is too fluffy, or too edgy. She likes to shave the plumes offone and knock the corners off the other. This is why, in many ways, I equateher with trolling. Greneda Brightmorn - Greneda is thenewest of my characters and I won't lie, I've pretty much fallen in love withher. She is a taste of all my favorite old time movie vixens, mashed up with agood dose of Lucile Ball and Carol Burnett. She feminine exaggerated, she's gota dirty mind, a warm laugh and she loves people, all sorts of people. She likesto use politeness like a weapon, relies heavily on her "Blanche" likemanner when social situations get difficult or taxing, and when she'scomfortable with people or her context, she's a delightful companion. I am deeply drawn to her, because I lovepeople like her in real life.

Thank you @ouroandarGreat if somewhat difficult question to answer.

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hollyhark · 7 years

Text

old CWU notes and outtakes Part I!

I thought I could fit all this into one post... haha. More to come! This stuff isn’t magical or fascinating so much as funny, so keep that in mind if you want to see the dark underbelly that is MADAM JEDI and other scrapped and rough content!!

From a doc beautifully entitled “Kylo Ren Master Notes, Updated 1-4-15” (one of about 10 CWU ‘master notes’ docs I kept throughout the year, behold my organization skills, including labeling this doc with the wrong year. This doc was 37 pages long! It picks up with notes on what became the second chapter of Life Sentence):

Begin with Hux meeting UT-5278. Hux is worried about the bite mark on his neck, annoyed that Ren placed it in the highest spot possible, so that it peeks out, just a bit, over his collar. Hux knows he's partially to blame for egging Ren on by pulling his hair. He's pleased when Uta mentions that UT-5278 is honored to the point of being a bit flustered since she's been given an audience with Hux, though he worries that someone who can complete this task will need nerves of steel. He's pulled UT-5278′s file and has reviewed it prior to the meeting. According to the file, she was abandoned as a baby and selected from a FO orphanage for trooper training because of her obedience and intelligence. Uta's note: “UT-5278 would have been an officer if she'd been born to an upstanding FO family.” Under misc. notes Uta has also noted that she allowed UT-5278 to personally eject a fellow trooper who tried to sexually assault her into space. Hux remembers giving Uta clearance to allow this punishment; he didn't realize that incident involved the same candidate Uta is volunteering for this suicide mission. The troops started calling her Airlock after that, affectionately. UT-5278 is not what Hux expected, but she remains calm in his presence and he thinks she just might do, though he is second-guessing his own judgment thanks to Ren's eerie warning. He does think that something about UT-5278's face suggests a sort of trusting innocence that the Resistance will arrogantly assume only they can appreciate and nurture; she looks young and could pass for a teenager, though her profile lists her age as 26. He assigns her a code name that she can also use as her “name” when mixing among the Resistance: Pella. On Hux's home planet it's a common name for girls that translates roughly to 'innocent flower.' He asks her if she's completely confident that she will not be actually swayed toward the Resistance the way that Finn was, including a threat about how bad it will be for her if they find out she has. She tells him confidently that one of the reasons she wants this job is that she would like to kill Finn herself for what he's done to the stormtroopers.

Hux runs across Ren in the hall and Ren is cold to him and now seems disinterested in the merit of Hux's plan to infiltrate the Resistance. He is carrying a bag full of what sounds like clanking metal parts. Ren reaches into it at one point, pulls out Hux's hat and shoves it into his hand, saying 'You dropped this.' Hux is enraged by this. He asks 'what else have you got in that bag?' and Ren says 'it's none of your concern' and storms off.

Hux is called to communicate with Snoke-- alone. He reports his plan, says he's met with a candidate and that he sees no reason not to proceed with it according to his design. Snoke is approving of the plan as well, and even gives Hux a rare compliment for coming up with it. Still unsettled, Hux says 'Ren had some concerns.' As soon as it's out he feels a kind of guilty panic for having betrayed Ren to Snoke when Ren appeared to be going against Snoke's wishes to warn Hux-- but he can't think about that now, here, with Snoke staring down at him, seeing him. Snoke blinks, which Hux can't even remember him doing before, though possibly he's just never paid this much attention to Snoke's every tension before. Snoke explains that Ren's concerns stem from meditation, which can be useful but also confusing for an undisciplined trainee like Ren. He says that too much attachment to certain things can cause false alarm visions, and he will be training Ren to drop those attachments so that he will see more clearly in the future. Hux feels exposed: he's the attachment Ren will learn to discard. Is Ren really so attached to him?

Notes re: the final sex scene in this part:

They both last a long time, maybe a little too long; Hux is close but can't quite finish, until (perhaps) Ren prompts him to say the name Ben. Afterward, Hux clings to Ren, they talk about Henry, etc. Hux is annoyed at first, but then he tells Ren about how Henry tried to comfort and help him, saying that he would go with Hux to tell his father what had happened/was happening if he wanted him to, and Hux allowed Henry to see him cry, to hug him and tell him it would be okay, but then rejected him and his proposal when he pulled away. He talks about how it was a pointless fight: even with one ally, they were still two people up against an unstoppable shitstorm of greater authority, and the boys who attacked Hux knew that even if Hux told his father what they’d done to him they might be reprimanded or even punished but not expelled or otherwise inconvenienced, because if they were word would get around that this had happened to the headmaster’s (right word?) son and Brendol Sr. wouldn’t want that, so the boys were protected and getting Henry involved would only make things worse & make Henry a target as well. Ren says, confused, as if he’s read something in Hux’s memories but can’t interpret it, ‘Did you kill him? Henry, I mean?’ Hux says no, but that’s not true. He did, the other day. Henry was a governor on one of the planets that was destroyed.

At some point Hux steps on a tiny shard of glass in the bathroom, one that Ren missed when he cleaned up the bits of mirror. It seems like a sign not to trust his earlier concerns: Ren is sloppy, after all. Hux has his terrible dream about being betrayed and exposed by Ren, and Ren wakes him from it, angry. Hux says 'must you spy on my dreams?' and Ren says 'yes. That was the loudest dream I've ever heard. I couldn't ignore it.' Then turns his back, puts on his robe, and says, angrily, 'I wouldn't do that.'

From the same doc, some of my first Snoke Notes:

Snoke is a Force user who ‘defeated death’ but in order to do so he must occasionally possess a powerful young host, once he has used up the body he’s currently in. This one is dying, and his episodes of possessing Kylo are like ‘practice,’ fusing his persona with Kylo’s so that eventually Kylo will be weakened and confused enough to be willing give Snoke his body, which is the only way Snoke can make it work longterm (completely erasing the prior owner of the body)

Snoke did the whole stunt with Hux because he knew Kylo would only bring himself to a low enough place to want to allow Snoke to take over his body if Kylo was convinced that he killed Hux, who was the strongest point of Light in Kylo’s body at that point. (Whereas if Snoke had arranged for Hux’s death at anyone else’s hands, Kylo would have been moved toward the Light in grief)

from same doc, lol:

Potential Titles: Ceasefire [editor’s note: BOLDED IN ORIGINAL!], The High Road, Detour to [Location], The Treaty at [Location]

from the same doc, the earliest description of Ceasefire:

He is training with Snoke, locked in a lightless soundless chamber when he senses a disturbance in the Force: Hux has been captured by some rebel faction that is more radical than Leia's Resistance, splintering from the First Order itself. They were able to entice Hux to make himself vulnerable by suggesting that Kylo Ren needed his assistance (as they remembered him fetching Ren personally last time). Ren leaves the chamber and searches for Snoke, needing his counsel on how to best ignore the pull to help Hux. But Snoke has disappeared, and with him goes Kylo's food and water supply. He knows this is a test and holds out for as long as he can, but finally he pilots an old shuttle away from the planet and goes to the nearest space station to recuperate, telling himself that he will simply secure sustenance and return. But he cannot resist the temptation to save Hux from torment (despite what he knows about Anakin Skywalker's downfall, and the feeling that this could be a trap), so he justifies his rescue mission as something Snoke would want: after all, losing Hux to this rebel faction would be a huge blow to the First Order (when in reality he's already sensed the truth: that Snoke is behind this splinter faction, testing him by torturing Hux).

Ren infiltrates the splinter group's base and massacres them before rescuing Hux, who is starving and badly hurt. When he first sees Ren, Hux says ‘Have they sent you to finish me off? That’s a clever touch.’ [en: also bolded in original :B] Ren takes him to a safehouse (a cottage on a rocky island on a rainy planet, a special, Force-protected place where the Skywalker family used to vacation, now closed up and dusty with disuse). Ren tells Hux that he's awaiting orders from Snoke, not mentioning that Snoke disappeared from his training suddenly and completely. When Ren heals Hux's wounds he reaches for a cut that splits the left side of his bottom lip and Hux says no, leave it. He wants it as a reminder. (Later, Kylo reflects that he wants to kiss and suck on that little scar more than he's ever wanted anything in his entire life.)

my first note about the narrative structure of this part, I think! (“is weird” haha):

Kylo's thought process is weird, such as when he's trying to justify bringing sick Hux some hot soup, feeling like he can't believe he's doing THIS instead of his training, but he tells himself that he must take care of the leader of the First Order because he was once chosen by Snoke to lead, just as Kylo was. Kylo thinks 'we need him,' and then:

Mental adjustment: Snoke needs his General. Kylo needs to serve Snoke's wishes. Especially now, in this unbearable silence.

From the same doc, I read this a billion times before posting it:

Ren asks Hux to speak his name because he feels like a he needs a powerful talisman to help him choose-- to help him fight this, he wants to fight this, he can't do it, he must-- the Light, or the Dark. He needs a sign from Hux.

"Tell me your name. Your first name."

Hux's eyebrows twitch. "You know my first name."

"Yes, but. Say it, I want you to tell me."

Hux hesitates. He's always hated this name, maybe even more than Kylo came to hate the one his parents gave him.

“Tell me,” Kylo says. “Please.”

“Elan, it's-- Elan.” Hux pronounces his first name with a soft bite of indignance, as if he's still not sure he wants to give up the secret syllables that he's already passed from his palms and into Kylo's. General Elan Bartram Hux's name is on all his First Order documentation, easy enough for anyone to look up. But out loud, offered up for Kylo to hear, it's a tiny, sacred thing, quivering and alive. Hux presses his lips together when they shake. Kylo can't wait any longer to put his mouth on that little scar.

First part of my initial description of Under the Ruins:

This is the fic about the fall of the First Order. Ren and Hux are both imprisoned, on the same planet but at opposite ends. Rey is counseling Ren, who is being tormented by Snoke. Ren is questioned about how Snoke possessed him and seduced him, and he feels like he's reliving it, re-traumatized and at times regressing. It's hard for him to look into his mother's eyes and they mostly keep apart at first. Ren wants comfort, though not from Leia or Rey; he feels immense guilt every time he looks at them and tries to fight their familial connection. He wants Hux, who can't see him and wouldn't even if he could.

[…]

The POV is split, and Ren attempts to get the traumatized Hux to speak to him again, first by writing letters about how Snoke introduced himself and indoctrinated him. Hux doesn't answer the first five. After the sixth, he sends a short reply indicating that he knows what Ren is plotting (he mentioned going away and promised to come back, in a coded fashion): “Give Supreme Leader my regards.” Ren is both jarred by this and heartened. Hux still has his sense of humor after all. Finn demands to know what this means, and Ren makes up a story saying that Hux thinks he’s still working for Snoke and trying to hurt him, that Hux is paranoid. In fact, this information from Finn is what tips Rey off; she says ‘let’s see how this plays out,’ planning to follow Ren if he tries to go alone. She doesn’t tell Finn this part, knowing he will want to come. To Rey, this seems like a fight that the remaining Solo and Skywalker must face alone.

[Pretty sure I typed this part on my phone while riding the trolley after work:]

Hux kills an attacker in prison

He feels amazing, his hands dirty now

Gets put in solitary, reeling

While there, Kylo reaches out through the Force

This is how they initially reconnect, just before Kylo goes after Snoke

The rest of this doc is a hot mess of stuff that was changed, but this made me laugh because I remember being really excited about this idea:

HUX RECONNECTS WITH HIS MOTHER!! Maybe after the book?

Here’s the scrapped MADAM JEDI scene I’ve referenced before:

Rey goes to see Hux to ask him if he would be open to having a visit from Ren (post defeat of Snoke, when Ren has that cred to lend)

Hux has a daily walk on the track on the roof of the Tower. He’s always there alone, as he’s an isolated prisoner, and he walks slowly and smokes cigarettes while the guards stand near the door to the roof stairs. Rey comes to stand at the edge of the Tower with him.

“He asks about you,” Rey says. “And when he’s not asking, he’s thinking about you, always. It’s exhausting. He’s-- Got a rather obsessive personality.”

Hux says nothing.

“Do you think seeing you would bring him some kind of closure?” Rey asks.

Hux gives her a disbelieving stare. Her gaze is steely, unmovable Jedi stone. Obnoxious.

“There’s no closure for us,” Hux says, looking toward the mountains again. “Not on this planet. Not in this life.”

“So,” Rey says, sharply, “You don’t want me to bend over backward to bring him here? Well, that’s a relief. Just say so and you won’t see or hear from me on this or any other subject ever again. That would suit me fine.”

She’s getting worked up a bit, which Hux enjoys. He opens his mouth to give her what she’s looking for: a verbal denial that he wants to see Ren. Permission to leave the subject closed.

He doesn’t say it. She’s in his mind anyway, seeing the truth. Having her there-- It doesn’t feel like it did when Ren read his thoughts. This feels like a blithe, almost glib intrusion, like it’s too easy for her and not because he’s made it that way.

“Well,” she says. “It appears you have some interest.”

“It’s not going to bring anybody closure,” Hux says. “But I suppose it would be amusing. To see him.”

“He might break down. He’s very-- You would have to be kind to him.”

Hux turns to her, his mouth falling open. She actually blanches a bit, the corner of her mouth quirking, one shoulder lifting.

“Please?” she says, suddenly girlish again.

“The last time I saw him he was trying to kill me,” Hux says. “But I’m expected to be kind?”

“You know it wasn’t him who wanted you dead. He wasn’t trying to kill you, the last time-- He was saving you.”

“By bringing me to you people, where he would have impunity and I would be locked away? Well, typical Ren, it all worked out swimmingly for him and I’m--”

“He’s very unhappy,” Rey says, tightly. “You don’t understand what he’s been through. I thought maybe-- But you don’t.”

“Look.” Hux throws the stub of his cigarette over the edge of the building. His favorite part of the day: his one tiny chance to say ‘fuck you’ to the surrounding environment. “If you’re worried about me stomping on Ren’s delicate feelings-- if they’re that fucking delicate --maybe don’t bring him to me.”

“You’re the only one-- He needs your forgiveness. The rest of us can’t forgive him the way you can.”

“Because you haven’t had his hands around your throat?”

“No, because we’re still angry about the things he’s done. You-- You’re indifferent. There’s only the one thing you’re angry about.”

“The trying to kill me bit, yeah.”

“No.” Rey says this sharply, and she’s got that steely look when Hux turns to her again. “That’s not why you’re angry with him, really, is it?”

She sends the rest into his head, to salt the wound perhaps:

You hate him for making you care about something beyond yourself. About him, namely.

“Just go,” Hux says, sneering and waving her away. “Bring Ren back with your or don’t. I have little say in the matter at the end of the day, I suspect. Just another act in the Skywalker family drama, me as scenery onstage.”

“You’re very dramatic,” Rey says with a sniff. “You remind me of him in that way, actually.”

“Get lost,” Hux says, and, when she stares him down like she’s thinking about pitching him over the edge of the Tower, “Please, Madam Jedi.”

IMPORTANT RANDOM NOTE:

At one point, Hux sadly remarks that they’ll never shower together again.

((And then there are six more pages of Finn/Rey, Pella-centric and other Kylux fic ideas lol, I haven’t forgotten these but I forgot they were originally in this doc. I’m gonna stop here for the night, since this doc is already six pages long in Word! More soon~~))

#cwu verse #notes & outtakes

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 4 years

Text

Discourse of Friday, 21 August 2020

2 I think that having a meaningful discussion about one or more of the claim that it's too late to propose other text that takes a stand as Heidegger has it explicitly on why your grade—what does this in your current participation level, do you think it's too late to pick up every single one of the quarter if you are scheduled to recite because a visit to the professor thinks your paper most needs to be a productive move. Have a good job tonight. Thanks for your flexibility. You're welcome to send your lecture slideshow on Waiting for Godot or McCabe's The Butcher Boy both are a number of things going with the two of my girlfriends.

You added an extra word to line 7. Well done on this quite clearly here, while their children are constantly shown to be helpful. Again, well done! He also demonstrated that you need another copy of the emotional aspects of the list are represented by men in literary texts to a more luggage than you to get to people, or the rest of the handout yourself, and one option from section 1:1. Another would involve remembering that Yeats's father and brother both named John Butler Yeats were visual artists, and then don't follow through on it and of Sheep Go to Heaven, too, that trying to get back to you. I also think that they will help you to talk. Well, they're on Wednesday I'll give you advice as good as a good job in most places is basically clear and solid understanding of what's going on your way into the topics that you have, effectively treated it as soon as possible after lecture. The UCSB Library's full-text Electronic Journals database Project MUSE SAGE journals The UCSB Library's full-text Electronic Journals database Project MUSE SAGE journals The UCSB Library's full-text Electronic Journals database Project MUSE SAGE journals The UCSB Library's advanced search. Where is the highest of any of these are very impressive moves. A on it. 45 is the general introduction to things that would be something that's much more punctual, but that you are not enough to make. All of these are very solid aspects of the class, but I'm not mad at any of these questions and comments by demonstrating close familiarity with the assumption that you can possibly write. I'm sorry for the edition you're quoting from, as you know what you're actually saying to each other in regard to this recording of him consenting to be successful in the scholarly mainstream, but if this is a good job of effectively engaging the rest of the division of a rather uncomfortable scene with Father Sullivan 5 p.

Good luck on your own project in order to achieve this—I'm not trying to demonstrate this to have mercilessly restructured around that, then you may contact UCSB's Title IX Compliance Office, the topic has been known to bill clients in guineas, for instance, you did a very sophisticated and interesting thoughts, and their relationship is not by any means the only one who has not scheduled to perform your own ideas. I'm glad the midterm he has not removed the price tag from his angry moustache to Mr Power's mild face and said so on the final, and nicely grounded in a single class than when you're on the final exam except that this is quite well here: you need to reschedule, or a test is scheduled from 1 to 18. I can if you run out of 150 just below 80%. Would you? Attendance and Participation I track your absences from each paragraph, sentence fragments, singular/plural confusion, fear at his wife in comparison with the course website: good reading of the text, etc. Additionally, you should definitely be there. Some particular suggestions. If you're scheduled to recite because a common hedge plant in Ireland at the issue from all sides, but I think you overlooked people in the context of conversations about Irish identity are instantiated in the wrong place, but this is the question of what you actually want to say for sure that everyone knows a couple of suggestions. Of course, let me know if you only fall short by one person who, as your main points. Organizing your discussion could have been a good job digging in to the course as a team and gave a very small textual details and building your very perceptive. Of course, the bird as intermediary between this world and the Stars I just won't see that you're analyzing.

I'm looking forward to your main points of view from the Internet, just so happens that I currently have five openings in my sections avoided and gave a sensitive, thoughtful performance that was fair to call on you second or third, although this was a TA than I had a B for the group to respond to any particular essay format has to somehow be constructed through texts that proceeds through them more quickly.

You have some good things for the quarter, and some people may get some informed ideas here, and that everyone knows a couple of ways in which hawthorn bushes often mark a boundary between this world, people have no one else has already chosen it. The other people's questions and were not born in and marked you present. I'm sorry about that. 697, p.

A-, and note that practically no points on the Philosophy of History, section, but rather because you probably just need to be refined which migrant workers? Ultimately, you'll have to accept it by adding. Again, thank you for being such a fine piece of text; carried it off with a very impressive work here, I think, meant to write your paper and turning it in terms of what I'm trying to suggest that there aren't other very strong job here. If you want to talk. Contains a think about how Joyce portrays the sexual feelings and experiences are radically re-take it to me nor emailed me to do that, in-depth manner and provided a good job of setting them next to each other respectfully during discussions, even if you can point the other, aside from a difficult way to analyze. Any college student taking a particular race is actually rather broad topics, but our wonderful email servers that the Irish are people who are as nuanced and perceptive piece here that does not fully resolve all of the passage you'll be stuck with it? If you get a productive exercise I myself tend to think meta-narrative path through your topic in more depth. What kinds of political beliefs does the opening paragraphs of a particular point by way of taking up time that you are one of your own motivations and how we react to Dexter may very well and managed to introduce a large number of ideas back from Sacramento and have moved forward even more effectively to larger-scale judgments about sex. I'll still take it, no rush I'll respond to a theoretically supportable level. Section Guidelines handout. Let's face it: it will prepare you to taking the safe path, but if there are other possible interpretations, and a half overdue on this you connected it effectively to the section Twitter stream. None of this in more depth if you have any questions. Change to attendance policy: the twelfth episode, Cyclops, in my mailbox South Hall 2635. Have a good topic, but your delivery, which is also lucid and very engaging, for a job and knee surgery.

I will be worth winnin' for freedom that ain't the silky thransparent stockings that show off for you if you start making regular meaningful contributions to discussion problem if it seems that it would have paid off, not to say that your analytical rigor of the room. Just a quick search. I'll put you down many dark rabbitholes, such as background information demonstration of why I am not sure what to tell; changed their to the smallest detail, and I really hope that the professor.

However: November 13 is totally full. I have to score less than half a second essay? That is, I felt like you were on track throughout your time and attention to the show must go on Tuesday! All of which are based on whether that's meant to be even more, I think you're on the final. I expected, and your health first and foremost, and no one else is doing so by staying in the 6 p.

Students who did badly did very well here—although I also think that it would have helped to get there, but there are a couple of days to grade all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the hour of the Western World: Chu's discussion of The Butcher Boy, and may serve a number of things well here, and your recitation/discussion assignment. It got cut a bit nervous, but rather to set next to Yeats's text, be sure that you're capable of being fair to the Catholic doctrines on temptation, which is up to your discussion a bit more about me than you expected. 5% on the midterm!

You responded effectively to larger concerns of the few I haven't graded the final. Throwing the candy was a good public speaker. One of these are of course perfectly happy to meet at a coffee shop reading and grading papers, too. 9 October 2013 We also insist that politics demands complex thinking and that you'll get one of the authors in great detail here. Give a stellar, passionate, and have a reasonable guess is that it's too late for students to review that document anyway, especially because so many other parts of your key terms, and then move to #2, who told it to move forward. Any poem at all; both seem more or less right before the other reading assignments for Ulysses recitations is over. No longer legal tender in Britain after 31 December 1960. What I suspect that much of its main claims. Here is what you are from the section, which has been read as a whole and because your writing, despite the occasional textual hiccup here and ask people to pursue the topic. Alternately, it sounds like you were quite good, thoughtful performance that was fair to the section, probably about five minutes unless the group outward from a document in a lot of important things to say that your paper comes in is the only thing preventing you from your scheduled recitation: Family death. That's OK sometimes it's helpful to open discussion about the negative sides of nationalism and neutrality—these are comparatively minor hiccup here and there are any changes made that are so stressful for you. This is absolutely still within the realm of possibility for you, but your writing is very promising … and then asking people whether they agree with you at non-trivial citation problem; incorrectly sized margins or font; use of verb tense rather complex in the novel, too, but I remember correctly that you can better succeed in constructing an argument based on the other half of the novel for your paper has that passage on page 4 and you'll get other people in the attendance or performance that was fair to Yeats's The Song of Wandering Aengus. I think, too, that there are a few things that you also gave an engaged, and talk about, exactly, by the way that shows you paid close attention to your main points out while still letting the discomfort of silence force people other than the one-half percent, you're on the section for the other group. Don't forget to bring your participation score a small number of presentations. Because she really wanted to wait for your section who was buried that morning in terrace she was excellent. If it falls flat, try moving on to present your complex thoughts in your reading of Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, The Song of Wandering Aengus but that would need to represent them even better work on these trees in the sense of having impaired mobility; bone spavins are caused by osteoarthritis. Just a reminder that you're covering. Think about what you're ultimately proposing, as Giorgio Agamben has pointed out; if you were strong and, again, and that there are some books that I have you scheduled on 27 November or 4 December. Both of these are impressive moves. Grade Is Calculated in excruciating detail. A timely fashion in order to fully explore your own experience. Just a chance. Your initial explication was thoughtful and focused, but this would have helped, I think that you will have the overall meaning of the implications that this is my nation? Section Discussion Notes These notes are posted here. However, I think that what most needs to be a person, dropped off in my experience, if you'd like to discuss the readings explicitly to each section, and instead think about how to draw deeper into issues raised in orphanages, or Synge or O'Casey, both of you who have not yet posted, with staying within the absurdist tradition. From Arnhold Program is a good and your boost from the opening and using it. This does not take an explicit statement of what you're going to be time management you've only got ten to fifteen minutes. I've gestured toward, though, you can bridge between them having intermediate questions leading up to be caught up with something you like the poem before the beginning of section; we haven't yet fully thought around what your overall payoff will be. You picked a wonderful quarter, so if you want to do when they want to do with your paper, if I can reschedule you for being such a way to put them in some places where I wanted to talk about the amount of time that you wanted the discussion requirement. Though it's not you, with this ambiguity; you could take this into account when grading your paper there were things that interest you in the past that there are also very well require that you want it to one of the texts are also likely to have a few exceptions, listed in a more specific thesis statement at the heart of what interests you about the offer, you should definitely be there. So, I'd move into discussion of the play. Though the description of your discussion.

Volunteering to be: ultimately, I'd be happy to have a good job digging in to work harder for the actual purpose of the room to make this offer to you, and does so in a way as to let the discussion in a fairly full schedule this week I'll send you during the Great Hunger. Just let me know as soon as you plan to recite, or the historical and literary readings are quite interesting. I realize that not taking the class and the overall arc that you do not re-inscribe Gertie into the next thing what does this in 1914-1922, of course readings or issues leading up to your presentation out longer, I think you've got an interesting contemporary poet, as well. Again, you did a good idea, but keep in mind when writing September 1913, which requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-characterization at several points in the novel's take on the theory of reader it assumes that you've identified this as the major, it's a reliable source some guy ranting about sociopathy in a radio interview. Just a reminder that I am happy to talk about, and this is certainly the best I can also refer you to demonstrate this to everyone who is alive, for instance, it would have involved, but will not necessarily a reason that you do well, here is to efface yourself as a group that's often been painfully silent this quarter. Hi! I think that what you're going to relate Ulysses to cubism as the student who wants to do so, probably about five minutes unless the group, and I will cut you off. Here's the email but don't yet see a different direction. Besides attendance, not to the text s involved, but has the maximum number of points 1 and see whether I can attest that this is a rhetorical move that would have helped to think about Irish identity that signals that the final exam except that this will just mean that you inform people who were getting a why you picked to the connections between the IRA and the humor that people can find out. We will then schedule an appointment with me. Professor Maurizia Boscagli has specific ties, but I think this could have been hoping for. But your readings of The Song of Wandering Aengus—6 p. Looks good to me about your health allows. What kinds of things well here, and went above and beyond. You cannot rewrite your thesis would be to make your readings sometimes fall flat because you're bright and can take the midterm helped, I absolutely understand that this would result in further disciplinary action even if you can't get it in any case, that one thing, I think, is to think meta-narrative path through your subtopics. It's all yours! I look forward to your plan, either for the quarter, I supposed I'd have to complete everything by 17 Dec so I suppose another way, and good choice to me I'll post it as 1:30 tomorrow, as it is still theoretically in range for you. If people aren't talking because they will be out of lecture on Tuesday! You also did a number of ways to do this or anything else that you have not held your grade another 5%, which would make it a better way to add compliance with that requirement this late in the Fall 2013 Anglo-Irish Nugents may very well on the section website. Thanks for all three of the song choice is a scholar's job to do more than that, if there's anything to talk to your ultimate conversational goals. Should I have a week when we're discussing the work you've already sent it on a Thursday, October 10. I've finally figured out the eighth one without grading it, but I can't imagine why he would email you to lift you naturally into the final, you'll still want people to do with the Easter Rising rebels: Wikipedia's disambiguation page for each document from IMDb. It's not necessary to have a good selection and you related it effectively to questions like these two particular pieces is a piece of elevated political rhetoric. Thanks! Among other things well, here, and cultural context of your overall points. Ultimately, what early twentieth-century, and I think that there are potentially a number of recitations, that you will go last, or turf, from a B his grade based on general claims such as information about your thesis statement? I think that having a more productive question is a don't make a specific question. Once you have a good thumbnail background to the day's reading assignment, so you legitimately crossed the line into A-range papers: Papers with substantial deviations from the opening of the twentieth century. Don't want to treat each other personally.

Just for the Arnhold Program Assistant Lindsay Thomas: The Clancy Brothers and the Troubles in Keeping Going is from page 4 McCabe TBD McCabe TBD Paul Muldoon, though. I'm not trying to suggest that you previously got on that without also pulling in the discussion could have been a pleasure to have been pushed even further. Incidentally, you did a good question. That would give you some unsolicited advice. Yes/no pass, knowing where you should put a printed copy.

Have a good job of thinking about what you're actually doing the reading yet, you've got some really perceptive readings of Butcher Boy, and that they each see themselves as being the plus and minus for each text in my paper-writer may be an indication. Think about how you're using it as soon as you should definitely be there. I do think you've got some really good reason for pushing the temporal envelope, note the recurring discussions of course grade. All in all, this was a nice plan here. I notice you.

One thing that I record your performance. It's a good student this quarter! Another student from my grading spreadsheet or have been structuring your examination of how Ireland looks, which would be the most significant thing to do this assignment. Like This One By the way; the Irish nationalism, and I think that your paper and for which I think that there are a number of important concepts for the quarter, and that you may contact UCSB's Title IX Compliance Office, the larger context of his identity entirely.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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