#queer-of-color critique

[ethicopoliticolit]

The task that awaits all of us, then, is to speak desire plainly, to pay attention to what we think when we fuck. It is the particular task of white men to give up the comforts of naivete, of banal gestures to racial inclusion. The work before us is precisely to put our own bodies on the line. We must refuse to allow the production of a queer theory so reified that it does nothing to challenge the way we interact, the way we think, and the way we fuck. We must insist on a queer theory that takes the queer body and what we do with it as a primary focus, lest we allow for the articulation of a queer subjectivity that never recognizes the differences we create and carry in our bodies, including not only race but gender, health, and age, to name only the most obvious categories. We must not only think as we fuck but also pay close attention to all the implications, good and bad, of those sometimes startling thoughts.

Robert Reid-Pharr, "Dinge," Black Gay Man, NYU, 2001

#queer-of-color critique #queer theory #queer desire #queer studies #political theory #political economy

[literarycatchall]

“Art is about empathy. If you’re not able to understand what another person feels, you’re depriving yourself of a better knowledge of your own feelings frankly.”

— Armond White in conversation with Aisha Harris on Alice Walker’s The Color Purple for Pop Culture Happy Hour (2023)

#empathy #queer critiques #the color purple #Alice Walker

[mossythefloridamoss]

“Feel It” -by me

I wanted to start posting more of my art on Tumblr so here ya go, this piece was made for AP Drawing, we had to come up with a question that we would continuously answer with the art we make throughout the school year. I chose the question “How being queer affects every part of one’s life” because of the attack on queer people in America and more specifically the Don’t Say Gay bill in Florida, it still makes me angry thinking about it because people simply don’t know how much there is to being queer outside of sex, and so I wanted to focus my art on showing many different aspects of queer existence.

This was my first piece and the second I knew what I was going to do I had the idea for it, it’s meant to act as an homage to John Boskovich who made a piece called “Electric Fan (Feel it Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item From The Stephan Earabino Estate” in 1997. The context behind it being that Stephan Earabino was his lover who died of aids during the aids epidemic, his family continued to clear his entire apartment of his belongings and left only an electric fan. Now there’s a fuck ton more that goes into it but I’m gonna try and keep it a bit shorter and move on. Originally with my version I wanted to elicit the same emotion as he did with his piece in the attempt to show the loss of queer people throughout history and the pain many of us have to carry from either mourning friends, family, or role models that made the world a better place before their death. But the way I went about it at first I think was very disrespectful to the people I involved in my piece since the way I was presenting them made their lives seem more like an object to be used for my purposes, and when realizing that I decided to steer more towards showing the importance of their lives to other people and who they were as a person because in the end that’s why their deaths hurt so much, they were just as important as a human life that influenced their world through ways they can’t always see because of the sheer impact any action can have. And through this change I think I lost the feeling of anger that I had when making it but I think that sort of gave it more emotional depth and a sense of emotional satisfaction in that it unveils the pain behind anger. But this piece means a lot to me for the change that I went through making it being able to honor queer activists who’ve passed on. Of course I could understand if it still seems like I’m using real people I don’t have personal relations with for personal gain, if it still comes off that way please let me know.

There’s probably WAY more I could say but I think artists are suppose to let the audience interpret the piece how they want so I’ll leave it to interpretation, if you’ve got any questions tho or critiques I would be open to it.

#artwork #art #realism #gay art #activism #gay pride #colored pencil #contemporary art #avante garde #photography #my art #ap art #aids epidemic #queer #queer community #queer art #homage #social commentary #art critique #hiv aids

[maddy-ferguson]

i think it's actually a good thing that babylon was only watched by ten people (i count for seven because that's how many times i've seen it) because there's endless discourse to be had and it would've been very annoying

#brad pitt being one of the leads obviously it's actually one of the reasons why i didn't plan on going to see it at first that and the fact #that it lasts three hours and also i wasn't interested. happened upon it anyway you know how the story goes i mean. i still paid for my #ticket but i only ended up going because my classes for that day were cancelled because of the strike that was going on then. yeah #three out of the four queer characters end up dead so that's bury your gays but two of the characters are only implied queer so i guess #that would make it better except it wouldn't because yk. not explicit. not enough lady fay zhu and sidney focus which true actually i think #just five more minutes of fay especially would've been great. there's a deleted scene where nellie finds out that manny separated them but #i kinda get why they deleted it. what else. oh yeah nellie manic pixie dream girl😭 also the fact that she dies and manny survives probably #counts as misogyny. but the white characters dying and the characters of color surviving makes it all okay would be the conclusion #there's other things it's a long movie #making up discourse yes but really these are just critiques if you think about it. some of them just happen to be dumb #and like i say: brf slt

[nicosraf]

Wait what did Freydis Moon do? :( I've read their books and really liked them, but I don't follow them anywhere online, so that last ask you got worried me

Freydis Moon has been exposed to be Taylor Barton, a white person from the state of Oregon, someone who had a history of faking their race, being racist, and general abusive behavior. You can read more here about this Taylor person here, and you can find an incredibly long thread here.

Freydis was a colleague of mine, and they took me under their wing when I entered the indie book scene. They presented themselves as a Latine, mystic, queer trans author — who was older than me, I should add — so I deeply admired them and confided in them. I don't think ABM would have ever gotten much attention if I hadn't received their guidance.

There had been some whispers that Freydis was really Taylor, but I'd seen Frey's seemingly darker-skinned hands and heard their real name, which was supposedly Daniela.

Two things I should say before the big reveal: Freydis briefly hired a publicist named Cordi, who was also an agent with their own agency, named The Lynne Agency. Cordi, very randomly, decided to leave the industry and left their clients, and Freydis, hanging. Someone else to mention is Saint Harlow, an author of gay, cannibal erotica. On twitter, Saint was known for peddling a lot of drama — sometimes, he was on the good side of things and sometimes the bad, but he tended to be a massive bully. Freydis allegedly comforted some of Saint's victims.

And the reveal:

Freydis is the race faker Taylor Barton. The evidence is substantial, but most notably, some of the files they shared with other authors, including me, had metadata with the names of Taylor Barton's other identities. I was able to check the files myself to confirm.

They were also Saint Harlow. Meaning Freydis was bullying people secretly on one account and comforting them on another. And the bullying was a lot more disgusting than you might think, but for the sake of the victim, I won't share details.

They were also the publicist/agent Cordi. Why did they pretend to be an agent at all? I'm not sure but they wasted a lot of authors' times, that's for sure. Were they just looking to plagiarize off manuscripts sent to them? Who knows. (A friend of mine who sent their manuscript to them fears so).

There were a lot of interactions between Taylor and I that are much much weirder in retrospect. They critiqued the industry use of #ownvoices, which I agreed about, but blew the issue out of proportion, like thinking #ownvoices gay-trans author book lists shouldn't exist because of potential outing, mlm books by mlm authors lists shouldn't exist because of potential outing, and that lists of books by people of color about people of color also shouldn't exist because... potential outing? Taylor was, to me, oddly sympathetic toward certain authors accused of racism and shot down my concerns of a certain book with what I felt to be pro-colonizer themes inconsistently — their response to racism seemed to depend on whether they already disliked a person or not.

I could say a lot more but as someone who spoke to Taylor in private at times, there were a lot of things I was unsure about even when I was on their side of things. To some people, apparently, Freydis had said they were part Mexican, but only ever told me they were Peruvian (they might've known I'd clock them as a faker). Regardless, when this all came to light, their response was shockingly dismissive.

This may be more info than you asked for but TLDR:

Freydis Moon faked their race and ethnicity, bullied and manipulated many readers and authors using various fake identities, took advantage of latine author resources, and so on.

#mine #ask #publishing #freydis moon

[sassydefendorflower]

I want to talk about something. I want to talk about ableism in fandom. And sexism in fandom. Oh, and racism in fandom.

Mostly though, I wanna talk about how the discussion about these things often gets derailed because people don't understand what trends and typical behaviors actually are.

Whenever a Person of Color, a woman, someone disabled, someone queer (or an intersection of any of these groups) points out that certain fandom trends are bigoted in some shape or form, half the replies seem to be "but they are my comfort character! Maybe people just like them better because they are more interesting!" or even "people are allowed to have headcanons!" - the very daft even go for a "don't bring politics into fandom" which is a personal favorite because nothing exists in a vacuum and nothing is truly apolitical. But alas~

What most of these replies seemingly fail to understand is something very, very simple: it's not about you.

You, as an individual, are just one datapoint in a fandom. You are not the trend. You do not necessarily depict the typical behavior.

When someone points out that there is racism in fandom, that doesn't mean every fan is racist or perpetuating racist ideas*. By constantly mentioning your own lack of racism, quite often, you are actively derailing the conversation away from the problems at hand.

When someone names and describes a trend, they don't mean your headcanon specifically - they mean the accumulated number of headcanons perpetuating a harmful or outdated idea.

I am not saying this to forbid anyone from writing fics about their favorite characters or to keep anyone from having fun headcanons and sharing their theories and thoughts - quite the opposite actually. A critique of a general trend is not a critique of you as an individual - and you're going to have a much better, and more productive, time online if you can internalize that. If you stop growing defensive and instead allow yourself to actually digest the message of what was pointed out.

I am saying this to encourage some critical thinking.

Allow me to offer up some examples:

Case 1: A DC blogger made the daring statement that maybe Tim and Jason were such a popular fanfic focus because they are the only two undeniably white batboys. Immediately someone replied saying "no, it's all the fun traumatic situations we can put them in!". Which is an insane statement to make, considering the same can be said for literally ANY OTHER DC Batman and Batfam character.

The original post wasn't anything groundbreaking, they didn't accuse anyone, didn't name any names... but immediately there was a justification, immediately there was a reason why people might like these characters more. No one stopped to take a second and reflect on the current trends in fanfiction, no one considered that maybe this wasn't a declaration against people who like these characters but a thesis depicting the OVERALL trend of fandom once again focusing on undeniably white (and male) characters.

(don't get me started on the racebending of white characters in media that has a big Cast of Color and the implications of that)

Case 2: A meta posted on Ao3 about ableism in the Criminal Minds fandom caught my attention. A wonderful piece, very thoughtful, analyzing certain characterization choices within the fandom through the lens of an actually autistic person. The conclusion they reached: the writing of Spencer Reid as an autistic character, while often charming and comforting, tended to be incredibly infantilizing and at worst downright ableist. They came to that conclusion while CLEARLY stating that the individual fanfic wasn't the problem, but the general fandom trend in depicting this character.

Once again, looking at the replies seemed to be a mistake: while many comments furthered the discussion, there were quite a few which completely missed the point. Some were downright hostile. Because how dare this author imply that THEY are ableist when they write their favorite character using that specific characterization.

It didn't matter that the author allowed room for personal interpretation. It didn't matter that they noted something concerning about the entire fandom - people still thought they were attacking singular people.

Case 3: I wrote a fic about abortion in the FMA(b) fandom (actually I've written a weird amount of fics about abortion in a lot of fandoms, but alas) and I got hate comments for it. Because of that I addressed the bias in fandom against pro-choice depictions of pregnancies. I pointed out that the utter lack of abortion in many omegaverse stories or even mpreg or het romances, painted the picture of an unconscious bias that hurt people for whom abortion was the only option, the best possible ending. The response on the post itself was mostly positive, but I got anon hate.

(which I can unfortunately not show you since I deleted it in the months since)

And I'm not overly broken up about it, but it also underlines my point: by pointing at a general problem, a typical behavior, a larger trend... people feel personally attacked.

This inability to discuss sexism, ableism, racism, transphobia, etc in fandom without people turning defensive and hurt... well, it damages our ability to have these conversations at all.

Earlier I said YOU are not the problem - well, i think part of this discussion is acknowledging that: sometimes YOU are in fact part of the problem. And that's not the end of the world. But you can only recognize yourself as a cog in the machine, if you can examine your own actions, your own biases, your own preferences critically and without becoming defensive.

And, again, this is not to keep you from finding comfort in your favorite characters and headcanons. This is also not to say that I am free of biases and internalized bigotries - I am also very much a part of the system. A part of the problem.

This is so you can comfortably ask yourself "but why is there no abortion in this universe?" or "why are my favorite black characters always the top in my slash ships?" or "why do I write this disabled character as childish and in need of help?" - and sometimes the answer is "because I am disabled and I want comfort", and that's fine too.

There is no one shoe fits all in fiction. There is not a single trope that captures all members of a group. There is no single stereotype that isn't also someone's comfort. No group is a monolith, no experienced all-encompasing (or entirely unique).

There is never a simple answer.

But that doesn't mean you should stop questioning your own biases, your own ideals.

Especially, if you grow defensive if someone points out that a certain trend you engage in might be racist. Or sexist. Or queerphobic. Or fucking ableist.

*this does not mean negate the general anti-blackness perpetuated by most cultures as a result of colonialism and slavery

#criminal minds #dc #batman #racism #fandom racism #fandom #fandom discourse #sexism #fandom sexism #ableism #fandom ableism #discourse #fma #fmab #abortion #abortion rights #pro choice #opening up a discussion about having discussions

[orange-coloredsky]

as a Wretched East Coast Fan i will always always side with Stuck Up West Coast Fans wrt the themes and functionality of fallout as a series because frankly in comparison (and excluding some of my longtime mutuals) i have never felt more scrutinized and unwelcome than in hypersensitive 3/4/76 spaces that see any frustration or expressions of negativity at the state of the franchise as an attack on community wellbeing.

seeing a passion of mine for the past 10 years -- digging into the worlds of fallout and their political explorations, or lack-thereof -- be reduced to "fandom wank" and an inability to let people have fun is disheartening. and honestly demeans the exceptional amount of time, energy, and thought me & MANY others have put into piecing together lore and themes and creating interpretive meta.

i understand this seems like A Lot for people who may have just started following me but this is not the first nor will it be the last time well-established critiques of the later fallout games made by people of color or queer people have been reduced to fandom drama and im kind of fucking sick of it. and honestly im kinda tired of being nice about it

#misc fallout #long post

[agnesmontague]

it's not that left-leaning Online folk have suddenly or even gradually regressed to an era of victorian sensibilities where they fully believe that bad things in fiction = bad things irl, i've rarely seen even the most uncultured of take-havers argue for monkey see monkey do (except that one blogger who thought anyone who enjoys horror is a damaged freak—special shoutout to you forever!); it's more that people have gotten hubristically confident in their ability to "clock" bad faith or dress a portrait of the author/creator/artist beneath their work when such assumptions can be false or even dangerous. yes, sometimes a person's work will put their biases and prejudice on display. sometimes people will be chronically unable to write women, to make characters of color sound human, etc, but somehow that (still fairly surface) level of engaging with a work has become the excuse we all use to tear down the veil between author and audience and drag people through extremely damaging interrogations of intent

even worse, everyone professing critical ability online has been able to find at least a niche clutch of others who got "bad vibes" from something and end up cruising through this vibes-based economy fueled by their echo chamber of angry fault-finders, resulting in critique that has no real literary or sociological value but sounds just well-dressed enough in critical language that it becomes someone else's metric for evaluation and even creation, which is how we get swathes of grown adults rallying against benign children's media or 200 "queer fiction" podcasts that all sound like they got mashed through a therapist's office to avoid precisely this type of senseless audience violence

#rambles

[femmespoiled]

ID: Video that is a stitch made by @professorneil on tiktok.

The person in the video stitched says: "which is that it seems like quite a lot of people, particularly white liberals, will very often take on all these different queer and neurodivergent labels and feel as if they have to be oppressed by something because…”

And the person stitching said video continues by saying: “so, yes, this is absolutely a thing and not only is it a documented sociological phenomenon, but sociologists have come up with a name for it and it’s called the race to innocence and sometimes also the race to the margins, it’s the same thing. Now when Mary Louis Fellows and Sherene Razack coined this term back in 1998, they were thinking mostly about white feminists within the multiracial feminist movements, so bear that in mind as I read from their article, it is more broadly applicable, absolutely, yes, but that is their focus here.”

The person in the video proceeds by quoting from the article mentioned: “When a woman fails to pursue how she is implicated in other women’s lives and retreats to the position that the system that oppresses her the most is the only one worth fighting and that the other systems (systems in which she is positioned as dominant) are not of her concern, she will fail to undo her own subordination. Attempts to change one system while leaving the others intact leaves in place the structure of domination that is made up of interlocking hierarchies.”

The person in the video continues: “So, Fellows and Razack are implicating and critiquing here that the very second wave feminist, white feminist idea that all women share a common struggle, which it is only possible to suggest if you are ignoring the unique oppressions of queer women, women of color, women in poverty, etc. When faced with that challenge, the people who occupy a position of privilege, so in this example, the straight, middle and upper-class, white women will say “That’s not the issue that we’re talking about here, we’re talking here about being women, we’re talking about patriarchy, misogyny.” They will race to innocence; they will race to their own marginalized identity categories in order to avoid admitting that they have power and privilege and are also the oppressor. And, sometimes, that race to innocence is very calculated (in this part the screen in the video shows text that reads: *and defensive!), it is deliberate, it is strategic. I might be avoiding talking about my male privilege, my white privilege, when I am also discussing being a wave slave because I want to preserve those privileges, while attacking the oppression I feel, but it’s, at least, as often, if not more often, something that we are doing reflexively, uncritically. It is easier to claim solidarity, it is easier to feel empathy, if we are doing it from our own position of marginality, it’s easier to speak credibly from a position of oppression and to do so with authority, if you also possess privileges that allow you to appear unbiased, neutral and to do so safely, if afterward you can retreat to a place of privilege. So, it is certainly possible that, at least in part, this explosion of straight, white, cis men leftists claiming neurodivergence is explained by some sort of desire to claim oppression, to build those alliances, to feel that empathy and to access that credibility, but even if it is sincere, it is still dangerous. Of course, it could be strategic and insincere. When you race to innocence, race to the margins, be mindful of the privileges you’re leaving at the center.”

END ID

- Here is the article mentioned in the video, if you want to check it out (in PDF):

The Race to Innocence: Confronting Hierarchical Relations among Women

#b discusses racism #and other marginalized issues #video #btexts #took me a while and i was supposed to do this yesterday so I'm very sorry but here it is #race to innocence #race to the margins

[xamiipholia]

Since it’s been a year since Burning Shores came out, some thoughts on Seyka:

TL;DR: Great character, really happy with her as a love interest for Aloy. They do some really interesting things with her that I never really see addressed so I wanted to talk about them.

She is tangibly shown to be much more of a match for Aloy through gameplay. Compared to other npcs, she solves things faster, does more damage, is a much more formidable melee combatant, faster climber - she even has a fucking Valor Surge using her Focus that does pretty significant tear damage to large machines like Slaughterspines. Environmental storytelling- Seyka’s skiff has at least 2-3 Tiderippers’ worth of parts, meaning she’s been out on her own killing the things to build boat motors, and she has some ambient dialogue that strongly suggests she’s fought and killed Slaugterspines before. Is some of this npc tech advancements in Burning Shores? Maybe, but it feels intentional. 

Seyka has a natural probing curiosity about the old world that for the most part Aloy’s other companions didn’t have without some significant hand-holding from Aloy to get them started, and some of her close friend (but not base team) characters just don’t have at all. I don’t mean this as a moral judgement, everyone is different and has different strengths and priorities , but it’s absolutely critical that a partner for Aloy have that kind of curiosity - it’s such a big part of her character. While she lives in this new world, she’s never going to be entirely a part of it. Like she says, she finds belonging in individuals, and not really the tribes. I don’t really see Aloy settling down in Meridian or Mother’s Heart. She needs to have a life of exploration and discovery and Seyka seems cut from that cloth too, whether she was always that way or being marooned gave her a fresh perspective.

Seyka did risk death using the focus and decided to do it anyway- in Rheng’s notes he calls for capital punishment for her. The threat is never *too* present but honestly I think that’s a broader critique of the series and pretty consistent with the writing of conflicts in Horizon. I agree they could have played up the dramatic tension a bit, but this is a person who weighed the risk of a military execution by a totalitarian state and immediately decided it was worth it to save her sister and others. I think Aloy can intimately relate, given what she went through for Beta.

Even though it’s a DLC, she has a TON of screen time, probably comparable to Kotallo in HFW, and Horizon does SO much storytelling through gameplay and ambient dialogue. I think she’s given a LOT of narrative space to breathe. She’s also has her own musical cues and leitmotifs that do a ton of foreshadowing work through the DLC - in terms of musical cues and framing she’s very associated with the acoustic guitar, and the flute melody in ‘Her Sky, Her Sea’ has for Aloy and Seyka the same function that ‘It Can’t Last’ does for Ellie and Dina in TLOU2 - next time you play Burning Shores, listen for it. That and the guitar cues from ‘The Idea of Home’ and ‘For His Entertainment’ do a lot of emotional work. It’s great stuff.

Okay and lastly- YMMV on this one - I’ve def talked about it with friends before but I don’t think I’ve said it on Tumblr. I’m a firm believer that meta narratives and the way that stories are situated and created in our own world matter and that art deserves to be taken seriously and dissected. I love Horizon, but it, and Aloy as a protagonist, are absolutely drenched in white savior and colonial storytelling tropes. Every time I play Frozen Wilds, all I can think of is Jack Sparrow going “and then they made me their chief”. There’s a lot of iffy stuff in the games, as much as I absolutely love them. We’ll have to see how H3 goes, but Burning Shores is MUCH better about this and honestly Seyka is a huge part of it. The story centers itself on a queer woman of color who is pretty tangibly presented as Aloy’s equal with her own strengths and weaknesses throughout the story and takes the lead just as often if not more than Aloy does, which I find really refreshing. It doesn’t entirely fix Aloy’s white savior issues but I think it’s a really good move for the narrative that continues the themes found in HFW about community and connection.

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds (2017)

#Seyka #horizon forbidden west #hfw #aloy #horizon #horizon zero dawn #guerrilla games #hzd #horizon burning shores #hfw seyka #horizon critical #The musical leitmotifs are gooooood shit #It was one of the things that really hooked me with the dlc because Horizon had never done that for a character relationship before #Also the last point is not a personal attack #I like lots of vaguely problematic things

[theygotbitchesinmedia]

okay so here is her review: https://arkadymartine.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/the-traitor-baru-cormorant-a-reviewresponse/

admittedly its from 2015- i haven't poked around to see how she may have changed how she feels about it, and i know she did blurb seth's recent scifi novel (Exordia), so there's no bad blood there or anything. it's also a positive review, in general- she ends with this sentence: "I highly, highly recommend this book; I have not thought so much about something I read in a long time."

i am also coming into this as someone who has read all of seth dickinson's work for the game destiny, where he was near-singlehandedly responsible for a good oh… 80% of the interesting women (& overall interesting concepts lol!) in the game, and his writing of one of those characters in particular as a complex and flawed character got him bullied viciously off of all social media. if you've tried to find his social media presence and havent found anything, that's why. so i mayhaps have a little more emotion in the game.

THAT SAID. here are some specific parts from her review i find really fucking annoying! and color the way i feel about Memory & Desolation, despite them being so incredibly targeted at me as a classics person AND someone who fucking loves the specific sub-genre of scifi her novels are.

"[Traitor] asks a question which I find compelling as a student of an empire and as a queer woman. That question is: what do we gain by complicity? What do we – we barbaroi, we women, we queer people, we imperialized – what do we get when we say yes? When we say yes I will hide my true nature? When we say yes I will subsume myself into the beautiful machine? When we say can we speak English? Or the literature I love just happens to be written by straight white men – and mean it, too, mean it with the kind of depthless love that a person can have for a text that speaks to them, which holds up a mirror to them?"

i dont think the use of the greek word for barbarian does anything here (she also keeps coming back to the greek term orthos in her review, which also pisses me off lol), i dont think empire is a "beautiful machine," and i don't think the invocation of identity politics is useful. like. i know she's a byzantine scholar but if your first association with empire is purely a finite Historical Empire instead of, like, modern US imperialism, or British colonialism, you are going into this discussion with a certain set of values and opinions! a set of values and opinions that let you call an empire a "beautiful machine" in all earnestness. this claim probably seems unsubstantiated and nitpicky now just from this excerpt but ill come back to it with more i promise. on the idpol front, she also says immediately after this that she does believe that straight people can and should write queer people, but that they should listen to queer people when they point out those errors. she then continues:

"But then, critique: there are two points on which I think Dickinson’s portrayal of a queer protagonist has faltered, and I think both of these errors arise from the fact that he isn’t part of – as far as I know at the time of writing this review – a queer community. Firstly, I disbelieve Baru’s awareness of her own desires… …For the first portion of the book, her queerness felt more like a character trait assigned to her for reason of plot than a naturally built part of her as a person… Secondly, I wonder where queer people in Falcrest are…"

theres more to these excerpts, but. i personally didnt find the depiction of baru's desire to be unrealistic, and also this was a review of Traitor, specifically, so where on earth would baru have heard about queer people in falcrest? and more importantly, why should we care so much about queer people in the imperial core? moreover i think the way seth does it with svir is very very well done, and illustrates the hypocrisy of empire in a way that does NOT seem like what martine is asking for here!!!

"Why am I invested? I myself am a student of empire. I’m a Byzantinist. My academic work is about empire and its seductions; it is the animating principle of my professional life. And: I am myself someone who loves order over disorder. Who looks for systems in all things. Who is comforted by structures; who is concerned deeply with propriety. But here’s my real criticism of this book: I don’t buy the seduction of the Masquerade. And I think if this book fails, it’s there: in that its empire is too easily read as undesirable. As profane, unethical, fundamentally wrong. It is really overtly evil." … "The Masquerade isn’t civilized. It’s civilization, but I don’t recognize it as civilized, and this is a problem with a constructed empire. An empire relies on itself as the definition of civilization – I would footnote here Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch as a SFnal example of an empire which is built on this principle, and which, for this reader at least, achieves the facsimile. (But then my ancestors were not enslaved, we were exterminated; not annexed, but exiled. Perhaps I like the Radch better than the Masquerade because I can find a place for myself in it, and cannot imagine a place within the Masquerade someone like me would ever be safe –)"

and THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE IS MY BIGGEST PROBLEM. critiquing the masquerade as not "seductive" enough, calling it too evil to have people join it- how does someone miss the point THIS badly??? like. are you FUCKING serious??? how do you read a book about the immense violence of colonialism and your problem is that it is boohoo too violent for people to join willingly. google literally fucking anything the US has done ever!!! and the invocation of the concept of "civilized" as an objective quality, despite the recognition that the empire constructs what counts as "civilization" is so fucking unserious/simplistic/juvenile! why do you need to imagine yourself a place in the empire? in the imperial core specifically!

and i think this particular approach bleeds into her books. i read them at Least 2 years ago, so this is mostly vibes-based, and i will avoid spoilers.

there is such a focus on the allure of the imperial core, on the "beautiful machine" of the empire as she calls it. there is violence done, but it is abstracted away from the wealth of the imperial core. there are no economics there. the empire sees her independent station as a backwater, and there is some cultural tensions there, but there is no realistic violence and exploitation! it is not clear at all what maintains the empire, besides some abstract idea of trade. i also don't know what her Point is with the naming & language conventions, which are very clearly inspired in part by ancient Mayan- e.g. the empire and core planet are called Teixcalaan. and idk this may be reductive of me but i think if you are going to pull features from civilizations that have been colonized and use them to inspire fictional colonizing forces, you ARE saying something there! idk! and like, the ancient Mayan

and on the ~representation~ front, i also don't think she does a better job than seth tbqh!!! i felt like the characters getting together came out of nowhere and felt anticlimactic- there is also not the tension i think there should be with the main character being an ambassador-ish and the love interest being… idr. junior intelligence officer iirc? idk! and for all her critique of baru's desire for women not feeling "real" or present enough, i do not remember the main character in Memory having any real focus on it!

i enjoyed Memory just fine, but i don't think it says anything interesting or novel or even critical about empire, and i found her review of Traitor extremely shallow and useless, if very revealing about her own outlook on empire lol!!!

this has been at best Minorly proofread and edited but im not like, writing an academic essay on the matter and so i apologize for any inconsistencies.

oh man thanks for this this is really interesting. i went and read the whole thing and i agree a ton with your critique. i'm going to stick my thoughts below the cut because i went on for a bit here, in typical fashion.

i personally didnt find the depiction of baru's desire to be unrealistic, and also this was a review of Traitor, specifically, so where on earth would baru have heard about queer people in falcrest? and more importantly, why should we care so much about queer people in the imperial core?

NO BUT EXACTLY... for starters this is explicitly a novel about colonized people taking place in a colony where none of the major characters are from the empire. where, when, and how would we take the time to explore what queerness looks like for them and more importantly, like you've asked, why the hell should that be a priority for the narrative in this case.

in terms of 'i found this to be an unrealistic depiction of queer desire' 9/10 times i feel like what that means is 'i found this to be an unrelatable depiction' which is an entirely different critique. i know i'm working with two additional books worth of context that martine isn't working with here. but even taking into account just the characterization we have for baru in traitor i think this is suuuuch an unfair complaint. i'm gonna pull the entire quote she says about baru's sexuality here because i have additional specific gripes with it.

Firstly, I disbelieve Baru’s awareness of her own desires. In the first portion of the book, I do not ever feel the weight of Baru’s own awareness of her sexuality; there is an absence of carnality, a kind of intellectual version of lesbian desire which is, to me, inconsistent with the sort of desire I expect. Not until the introduction of Baru’s eventual lover Tain Hu do I get a sense of Baru as a woman who loves women. Further, considering how very much the Empire of Masks and Increastic philosophy criminalizes the sin of queer desire, I wish Baru had struggled more with the nature of her desire. For the first portion of the book, her queerness felt more like a character trait assigned to her for reason of plot than a naturally built part of her as a person. This markedly improved in the second half, where Baru notices women in a way she does not notice men.

For starters, it is insanely hypocritical to me to complain that her desire both isn't carnal enough and she processes it too intellectually, but that she isn't struggling enough with it. Baru intellectually processes things! That's her entire character from the getgo! She also has a difficult time conceptualizing other people as fully realized beings with their own agency. These character traits paired together don't make for a particularly passionate and carnal relationship to her sexuality. She is also, at her absolute oldest in this book, 21! (Or 22? I can't remember. I know she spends 3 years in aurdwynn) and has spent her entire youth being groomed to be a scholar. Of course detached intellectualism is her primary way of navigating all things. Why wouldn't it be?

Baru primary motivation is to save taranoke, she wants to save the taranoki way of life, and part of that way of life includes an acceptance of nonhetero nonmonogamous relationships. Sure, a different character arc may have involved baru actually internalizing and then having to break free of the trappings of race, gender, and sexuality that the empire tries to impose upon its citizens. but that's not baru and acting like this is a writing flaw rather than a character choice is insane to me.

There's absolutely no reason for Baru to lie awake at night pontificating about how wrong and dirty of her it is to want to have sex with women because we are never lead to believe even for a minute that Baru puts any emotional weight in incrasticism. She doesn't conceptualize it as sinful she conceptualizes it as illegal!

And "Not until the introduction of Baru’s eventual lover Tain Hu do I get a sense of Baru as a woman who loves women. " is killing me in particular because like. Yeah. Tain Hu is baru's first love. thats the point. But beyond that this is just not being able to see anything other than what she's looking for because i think the chapters covering baru's childhood make it pretty clear that her feelings for aminata and cousin lao (im not double checking the name but im pretty sure it was this) are deep and strong. the fact that they're not as explicitly and straightforwardly romantic and sexual as her relationship with tain hu doesn't change that, and in fact, points to baru's struggle with/development of her sexuality that she claims was somehow missing in this book.

like i just simply can't see anything here but someone who is seeing an emotional landscape they can't relate to and assuming that means it's flawed writing. skill issue frankly.

She's also fucking insane for acting like the masquerade is too cartoonishly evil to be appealing. once again im going to post her full quote here because i think its important to see

its empire is too easily read as undesirable. As profane, unethical, fundamentally wrong. It is really overtly evil. It punishes sexual “deviants” with mutilation and death. It murders children callously. It inflicts plague and withholds vaccines. It lobotomizes its own emperors for the sake of convincing its populace that the emperor is just. Most of all, the Masquerade is a eugenicist empire: it is explicitly founded on not purity of bloodline but on purification of bloodline, on making people useful to it. It makes people: it breeds them carefully, it indoctrinates them through schools, it uses drugs and operant conditioning to transform their minds and make them into automata tools. It commits every atrocity that a modern Western reader recognizes as abhorrent. This is a problem. It is a problem because we are asked, as readers, to believe that there are reasons besides blackmail that a person would willingly become an agent of the Masquerade. We are asked to imagine that the Masquerade is a beautiful machine.

for starters. "It commits every atrocity that a modern Western reader recognizes as abhorrent." MODERN WESTERN EMPIRES DID, AND OCCASIONALLY STILL DO, MOST OF THESE THINGS!!! THIS IS US! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!! I FEEL INSANE!!!!

I think the book makes it more than explicitly clear why the empire is appealing??? it has all of the capital???? its building schools and sewage systems and importing food and goods and teaching reading and writing??? baru's own internal narrative often shows her own strife at the fact that the empire has made genuinely incredible scientific advancements that offer significant improvements in quality of life to many, many people. martine actually acknowledges this in the next paragraph of her review, and then brushes it away as not being good enough. why? what about that doesn't convince you?

she is seeming to hugely ignore the fact that in the case of aurdwynn specifically, the bureaucracy of the empire is coming in to unseat feudal aristocracy! what the masquerade offers may not be particularly tempting to most of that ruling class, but its economic opportunities are more then believably appealing to the common people. i think this is made pretty clear when baru's ploy to use the fiat bank to make loans to the aurdwynni people and basically lessen the massive tax burdens from the duchies wins her huge favor with the public.

and frankly even for the ruling class the potential economic benefits are massive too if you're willing to participate in the empire properly. yes the empire doesn't have Moral appeal. it doesn't fucking have to. it owns pretty much every economy outside of the oriati mbo. the fact that that's not enough for her is as you've pointed out really really showing her biases and blind spots. 'no reason besides blackmail' MONEY!!!! MONEY! IT'S MONEY! THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT ACCOUNTING! HOW DID YOU MISS THAT!!!

and the invocation of the concept of "civilized" as an objective quality, despite the recognition that the empire constructs what counts as "civilization" is so fucking unserious/simplistic/juvenile! why do you need to imagine yourself a place in the empire? in the imperial core specifically!

And this is really it for me too, yeah. It's gross. It's absolutely gross. "An empire isn't believably appealing unless I, personally, find it appealing" there are people alive who are eugenicists, who love community policing, who believe in race science. the masquerade is an empire for them. the thing about empires is that they are only actually empowering for an incredibly small subset of people, and the fact that You, Specifically, Arkady Martine can't imagine being one of those people in this instance doesn't make it not believable. This is a shatteringly individualist way of engaging with a work.

As for your points about the way she handles empire in her own book obviously i can't have anything to say there because i haven't read it yet, but i do absolutely agree with you on this bit:

and idk this may be reductive of me but i think if you are going to pull features from civilizations that have been colonized and use them to inspire fictional colonizing forces, you ARE saying something there! idk! and like, the ancient Mayan

1000% i don't think this is reductive of you. whether or not you're consciously saying anything is one question but it's a choice that absolutely doesn't exist in a vacuum. out of curiosity i googled her to see if she was of mayan descent or anything and maybe she chose that due to some personal ties to the subject matter but she doesn't seem to be. which of course i don't think means she can't or shouldn't draw any inspiration from there but i do think all of these sorts of choices are meaningful

i don't really have much to say here to round off a conclusion but. wow. deeply deeply telling review that does not particularly make me want to read anything she has written beyond this.

#long post #lb baru cormorant #ask

[the-everqueen]

action items white people can consider to make fandom spaces more inclusive for bipoc:

rec/kudos/comment on fanworks made by poc

consider what roles characters of color take in your own work. do black and brown characters exist solely as emotional support for central white characters? are black and brown characters sidelined for white character arcs? do black and brown characters appear solely to Talk About Racism (aka be the Magical or moralizing force for a narrative)?

(consider: Not Doing That)

reflect on whose voices get centralized/prioritized in any given narrative

listen to poc who express discomfort/frustration/critique of the text or fanon without feeling the need to defend either (or recognize you don't need to insert yourself into some conversations)

conversations around racism in fan spaces almost always get derailed into debates about ships or The Literal Text, but in my experience some of the most alienating aspects of fandom are the subtle ways that white people signal us as "other," i.e. acting as though race and queerness are distinct categories (there are queer bipoc! we invented a lot of queer culture!), framing nonwhite characters as unrelatable or undesirable, and reproducing stereotypes in fanon narratives. these become exhausting to encounter, whether or not we're part of the larger fandom ecosystem, and because it's systemic, it becomes impossible to avoid. which means white people's escapism corner is another site that poc have to navigate very, very carefully.

#fandom discourse #i don't want to get into the debates about shipping #some of my favorite fics involve Main Fandom Ships #i also project onto white male characters in media #that's fine! i'm not here to dictate your desires #what frustrates me in any given fandom is the underlying rhetorics that uphold white supremacist thinking #kill the cop in your head #and that's really all i have to say about that #because i would like to get back to my unhinged reblogging of gifsets and discussions on critical race theory #also again! i know a lot of ppl who are into the Main Ship in the current fandoms #who are doing really really good and nuanced shit #i follow some of them!

[katy-l-wood]

Okay, finished the whole season. Thoughts on the new ATLA under the cut. (They're positive, so if that's not your jam that's fine. But I'd like to keep this post positive. Discussion is welcome, bashing is not.)

I fucking loved it. This is easily the best adaption of something I have ever seen. They got the tone so well, and the way they mixed in 1 to 1 stuff from the original show with their new stuff worked so, so well. That addition of the division Zuko saved being assigned as his crew? Chef's kiss. Chef's fucking kiss.

I think the biggest marker of success for me, though, is that I didn't have to do anything else while I was watching and I didn't WANT to. My attention was fully, 100% on the show 95% of the time, which is so, so fucking rare for me as someone with ADHD. I don't even remember the last time I watched a show and didn't have to also be drawing or doing a puzzle or playing a game on my phone to stay engaged. But with this I didn't.

Also, the COLORS. It was such a fucking pretty show. And IT WASN'T FUCKING BLACK. There was LIGHT. I watched 80% of it during the day in my relatively bright livingroom and I could always see everything clearly, even during the night scenes. And the siege of the North with the limited hues and blasts of fire? Perfect.

And Azula! The way they added her to this season was so damn good. Sets up her character so fucking well. Just. Ugh. Yes.

They also aged it up just right. It really feels like a WAR is going on in a way it didn't in the original (which is not a critique of the original at all, just what worked for telling the story that way). But it also doesn't revel in that darkness constantly, which is refreshing.

As for the changes they made to Sokka, I think the warrior narrative works really well, and they rounded it out nicely. I can't wait to see his eventually reunion with his dad now. Would it have been more true to his character to include the sexism as well? Yeah. But I think, with the way they streamlined the narrative overall, having him go on a journey of learning better about his sexism AND struggling with being a warrior would've made things feel bloated. Focusing on just the warrior narrative, to me, just works better with everything else they did in the live action.

Can't wait to see what they do in season 2! (And we better get a season 2. And 3.)

Also.

Queer ladies Oma and Shu FTW.

#Avatar the Last Airbender #Live Action Avatar the Last Airbender #Live Action Avatar the Last Airbender Spoilers #Avatar the Last Airbender Spoilers #Spoilers

[skimblyshanks]

This is ur local skimbly telling you that if you're comfortable reading academic style writing, you should really really really pick up Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson's 2018 book Histories of the Transgender Child. She explores the history of trans youth in the US through the 20th century, with open acknowledgement of both intersex medicalization and the racialization of pathology in terms of both intersexuality and the trans experience, and is openly critical of our medical framework of identity, with the historical reasoning to back this up.

From her site:

Histories of the Transgender Child is the first book of its kind, uncovering a century of the hidden history of transgender children. Shattering the widespread myth that today's transgender children are a brand new generation, Jules Gill-Peterson shows how modern transgender medicine, as well as the very concept of gender itself, depend upon the often invisible medicalization of trans and intersex children's presumed biological plasticity.

Through a trans of color critique of medicine and its archive, Histories of the Transgender Child shows how the medical model built in a racial divide through plasticity, by design disqualifying black and trans of color children from access to care and support, setting the strict gatekeeping boundaries of the medical field that have harmed trans people for decades. The histories of trans children Gill-Peterson has brought to light open up an array of possibilities for reimagining today’s clinic by learning to listen to what trans children know about themselves, grounding medical care in the recognition of their selfhood, and critiquing binary models of transition and dysphoria.

You can purchase it here

Similar trans/queer of color writings can be found underneath the option of purchase

#histories of the transgender child #jules gill-peterson #trans authors #trans history #trans children #transgender history #transgender authors #transgender children

[mygwenchan]

Is Playboyy really that messy?

If you look at the quick succession of scenes, some barely reaching the 2 minutes mark, the changes in mood and style - here a romantic kiss, there a dramatic reveal with the occasional social criticism thrown into the mix - the answer would probably be: Yes, it's very messy. The characters and the plot lines are plenty. You've got tons of imagery from other media as well - ep11 was especially rich in movie references. It's all over the place and it's a lot!

But I wonder, what if the series works similar to a pointillism painting?

It's one brightly colored dot right to the next, but the image itself will only be revealed when you take a few steps back. Only then can you see the figures and the landscapes immerging from the chaos.

If you ask me, Playboyy is like a collage of queer life. It takes the pop culture, the Greek statues, the (sometimes failed) romance, the sex and kink, the drama, the music, the clothes, the activism, the conflicts with older generations, the experimental styles, the references... The series takes all these things and sticks them together to create something new: They put Michelangelo's David next to a pair of rainbow angel wings, next to an article about murdered prostitutes, next to the cut out of an underwear fashion model, next to a cheesy quote from Notting Hill.

So Playboyy can't be only a series that discusses sex or offers criticism towards problems in our modern societies. You've got those things in there, mind you: Look at the upper right corner of the artwork and you'll find discussions about kink and consent or look down and you'll have your critique towards a government that can't even acknowledge prostitution is real. But as a whole, Playboyy is a collection of different experiences, things that happend and things that are only imagination.

The series itself tells us repeatedly that it's neither a thriller nor an action movie or an 80's romcom. Playboyy can't be just one thing, one genre, because it encompasses everything (everything that is queer that is).

It is up to us viewers what we want to take from this piece of art. You can watch it as a silly and entertaining flick (equivalent to: Yay~ Lots of bright colors and glitter :D) or go for the cinematography and the references (how did they even build this thing? o.O) or discuss political issues (let me read that news article again...), talk about sex and kink (is that a naked guy with a dog mask over there? omg!) and so on and so forth. I think in the end Playboyy the Series is meant to be a vehicle for us, to get the discussions going and to show us the many different facets of queer life in Thailand.

#basically: it's messy but with a purpose :) #playboyy the series #playboyy #playboyy meta #meta #gwen's watchlist

[genderkoolaid]

Achillean is an ok term & I don’t think there’s nothing inherent wrong with it, but I think you’re misrepresenting the “oh he’s Greek thus problematic” issue a tadbit. The issue I (personally, nothing against those who use the label, albeit it is a criticism I have about it) and other people of color have with “Achillean” is that once again, the language surrounding queerness comes from a white, western canon. What about Latino men? Native men? Asian men? All our cultures have an equally rich in queerness, but people insist in using white western terms. Why can’t we use OUR canons to define language?

Now that is a very good point to make.

I want to clarify: the arguments I was referencing aren't "being Greek is why he's bad". I'm referring to people who say that Achilles, by virtue of being a cis guy in Ancient Greece, did things which today we see as being morally bad (owning a slave, for example), which means that he is a Bad Person and therefore no one should use the term achillean because it somehow endorses this ancient mythological character's actions. It's a very moral purity, "cultural relativism, what's that?" way of interacting with classical history, especially something with as much cultural importance as the Illiad.

But your point is very good & a much better critique of achillean than others who are making an argument based in homophobia. Thank you for bringing this up.

#m. #ask box #achillean