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canichangemyblogname · 2 months

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I watched all eight episodes of season 1 of Blue Eye Samurai over the weekend. I then went browsing because I wanted to read some online reviews of the show to see what people were thinking of it and also because I wanted to interact with gifs and art, as the series is visually stunning.

Yet, in my search for opinions on the show, I came across several points I'd like to address in my own words:

Mizu’s history and identity are revealed piece-by-piece and the “peaches” scene with Mizu and Ringo at the lake is intended to be a major character reveal. I think it’s weird that some viewers got angry over other viewers intentionally not gendering Mizu until that reveal, rather than immediately jumping to gender the character as the other characters in the show do. The creators intentionally left Mizu’s gender and sexuality ambiguous (and quite literally wrote in lines to lead audiences to question both) to challenge the viewer’s gut assumption that this lone wolf samurai is a man. That intentional ambiguity will lead to wide and ambiguous interpretations of where Mizu fits in, if Mizu fits in at all. But don't just take my word for this:

Re: above. I also think it’s weird that some viewers got upset over other viewers continuing to acknowledge that Mizu has a very complicated relationship with her gender, even after that reveal. Canonically, she has a very complicated relationship with her identity. The character is intended to represent liminality in identity, where she’s often between identities in a world of forced binaries that aren’t (widely) socially recognized as binaries. But, again, don’t just take my word for this:

Mizu is both white and Japanese, but she is also not white and not Japanese simultaneously (too white to be Japanese and too Japanese to be white). She’s a woman and a man. She’s a man who’s a woman. She’s also a woman who’s not a woman (yet also not quite a man). But she’s also a woman; the creators said so. Mizu was raised as a boy and grew into a man, yet she was born a girl, and boyhood was imposed upon her. She’s a woman when she’s a man, a man when she’s a man, and a woman when she’s a woman.

Additionally, Mizu straddles the line between human and demon. She’s a human in the sense she’s mortal but a demon in the sense she’s not. She's human yet otherworldly. She's fallible yet greatness. She's both the ronin and the bride, the samurai and the onryō. In short, it’s complicated, and that’s the point. Ignoring that ignores a large part of her internal character struggle and development.

Mizu is intended to represent an “other,” someone who stands outside her society in every way and goes to lengths to hide this “otherness” to get by. Gender is a mask; a tool. She either hides behind a wide-brimmed hat, glasses, and laconic anger, or she hides behind makeup, her dress, and a frown. She fits in nowhere, no matter the identity she assumes. Mizu lives in a very different time period within a very different sociocultural & political system where the concept of gender and the language surrounding it is unlike what we are familiar with in our every-day lives. But, again, don’t just take my word for this:

It’s also weird that some viewers have gotten upset over the fact women and queer people (and especially queer women) see themselves in Mizu. Given her complicated relationship with identity under the patriarchy and colonial violence, I think Mizu is a great character for cis-het women and queer folks alike to relate to. Her character is also great for how she breaks the mold on the role of a biracial character in narratives about identity (she’s not some great bridge who will unite everyone). It does not hurt anyone that gender-fluid and nonbinary people see themselves in Mizu's identity and struggle with identity. It does not hurt anyone that lesbians see themselves in the way Mizu expresses her gender. It does not hurt anyone that trans men see themselves in Mizu's relationship with manhood or that trans women can see themselves in Mizu when Mama forces her to be a boy. It's also really cool that cis-het women see themselves in Mizu's struggles to find herself. Those upset over these things are missing critical aspects of Mizu's character and are no different from the other characters in the story. The only time Mizu is herself is when she’s just Mizu (“…her gender was Mizu”), and many of the other characters are unwilling to accept "just Mizu." Accepting her means accepting the complicatedness of her gender.

Being a woman under the patriarchy is complicated and gives women a complicated relationship with their gender and identity. It is dangerous to be a woman. Women face violence for being women. Being someone who challenges sex-prescribed norms and roles under patriarchy also gives someone a complicated relationship with their identity. It is dangerous to usurp gender norms and roles (then combine that with being a woman...). People who challenge the strict boxes they're assigned face violence for existing, too. Being a racial or ethnic minority in a racially homogeneous political system additionally gives someone a complicated relationship with their identity. It is dangerous to be an ethnic minority when the political system is reproduced on your exclusion and otherness. They, too, face violence for the circumstances of their birth. All of these things are true. None of them take away from the other.

Mizu is young-- in her early 20s-- and she has been hurt in deeply affecting ways. She's angry because she's been hurt in so many different ways. She's been hurt by gender violence, like "mama's" misogyny and the situation of her birth (her mother's rape and her near murder as a child), not to mention the violent and dehumanizing treatment of the women around her. She's been hurt by racial violence, like the way she has been tormented and abused since childhood for the way she looks (with people twice trying to kill her for this before adulthood). She's been hurt by state-sanctioned violence as she faces off against the opium, flesh, and black market traders working with white men in contravention of the Shogun's very policies, yet with sanction from the Shogun. She's been hurt by colonial violence, like the circumstances of her birth and the flood of human trafficking and weapons and drug trafficking in her country. She's had men break her bones and knock her down before, but only Fowler sexually differentiated her based on bone density and fracture.

Mizu also straddles the line between victim and murderer.

It seems like Mizu finding her 'feminine' and coming to terms with her 'female side' may be a part of her future character development. Women who feel caged by modern patriarchal systems and alienated from their bodies due to the patriarchy will see themselves in Mizu. They understand a desire for freedom that the narrow archetypes of the patriarchy do not afford them as women, and they see their anger and their desire for freedom in Mizu. This, especially considering that Mizu's development was driven by one of the creators' own experiences with womanhood:

No, Mizu does not pass as a man because she "hates women" or because she hates herself as a woman or being a woman. There are actual on-screen depictions of Mizu's misogyny, like her interactions with Akemi, and dressing like a man is not an instance of this. Mizu shows no discomfort with being a woman or being seen as a woman, especially when she intends to pass herself as and present as a woman. Mizu also shows the women in the series more grace and consideration than any man in the show, in whatever capacity available to her socially and politically, without revealing herself; many of the women have remarked that she is quite unlike other men, and she's okay with that, too.

When she lives on the farm with Mama and Mikio, Mizu shows no discomfort once she acclimates to the new life. But people take this as conclusive evidence of the "only time" she was happy. She was not. This life was also a dance, a performance. The story of her being both the ronin and the onryō revealed to the audience that this lifestyle also requires her to wear a mask and dance, just as the bride does. This mask is makeup, a wedding dress, and submission, and this performance is her gender as a wife. She still understands that she cannot fully be herself and only begins to express happiness and shed her reservation when she believes she is finally safe to be herself. Only to be betrayed. Being a man is her safety, and it is familiar. Being a boy protected her from the white men as a child, and it might protect her heart now.

Mizu shows no discomfort with being known as a woman, except when it potentially threatens her goals (see Ringo and the "peaches" scene). She also shows no discomfort with being known as, seen as, or referred to as a man. As an adult, she seems okay- even familiar- with people assuming she's a man and placing her into the role of a man. Yet, being born a girl who has boyhood violently imposed upon her (she did not choose what mama did to her) is also an incredibly important part of her lived experience. Being forced into boyhood, but growing into a man anyway became part of who she is. But, being a man isn’t just a part of who she became; it’s also expedient for her goals because men and women are ontologically different in her world and the system she lives under.

She's both because she's neither, because- ontologically- she fits nowhere. When other characters point out how "unlike" a man she is, she just shrugs it off, but not in a "well, yeah, because I'm NOT a man" sort of way, but in an "I'm unlike anyone, period," sort of way. She also does not seem offended by Madam Kaji saying that Mizu’s more man than any who have walked through her door.

(Mizu doesn’t even see herself as human, let alone a woman, as so defined by her society. And knowing that creators have stated her future arc is about coming into her “feminine era” or energy, I am actually scared that this show might fall into the trope of “domesticating”/“taming” the independent woman, complete with an allegory that her anger and lack of human-ness [in Mizu’s mind] is a result of a woman having too much “masculine energy” or being masculine in contravention of womanness.)

Some also seem to forget that once Mama and Mikio are dead, no one knows who she is or where she came from. They do not have her background, and they do not know about the bounty on her (who levied the bounty and why has not yet been explained). After their deaths, she could have gone free and started anew somehow. But in that moment, she chose to go back to life as a man and chose to pursue revenge for the circumstances of her birth. Going forward, this identity is no longer imposed upon her by Mama, or a result of erroneous conclusions from local kids and Master Eiji; it was because she wanted people to see her as a man and she was familiar with navigating her world, and thus her future, as a man. And it was because she was angry, too, and only men can act on their anger.

I do think it important to note that Mizu really began to allow herself to be vulnerable and open as a woman, until she was betrayed. The question I've been rattling around is: is this because she began to feel safe for the first time in her life, or is this part of how she sees women ontologically? Because she immediately returns to being a man and emotionally hard following her betrayal. But, she does seem willing to confide in Master Eiji, seek his advice, and convey her anxieties to him.

Being a man also confines Mizu to strict social boxes, and passing herself as a man is also dangerous.

Mizu doesn't suddenly get to do everything and anything she wants because she passes as a man. She has to consider her safety and the danger of her sex being "found out." She must also consider what will draw unnecessary attention to her and distract her from her goals. Many viewers, for example, were indignant that she did not offer to chaperone the mother and daughter and, instead, left them to the cold, only to drop some money at their feet later. The indignity fails consider that while she could bribe herself inside while passing as a man, she could not bribe in two strangers. Mizu is a strange man to that woman and does not necessarily have the social position to advocate for the mother and daughter. She also must consider that causing small social stirs would distract from her goals and draw certain attention to her. Mizu is also on a dangerous and violent quest.

Edo Japan was governed by strict class, age, and gender rules. Those rules applied to men as well as women. Mizu is still expected to act within these strict rules when she's a man. Being a man might allow her to pursue revenge, but she's still expected to put herself forward as a man, and that means following all the specific rules that apply to her class as a samurai, an artisan (or artist), and a man. That wide-brimmed hat, those orange-tinted glasses, and her laconic tendencies are also part of a performance. Being a boy is the first mask she wore and dance she performed, and she was originally (and tragically) forced into it.

Challenging the normative identities of her society does not guarantee her safety. She has limitations because of her "otherness," and the transgression of sex-prescribed roles has often landed people in hot water as opposed to saving them from boiling. Mizu is passing herself off as a man every day of her life at great risk to her. If her sex is "found out" on a larger scale, society won’t resort to or just start treating her as a woman. There are far worse fates than being perceived as a woman, and hers would not simply be a tsk-tsk, slap on the wrist; now you have to wear makeup. Let's not treat being a woman-- even with all the pressures, standards, fears, and risks that come with existing as a woman-- as the worst consequence for being ‘found out’ for transgressing normative identity.

The violence Mizu would face upon being "found out" won’t only be a consequence of being a "girl." Consider not just the fact she is female and “cross-dressing” (outside of theater), but also that she is a racial minority.

I also feel like many cis-het people either ignore or just cannot see the queerness in challenging gender roles (and thus also in stories that revolve around a subversion of sex-prescribed gender). They may not know how queerness-- or "otherness"-- leads to challenging strict social stratifications and binaries nor how challenging them is seen by the larger society as queer ("strange," "suspicious," "unconventional," even "dishonorable," and "fraudulent"), even when "queerness" (as in LGBTQ+) was not yet a concept as we understand it today.

Gender and sexuality- and the language we use to communicate who we are- varies greatly across time and culture. Edo Japan was governed by strict rules on what hairstyles, clothes, and weapons could be worn by which gender, age, and social group, and this was often enshrined in law. There were specific rules about who could have sex with whom and how. These values and rules were distinctly Japanese and would not incorporate Western influences until the late 1800s. Class was one of the most consequential features to define a person's fate in feudal Japan, and gender was quite stratified. This does not mean it's inappropriate for genderqueer people to see themselves in Mizu, nor does this mean that gender-variant identities didn’t exist in Edo Japan.

People in the past did not use the same language we do today to refer to themselves. Example: Alexander The Great did not call himself a "bisexual." We all understand this. However, there is a very weird trend of people using these differences in language and cultures across time to deny aspects of a historical person's life that societies today consider taboo, whether these aspects were considered taboo during that historical time period or not. Same example: people on Twitter complaining that Netflix "made" Alexander The Great "gay," and after people push back and point out that the man did, in fact, love and fuck men, hitting back with "homosexuality wasn't even a word back then" or "modern identity didn't exist back then." Sure, that word did not exist in 300s BCE Macedonia, but that doesn't mean the man didn't love men, nor does that mean that we can't recognize that he'd be considered "queer" by today's standards and language.

Genderqueer, as a word and as the concept is understood today, did not exist in feudal Japan, but the people did and feudal Japan had its own terms and concepts that referred to gender variance. But while the show takes place in Edo Japan, it is a modern adult animation series made by a French studio and two Americans (nationality). Mizu is additionally a fictional character, not a historical figure. She was not created in a vacuum. She was created in the 21st century and co-written by a man who got his start writing for Sex in the City and hails from a country that is in the midst of a giant moral panic about genderqueer/gender-variant people and gender non-conforming people.

This series was created by two Americans (nationality) for an American company. In some parts of that country, there are laws on the book strictly defining the bounds of men and women and dictating what clothes men and women could be prosecuted for wearing. Changes in language and identity over time mean that we can recognize that if Mizu lived in modern Texas, the law would consider her a drag performer, and modern political movements in the show creators' home country would include her under the queer umbrella.

So, yeah, there will also be genderqueer people who see themselves in Mizu, and there will be genderqueer fans who are firm about Mizu being queer to them and in their “headcanons.” The scene setting being Edo Japan, does not negate the modern ideas that influence the show. "Nonbinary didn't exist in Edo Japan" completely ignores that this show was created to explore the liminality of modern racial, gender, class, and normative identities. One of the creators was literally inspired by her own relationship with her biracial identity.

Ultimately, the fact Mizu, at this point in her journey, chooses to present and pass as a man and the fact her presented gender affects relationship dynamics with other characters (see: Taigen) gives this story a queer undertone. And this may have been largely unintentional: "She’s a girl, and he’s a guy, so, of course, they get together," < ignoring how said guy thinks she’s a guy and that she intentionally passes herself as a guy. Audiences ARE going to interpret this as queer because WE don’t live in Edo-era Japan. And I feel like people forget that Mizu can be a woman and the story can still have queer undertones to it at the same time.

#Blue Eye Samurai #‘If I was transported back in time… I’d try to pass myself off as a man for greater freedom.’#^^^ does not consider the intersection of historically queer existence across time with other identities (& the limitations those include)#nor does it consider the danger of such an action #I get it. some come to this conclusion simply because they know how dangerous it is to be a woman throughout history.#but rebuking the normative identities of that time period also puts you at great risk of violence #challenging norms and rules and social & political hierarchies does not make you safer #and it has always been those who exist in the margins of society who have challenged sociocultural systems #it has always been those at greatest risk and who've faced great violence already. like Mizu #Anyway... Mizu is just Mizu #she is gender queer (or gender-variant)#because her relationship with her gender is queer. because she is gender-variant #‘queer’ as a social/political class did not exist. but people WE understand as queer existed in different historical eras #and under different cultural systems #she’s a woman because queer did not exist & ‘woman’ was the sex caste she was born into #she’s also a woman because she conceptualizes herself as so #she is a woman AND she is gender-variant #she quite literally challenges normative identity and is a clear example of what sex non-conforming means #Before the actual. historic Tokugawa shogunate banned women from theater #there were women in the theater who cross-dressed for the theater and played male roles #so I’m also really tired of seeing takes along the lines of: ‘Edo Japan was backwards so cross dressers did’t exist then!’#like. please. be more transparent won’t you?

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baggebythesea · 1 month

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I really love the 'queer utopia' part of the She-Ra world building.

It's not a utopia in the sense that there are no problems - structural or otherwise (as amply demonstrated by pretty much the entire show). But there is no queer discrimination. Catra and Adora are not kept apart by homophobia but by war and abusive assholes. Bow struggles to come out to his parents not about his sexuality or gender, but about his career choice and politics. Hordak has a thousand problems, but the gender-transgressing aspects of his fashion sense is not one of them. No one hesitates to give Kyle shit, but if anyone would try to taunt him for being into boys it would just come across as weird.

And I love how that's reflected in the greater fanon when it comes to the question of how people of the same gender get children in next gen fics, because the answer is: In whatever way we feel like exploring today.

Just on the top of my head I have seen Adoption (formalised or 'is no one going to raise this urchin? Fine, I'll do it myself), Trans parents, Sperm donors, Sperm donors that's part of the greater family unit, downright policules, Magic (as in miracle, casual Etherian healthcare or 'comes with a price'), Mpreg and Fempregnation (magical or otherwise), Cloning (and other variants of 'build them ourselves'), Egg laying or simply "arrangements were made". Sometimes the same story mixes several modes, and there is never a discussion that one way is better than the other.

Kids are kids, and regardless how they came to be they will get into adorable and/or angsty shenanigans just like the rest of them.

#spop #analysis #spop next gen

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genderkoolaid · 7 months

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Tumblr.com/kikurihiroienjoyer/729469124420517889

Yknow i almost at least partially agreed w this post for a second (mainly in the context of certain cultures having different views on gender/sexuality than we do now) but then you randomly insult trans men in the tags and the reblog is nowhere better- I’m sorry but we kinda HAVE to infer certain figures are transmasc because trans men are consistently erased from records, even ones that explicitly said they were men get rewritten as “women escaping patriarchy by disguising as a man”

[obligatory Don't Harass People notice]

love how the post itself is so general and normal and then the tags just go full mask off "i'm mad that transmascs are talking about things >:(((" and then the rb tags which are just unchanged TERF rhetoric

the funny thing is if you actually acknowledge that modern labels and gender constructions can't be applied to historical figures then we have MORE potential figures in transmasc history. its when people cling to the idea of "they could be a lesbian OR a trans man, we can't say (so we'll assume she was cis)." for any kind of collective trans history to be narrated, we have to acknowledge that there are people who could not identify with our terms even if they wanted to, and that what makes them part of trans* history is not whether or not our labels can be applied to them, but the experiences shared between modern trans* people and people of queer/varied genders throughout history. Like when we talk about George Sand being part of transmasculine history, thats not because they were For Sure A Trans Guy, but because as cross-dressing woman they share trans*- (in the expansive "gender variant" sense) -masculine experiences.

L + ratio + "there's enough actual transmascs do that with" people hate us for calling them transmascs too + transmasculine history can also be feminist history if you understand transfeminism + why are you only complaining about transmascs here? do no transfems ever simplify historical figures and use modern terminology to describe their genders? + booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

#m.#ask box #examples of transandrophobia #transandrophobia #transmisandry #anti transmasculinity #transunity

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hussyknee · 4 months

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I accidentally deleted this ask yesterday but fortunately had a screenshot. Ngl I'm kind of ??? about it because...why would you single out Hinduism to pick the most fundamentalist, cultural and political aspect of it, that's not even practised in most the Hindu minorities outside of India? Nearly every community in India has a caste system regardless of religion. Within Hinduism there's no just one caste system either. Eelam Tamil Hindus have a caste system, but it's not as violent as India's (although of course still violent and oppressive). Sinhalese have a caste system too, and the ones still invested in it would swear blind this was related to Buddhism somehow, a doctrine that preaches against inequality of any kind. Caste systems are literally haram in Islam and yet some Muslim communities managed to rationalize creating one because they wanted to assimilate into the worst of us I guess.

I know fuck all about Hinduism to tell you the truth, but my sister is a convert and devotee of Durga Matha. I asked her about it and she sent me this:

There are as many variants of Hinduism as there are varieties of grass. The only thing they have in common is the Vedas which is a bunch of hymns and stuff. It doesn't really go into detail about caste.

The caste system comes from a book called Manu Smriti. Some accept it as a Hindu text, some don't. Hinduism isn't even a religion actually. It's a bunch of similar belief systems that the Britishers lumped in together for ease of classification. Within Hinduism there are many sects- Saivism, Shaktism, Vaishnavism, etc. So to define Hinduism as some sort of oppressive religion doesn't make sense because it isn't a religion as Westerners define it. Anyway, truth is everyone cherry picks the parts of religion that suits them and discards the rest. Some think that's being dishonest. I think that's just common sense.

This makes sense to me. It's very colonial to monolithize belief systems that evolved from the disparate religious texts and syncretic practices of dozens of kingdoms and dynasties over 4000 years, just because it shares the unique character of belonging to the Indian subcontinent. (Which is precisely why its propagated by Hindutva nutcases. They're imperialist colonizers permanently snorting Indian manifest destiny crack.)

Bestie. Friendo. My guy (gender neutral). Ideology doesn't shape society. People wrap ideology around what they already want to believe and do. This is how you get Zionists (both Christian and Jewish), Wahabi/Salafi Muslims, Hindutvas and... whatever we're supposed to call this current iteration of Theravadin Buddhism that is also characterized by ethnosupremacy and genocide. Religion takes the character of the individuals and ideologues that choose to follow it. There are no exceptions.

To reiterate the point that inspired this ask: Some LGBT folks's queerness is inextricable from their religious identity. Stigmatising and ostracizing religion in queer spaces is alienating, racist and violent. Just like no one should force religion on you, no one should force secularism on people either. There is enough air for us all to breathe free.

#religion #hinduism #religious tolerance #casteism #social stratification #buddhism #islam #anti zionism #hindutva #culture and society #racism #colonialism #christianity #knee of huss #asks #anon #sri lanka

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xuexishijian · 8 months

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The Ballad of Mulan: 木兰诗 mù lán shī

I was curious about what the original story was like, so I looked up (a version of) the original text. It was really interesting and eye-opening because (unsurprisingly?) it's nothing like the Disney movie(s). The only real similarity is the premise: a young woman with no older brother takes her elderly father's place in the war draft. Apart from that, about every other detail is different:

Mulan has siblings: an older sister and a younger brother.

The ruler of this kingdom is referred to as the Khan/Khagan (可汗) and as the Son of Heaven (天子), titles used together for the emperors of the Northern Wei Dynasty (北魏 386–535 CE).

Mulan is never discovered to be a woman during her time in the army, spending 12 years there.

The enemy is never specified explicitly, though historically this may have been the Rouran (柔然) in present-day Inner Mongolia (内蒙古). Places that Mulan passes include the Yellow River (黄河), the Black Mountain (黑山, thought to be southeast of Huhhot 呼和浩特, Inner Mongolia), and the Yan Mountain (燕山, referring to either the 阴山 Yīn mountains of Inner Mongolia or the 燕然山 Yānrán mountains of Mongolia 蒙古).

The description of her journey is much longer and more colorful than anything about the war itself, providing imagery and parallel structure that differs from the rest of the poem.

On the soldiers' return, the emperor offers Mulan a government position (尚书郎), which she turns down, asking only for a 明驼 to return her home across the 万里 that separated her from her family. I wasn't sure if this "camel" was to be taken literally; translations I found differed on whether this was a camel, a horse, or some magical version of these which traveled at incredible speed.

The soldiers only discover that Mulan is a woman when she returns home, changing back into her old clothing (旧时裳), pulling her hair back into a feminine style, and applying makeup. I found it curious just how quickly she readjusted to her old life.

The last lines of the poem were also really beautiful and spoke to me in a queer way. It says that when you see a pair of rabbits, male and female, running together, side by side, how can you tell them apart?

雄兔脚扑朔，雌兔眼迷离，双兔傍地走，安能辨我是雄雌？

These lines include a chengyu, 扑朔迷离, meaning "complicated, confusing," which originally comes from this passage, referring to the difficulty in telling apart the male and female rabbits. "The male's foot is twitching, the female's eyes are squinted, blurry," but these small differences aren't noticeable from afar or when the rabbits are in motion. Though you might eventually be able to pick out some small details regarding the sexes of the rabbits, in the end it doesn't really matter. To the hunter, for instance, these are both simply targets; their sex is inconsequential.

For Mulan, in her role in the army, it didn't matter that she wasn't a man; she completed her tasks regardless. (And not only did she complete them, she earned recognition from the emperor for her work.)

Transphobes online may waste hours picking apart the details of people's bodies that they deem gender variant, but in the end, in many cases, people simply don't care whether the rabbit has twitchy feet or squinted eyes or whatever else. A rabbit is a rabbit, and our genders are rarely, if ever, consequential enough to the task at hand to merit such scrutiny.

安能辩我是雄雌？你到底为什么要知道？

#中文 #汉语 #mandarin #mandarin studyblr #langblr #mandarin langblr #木兰诗 #诗 #mulan #the ballad of mulan

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copperbadge · 2 years

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strictly-script

Hey can you backwards engineer some gender neutral version of sir/ma'am

I can! And I will. But I’m going to walk you through it because you guys can do this too. I have no special skills other than having taken Latin 20 years ago. :D

Bit of a plug first: this is a technique that I am using to de-gender a number of royal ranks in my books -- for example, the retired king has declared his nonbinary partner “Caez”, shortened from Caesar, to replace king/queen. In a book not yet published, his granddaughter is offered prince, princess, or the gender-neutral princeps when she’s adopted, and although she identifies as female, she chooses princeps because she doesn’t like the word princess. Ledan came about because I was trying to decide what one character, a duke known for his irreverence, might call a person at the rank of lord or lady if he wanted to make fun of himself a bit for not knowing their gender.

Okay, now that I’ve got the obligatory “Hey look, queer romance novels” out of the way, let’s dive in...

So, what you want to know is the origins of the words Sir and Madam. With Lord and Lady they came from the same general place -- Old English derived from the Germanic -- so it was easy to just go “Bread watcher? Bread maker? Sure let’s find something else you can do with bread” and go from there. This will not always be the case, and it isn’t here, but that makes things extra-interesting.

What you’re going to do is go to Wiktionary.org and search the terms you want to work backward from. In this case we want to search Sir, and we also want to search Madam, which is what Ma’am comes from.

On the page for Sir, we click “etymology” under English or scroll down to it, and we get the history of the word. How far back you go in this history can vary by what kind of word you’d like to use. In this case we know the history goes sir > sire > French Sire (master, sir, lord) > Latin senior (elder) > Latin Senex (old). I like to go all the way back to the Latin, but let’s hold that thought.

Now that we have Sir identified, we’ll check out Madam, from which we get the history ma’am > madam > madame > Old French madame (”my” and “lady”) > post-classical Latin mea domina, which also means generally “my lady” although it has a more specific meaning we’ll get to shortly.

So we have a couple of options!

We can take “Senex” which is more closely related to the masculine “Sir” but is in itself generally neutral, and come up with “Sen”, which has no meaning in Latin on its own but we’re not speaking Latin, we’re speaking English, which shortens everything anyway.

We can also look at “ma domina” and take that apart -- domina and dominus concern the home, the physical building, using the same root we get “domicile” and “domain”. So you could click through from domina to dominus to domus, and go with “ma domus”, since domus has connotations of household, family, etc. Ma Domus might shorten to M’us. It could also shorten to “ma’do”, but that’s two syllables and I like to retain the syllable count of the original words. And also M’us or even just Mus sounds like you’re saying Moose. Which, Moose is a pretty cool name to call a nonbinary friend, but may be taken amiss by strangers. It strikes me that M’us could be used as a term of respect specifically for someone in your family -- a parent or grandparent, a cousin or zaza. There’s a hint of familiarity there.

We could go one step further and look at the implications of the word origins -- both are addressing a superior in rank, but “sir” emphasizes age, while “ma’am” emphasizes economic power. Now, if we want to break away from both of those we could decide that instead we want to respect a different kind of power -- say, the power of a teacher we trust and look up to. Wiktionary tells us that teacher derives from the verb “teach”, and at the etymology of teach we find several variants including techen, taecan, taikijan, taikijana, and deyk (as a prefix). I rather like Deyk, because a) it shortens nicely to Dey, b) if you’re talking to someone you respect it’s sincere but if you’re talking to someone you don’t respect it’s easily sarcastic, and c) if you’re talking to someone you don’t respect you can throw a little k in, so that it sounds like you’re calling them Dey but you’re actually calling them Dick.

Of these options I really do prefer Sen. It sounds nice, it’s not a homophone for anything weird, and it implies respect for the person’s experience. If I were writing a novel with a nonbinary honorific I might go with Dey just because there’s more scope for wordplay and nuance, but in actual life I think Sen’s quite nice.

So yeah it’s fun and interesting and you get to learn the weird-ass histories of weird-ass words. I encourage everyone to make their own!

#strictly-script #gender

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taw-k · 14 days

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There was no representation in the Loki series AND I DON'T COUNT SYLVIE AS REP. Apparently she's not even fluid, which is fine, there's probably a straight, Lululemon wearing, Stanley cup having, Starbucks loving version of me in another universe but why include that character when Loki is a very important queer character to some people. I don't count lokius either cuz that's not cannon obviously. GIVE LOKI A BOYFRIEND! LET HIM WEAR A DRESS AS A MAN AND WOMAN! LET HIM TALK ABOUT HIS GENDER IDENTITY AND WHO HE LOVES YOU ASSHOLES!!! And the other Loki's going "wha- woman variant!!! That's so wacky!" Is so stupid because even if they all happened to be the non genderfluid versions of Loki in the infinite universe ITS NOT THAT HARD TO COMPREHEND!! I would be surprised if there was a version of me made of solid frozen piss, it's the multiverse!!!

#loki #marvel #loki laufeyson #loki laufeydottir #loki laufeychild #loki series #larry series #sylvie #anti sylvie #anti loki series #lgbtqia #representation

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dropout-if · 8 months

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Hello! I was wondering how queer relationships will be handled in your story? Will there be any difference between them and straight romances? For example, if my gay MC is romancing Jean, will there be some different dialogue than if my MC were a girl? I'm down to read no matter what, just like to gauge this when reading IF's! 😊🏳️‍🌈

Queer relationships are completely different from straight ones^^

Uma is probably the one with the least changes now that I think about it. They react to MC's gender but the variants are sort of similar.

Travis and Kai + Uma are the only three ROs who are openly out of the closet. They acknowledge MC's gender but they don't really care ajdka their attitude is the same regardless. Kai is more open with their very based "fuck homophobes" policy and they do give more reactions when out in public with MC. Maybe Fem!Kai more so than Male!Kai because of Liv^^ but don't quote me on that^^

Wanda doesn't hide the fact that she's queer but she's surprisingly not as open about it. People really don't like her so she takes a page off of J's book and has decided to remain in the closet just in case! Wanda and a female/enby!MC will often be mistaken as "friends" publicly.

Jade/Jean isn't really ashamed of being queer but they do feel a strange sense of empowerment by "fitting in" the spectrum of normalcy (cis white hetero). J is also kind of scared of their father not accepting that side of them. They see no positive outcome in coming out of the closet, and so they don't want to. Same-sex relationship/enby MC and J have a secret relationship instead of dating openly.

Statler has two completely different routes depending on gender. Their queerness is something they feel ashamed of, and they've repressed that side of them to the point where they can just... pretend it's not there. Statler has a lot of internalized homophobia. They'll never be outwardly negative toward any queer characters, all of Statler's hate is reserved to themself. It's a "Statler-thing".

#dropout if #dropout #ask #ros #j gray #kai alofa #statler amani #travis camaro #uma bharat #wanda pavon #gameplay

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lavfeyson · 9 months

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loki season two is starting to be promoted and here’s your reminder NOT to watch it

the loki show did damage to not only loki’s character as a whole, but to bisexual and genderfluid people as well.

for years, loki has been a comic character that is well known for their bisexuality and genderfluidity. a huge component to this was the ‘loki: agent of asgard’ series written by al ewing (a personal favorite of mine). many queer people opened up their arms to welcome this representation. had i known i was bisexual at the time that mcu loki was my favorite character ever, i just know i would’ve been ecstatic, which i was when the first looks at season one came out.

the first red flag should’ve been when it was revealed that in loki’s tva files, his sex was labeled as “fluid” when it’s actually his gender. i remember people being skeptical and wary about it but continued to hope for the representation that the cast promised in interviews beforehand. (if anyone is able to find which interview this was in, please let me know so i could link it.)

then as the series went on for the next six weeks, hopes of there being representation dwindled. there was the line of “a bit of both” when sylvie asked if loki courted princes or princesses and he assumed it was the same for sylvie, which was SOMETHING at the time! people were happy… for the first few days or so. we quickly realized that this was probably disney’s way of telling but never showing considering their infamous prejudice against lgbt+ rep. it was quite literally the bare minimum — a throwaway line so to say that could easily be forgotten by the average viewer. i recall that lots of people were huge shippers of loki x mobius and thought that maybe, just MAYBE, there would be something more explicitly romantic between them and hey, maybe there will be in season two! but it’s disney. you can understand that there’s not a whole lot of hope.

then comes loki’s genderfluidity. to start off, the whole existence of sylvie is the most damaging. in agent of asgard, loki has confirmed that no matter how she presents, she is always loki. there’s no “female/lady loki”, it’s all JUST loki. so to change up loki’s name, bleach her hair, and contradict whether or not she IS actually loki throughout the show is… questionable.

the line of “have you ever met a woman variant?” was just insane writing. all lokis can identify/present as women if they please!!! their shapeshifting abilities give them an advantage of presentation being easy for them, but all in all, every single loki can canonically identify as a woman. when that line was delivered, all the other loki variants looked confused as if they didn’t know. loki’s genderfluidity was never at the forefront of the writers’ minds, writers that were caught to be fucking weirdos on twitter! you can find what old tweets i’m talking about on twitter… but i digress. why would the loki variants not know such an integral part of their identity?

and the KISS. THE FUCKING KISS. we’re not angry that loki kissed a female-presenting character instead of mobius like many wished, no no no that’s not the big issue because bisexuals should never have to prove their bisexuality to anyone and they can kiss whoever the hell they want. we’re angry because loki kissed a female-presenting variant of HIMSELF. all throughout the first season, the writers went out of their way to try to differentiate sylvie from loki despite sylvie having been born as a loki variant, but there’s literally no way to separate sylvie from their lineage because at the end of the day, that’s who she was born as. no amount of bleach will change that fact. (i hope i made this easy to understand; not a lot of people get why this is an issue.) and regardless of whether or not that kiss was romantic, the fact that it even HAPPENED was a slap in the face to genderfluid fans of loki, and if the leaks for season two are right, that whole thing between the two will be continued since most of the season one writers worked on season two as well.

on top of this awful rep, known abuser jonathan majors will be in season two as another kang variant. i’ve heard that marvel had bigger plans for him, but due to these allegations, they’re limiting his presence as seen in the trailer, obviously meaning that they know.

hence why i ask fans to boycott/simply not tune in for season two if you care about queer people. if you’re desperate to watch, at least don’t use disney+. just because s2d is gone doesn’t mean other websites don’t exist. i also recommend reading ‘agent of asgard’. if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me and please be respectful; your feelings about the show don’t dictate how hundreds of others feel, especially if their concerns are valid.

#loki #loki show #loki series #loki season two #loki trailer #loki laufeyson #mcu loki #anti sylvie #anti loki series #marvel #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #lgbtqia #queer rep in media #lily speaks tumblr edition

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pillowprincessvarric · 11 months

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please tell us more about dwarven LGBT terminology

Okay here's the stuff I have that I feel most solid on. Like, some boiler plate gender terminology, mostly.

"Eida" is basically a gender neutral version of man/woman, but it's not really the same as like, "person". You're not supposed to use it to refer to someone whose gender is unknown to you, it means their gender is known to you and they are neither/both. It's from the old language and there isn't really an exact equivalent in common/trade tongue, which is why it's still used.

"Eida kal-amgetoll" or slightly more rarely "eida kal-mara" are basically dated terms for being trans/gender variant. They used to be the go-to terminology but in the modern day are largely considered to be derogatory, in a "don't call anyone that unless you know they're okay with it" kind of way. It's kind of like "transsexual", with eida tunshavar being more like "transgender". "Eida tunshavar" is the current most commonly accepted polite term.

To break those down further:

"Tunshavar", when used literally, refers to the light level when you're leaving a dark cave (or room) and entering a well-lit one. It's like twilight if you live underground. Commonly accepted translations are "twilight", "half-lit", and "low lit" or "softly lit". Colloquially it means you have a non-straight sexual orientation, because it describes being in-between two states and homosexuality was traditionally seen as being "between" reproductive heterosexuality & celibacy (It's complicated). In recent decades it's expanded to be more of an umbrella term for all LGBT identities, similar to queer, but still generally "tunshavar" refers to sexual orientation, and "eida tunshavar" refers to gender identity.

(Sometimes Orzammarians just say half-lit when speaking in Common instead of tunshavar, and unfortunately this can cause misunderstandings because in surfacer Common similar terms like "dim" and "not bright" have, different connotations)

"Kal-amgetoll" & "kal-mara" are "husband" & "wife", respectively. Historically husband & wife were not as strictly gendered as they are now, they referred to your position in the household. Like yeah 90% of the time men were husbands and women were wives but not always. Only bringing this up to make it clear that eida kal-amgetoll and eida kal-mara are not 1-to-1 trans man/trans woman lol. There's some other nuances involved.

Kal-amgetoll and kal-mara are not really used much on their own in the modern day, but husband & wife are used in Common sometimes in a way kinda similar to butch & fem(me). Occasionally as a noun (ex. "I'm a Wife") but more often as an adjective (ex. "She's kind of husband") This is more common in the lower castes than the upper ones.

Also big hairy gay Orzammarian guys get called Brontos just because I think that's funny

#hope any of this is legible or interesting alsjidksk. i do intend to elaborate eventually.#ask #orzammar tag

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gatheringbones · 1 year

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[“Alex tells me he had long been aware of the existence of transsexuals, and he had even contemplated transitioning earlier in his life. He had known a couple of people over the years who had transitioned, but he had no idea of how to go about doing so, and he lacked the money and the wherewithal.

In the early 1990s, “the conversation changed,” he says, making it possible for him to contemplate transitioning. He heard about support groups for transgender men. FTM groups were forming in San Francisco and Seattle. A burgeoning “queer” movement was challenging the dominance of radical feminist ideas and was offering female-assigned individuals who wished to embrace their inner maleness a way to do so affirmatively, with a sense of pride. Writers and activists like Sandy Stone and Kate Bornstein were talking about a different, more expansive understanding of the radical potential of gender switching, rejecting medicalized notions of trans people as having the “wrong body,” or as being mentally deficient. The term “transgender” was established as a way to move beyond the medical model of “transsexualism” and to include a broad array of gender-variant persons who wished to challenge the binary. It enabled Alex to call himself transgender.

“I did not want to have to say I was ‘crazy.’ I don’t even like saying I’m dysphoric, though I fit the narrative,” says Alex. “I didn’t start T until I found a very good doctor who didn’t demand a letter from a therapist. I wouldn’t confess dysphoria in order to get access to top surgery. I won’t do it. Why would I want to make myself even more marginal?” However, once there was a “weakening of pathology, of judgment,” he decided to move forward.

Meanwhile, Kristin, Alex’s closest friend, settled in Seattle after graduation, where she found an accepting culture and a lively butch presence in the lesbian community. She worked for a state representative, and when she visited the state capitol to lobby on his behalf, people sometimes perceived her “as a boy.” But mainly she felt okay about looking different, and she fell in love with a woman, Jennie, who affirmed her right to be who she was. Kristin is pretty flat chested and small hipped, and “looks like she wants to,” more or less. She presented as a masculine female. It helped that her family tended to be supportive. “Even though I don’t really operate as a woman, I operate in the sphere of women, and there were a lot of really strong women in my big Polish family!” Also her dad, now deceased, was queer, and her brother (who appears in this book) is a transgender man.

Because Kristin, unlike Alex, received a lot of support for her gender nonconformity, she said it never became a major source of distress for her—which isn’t to say that it hasn’t been a challenge at times. She contemplated transitioning for a while but eventually made peace with her body. Being in therapy helped. “I thought that my anxiety was special and everyone else was normal,” she tells me. But as she found ways to ease her generalized sense of anxiety, she became more comfortable with her body and her gender nonconformity. “I thought, ‘Why do I care so much about what other people think about my gender?’ I have a right. I have a fucking right to be who I am,” she tells me, her voice cracking.

And as she became more comfortable with herself, she found ways to deal with bathroom confrontations. “Now when people come up to me and tell me I’m in the wrong bathroom, sometimes I look my body up and down and look at them quizzically and say, ‘Oh, really?’ Thanks!” She makes light of it. “The more comfortable I am, the more likely they are to think I’m in the right place and leave me alone. Now it’s even funny at times.” But airports, she says, are still particularly challenging. Heightened security seems to extend to the policing of gendered bodies in bathrooms. The other day, a blond woman in her fifties came over to her as she entered a bathroom stall and started yelling, “You’re in the wrong place—the men’s room is over there.” Kristin just smiled and said, “Thank you,” and the woman left in a hurry.

“I get why some people transition,” says Kristin, “to be normal, and not have people gawking at you all day. It takes a whole lot of energy.” Still, she came to the conclusion that transitioning would not solve her problems, and that it might open up new, unknown challenges.

Alex, on the other hand, made the decision to modify his body and present as a male, and it has made his life much easier. He no longer gets harassed walking down the street, and he’s no longer as angry. “I still look young,” he tells me, “but at least the beard and receding hairline prove I’m through puberty!” He is much happier now, he says. “I honestly don’t feel I’ve changed that much. That is, ‘transitioning’ didn’t change me so much as it forced others to see me as I saw myself. Yes, the bodily transformations were welcome and comforting. I felt that I was finally ‘home.’ But how do you separate that feeling from the sense that you’re finally recognized by others for how you see yourself?”]

arlene stein, from unbound: transgender men and the remaking of identity, 2018

#arlene stein #gender stuff #currently reading #trans literature #lesbian literature

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tarucore · 3 months

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DC has once again accidentally given Dick Grayson an interesting character trait by being repressed bigots and I can’t stop thinking about it

Specifically this time I’m thinking about how they keep queerbaiting Dick but it actually makes sense with his character if you think about it for two seconds

Because No, I Don’t Think That He Would be open about his sexuality with others, if he has come to terms with it at all

While I’d love to talk about the history of queerness in comics, I don’t have the energy for it right now. What I will say however is that modern day Dick Grayson is written as a very millennial character, in both fan-spaces and modern comics despite whatever age the retcons have set

I think people forget how far queer acceptance has come in recent history, twenty years ago, even ten years ago, we were not at the place we are now, it’s honestly insane how quickly things changed from 2015 to now

Like, No He Wouldn’t be ‘out and proud’ in the Gen Z sense, most older gay people that I know are private about their gender and sexuality, either because of bullying when they were younger, abuse, or the media never picturing queer people as anything other than villains or jokes

He’s had constant media pressure on him from an early age, in both aspects of his identity, his ethnicity already makes him stray from the ideal cishet WASP that a private school and Bruce’s social circles would want him to be, even as he got older his love life was in the public eye when he dated Kori as Dick Grayson

And that’s not even getting into how his relationship with his sexuality would be affected by his history of sexual abuse

Him appearing on pride covers/events or openly supporting queer people in the text is different from him turning to the audience and saying “Hey, I’m bisexual,” or “Did you know that I’ve always been demisexual and biromantic?” or even a “I like guys too,” and frankly it would be out of character for him to say so

For some people, being out to close family and friends is wildly different from ‘coming out,’ especially for a public figure like Dick Grayson or Nightwing is in his world. And I feel like that could make an interesting dynamic with a member of his family like Tim, who is out publicly as Tim Drake-Wayne. Tim who is written as a part of Gen Z in his early twenties or something rn (even though 90’s kid Tim will always have my heart)

And this is a personal anecdote but I’m thinking about how my little sister and I were standing in the checkout line one day and she starts talking about how gay an outfit that I tried on looked, and how quickly I changed the subject. She about nine years younger than me but old enough to know that we live in a conservative area. It was a bit panic inducing, and it’s so interesting to think about how even though I’m on the older side of Gen Z, I was still raised in a culture that said we don’t talk about these things especially not in public. Like I was still called a dyke in middle school but when I hit junior year all of a sudden it was trendy (if a bit fetishized) to be bi. She, thankfully, never really has to deal with that

So whenever he’s on a pride variant cover and people are complaining about a lack of formal representation, all I can do is seethe bc yes it’s completely in character for him but obviously detective comics comics isn’t doing it on purpose

#he would not say that but it’s about dick being open about aspects of his identity #and this isn’t to say I hate fanon AUs where everyone is gay with no consequences and homophobia doesn’t exist #I just was thinking about how DC keeps baiting the fandom with little quips and covers and cameos #but if they had him outright come out on page and pretended like he’s never had any struggles with his sexuality I think I’d actually riot #he strikes me as the kind of person to come out to his family much later in life #after he’s got everything in his brain figured out #when Dick Grayson trusts you with information about his life he’s giving you a gift #and it’s shown that he’s only going to give it to people he knows won’t use it to their advantage #dick grayson analysis #dick grayson #this got long #*

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buttercups-song · 7 months

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Alright, so I’ve seen a couple of hot takes that there is no queerbaiting in the Loki show (and what’s even funnier that mcu has never queerbaited) because Loki is canonically queer… and like… alright so there’s no queerbaiting in spn because technically speaking cas is queer? Queerbaiting is a marketing strategy so even if we ignore what’s in the show, the chemistry between actors and some truly insane acting choices, the Loki show is queerbaiting because of how it was marketed, and especially how the first season was marketed. Before the show aired we were told that Loki was going to have multiple love interests, we were told that sophia di martino was playing loki (and told so in a way that suggested that she was playing ‘our’ loki). There is a part of the soundtrack that is literally named ‘lokius’. Even before this season started airing the marketing heavily focused on the relationship between Loki and mobius, reassuring us that Our Loki would be with Our mobius.

And alright I’ll give them that they confirmed that loki is bi/pan in episode three and let’s ignore that the confirmation was two seconds long, pretty vague, had no impact on the plot nor characters and wasn’t mentioned ever again. Ok. Fine. Honestly my much bigger gripe is with how they handled Loki’s gender.

Which is to say that they fucked up. Despite Loki being gender-fluid in the comics and despite how the show was marketed, the text of the show heavily suggests that both our Loki and Sylvie are cis. Ok so the arrest report in the credit says: “sex: fluid”. Which is completely different from saying (and showing) that Loki is gender-fluid. What is shown in the show (or rather in the credits, which let’s be real almost no one bothers to read) is that Loki’s sex is fluid… which yes he’s a shapeshifter. That’s not representation, they don’t say that Loki is trans, the fans can read it that way, but disney doesn’t have to fear backlash from conservatives because Loki in the show is not gender-fluid, he’s a shapeshifter (who doesn’t shapeshift for some reason). Sylvie literally says that she was born a “goddess of mischief”, every single other Loki is shocked by the idea of a ‘female version’ of them. It’s supposed to be a #girlboss moment but it’s not! It reads like every Loki is a (cis) man! And sure you can have a head canon that they’re shocked that Sylvie is exclusively presenting as a woman, or that Sylvie is not cis but obviously was born a goddess. But that’s not what’s in the text. From episode one when talking about the variant they’re hunting everyone in the tva uses ‘he’ pronoun when referring to them. Why? All they know is that they’re hunting a loki, so if Loki is gender-fluid (or even if their ‘sex is fluid’ as referred to in the show) why assume that the variant they’re looking for is a he? (Probably for the extremely obvious plot twist when Sylvie shows up). I’m actually so mad about this, gender-fluid representation is so rare and they took a canonically gender-fluid character and did what?

There’s so much queerbaiting in the show! And they know what they’re doing! It’s not a coincidence that they’re leaning so much into loki and mobius’ banter! It’s not a coincidence that in the First episode (!) of season two we get a scene in which Loki before pruning himself goes “if I don’t make it back, I…” which is meant to sound like a beginning of a confession! Which was a beginning of a confession last season when it was directed towards sylvie! It’s almost exactly the same scene! But let’s be real, he probably was going to say something like: “if I don’t make it back, find sylvie”.

Why are we still getting this treatment in 2023? (because it clearly pays well) If they didn’t want to give us good queer rep, why market it as such? Loki is queer in the comics, he wasn’t canonically queer in the movies (despite the immaculate vibes). They could have left it alone. I’m sure that many people still would have shipped Loki and mobius because of the incredible chemistry between actors and (let’s be real) that just how fandoms work, but that wouldn’t count as queerbaiting, because again that’s a marketing strategy.

#how many essays about Loki can I write?#loki #loki season 2 #loki show #take a shot every time I use the term queerbaiting #please don’t you’ll die

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lokiinmediasideblog · 7 months

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I Intentionally Start Shit in the Loki Tag

If you complain about Sylvie being "harmful queer rep" BUT want "Lady Loki" in the MCU, which was Loki possessing Sif's body just to torment Sif, I need you to sit down and shut up. a. Genderfluid people don't go by "Lady " when they're femme or women. b. If you don't see the transphobic dogwhistles in the comics possession subplot, I don't know what to tell you... But let's say that hag that wrote those crappy books would love it. c. If you weren't aware about this, maybe you should read the wiki at least before giving uninformed opinions.

I definitely agree that they should not have led people on with the promise of genderfluid rep during the promotion of the series. But get mad at Disney/Marvel for that. Not at the writers or Sophia Di Martino that had to cave in to Feige's demands. That's literally what they have to do.

I really don't give a damn about the "autogynephilia" allegations, which again, is ALSO PRESENT IN CIS WOMEN. Like why the fuck should I care about someone finding themselves hot? There's fascists out there. AGP even if it was a trans-specific thing harms no one. The only harm said to come from it is DUE TO FASCISM because it plays into RESPECTABILITY POLITICS.

If you use AI to create a "proper" Lady Loki or love interest for Loki, you can't complain about the blatant product placement in S2. I am not a fan of product placement either and won't defend it, but those are the rules. Show some integrity. And before you ask, I have not given a cent to Disney since they pissed me off with attempts to trademark Dia de los Muertos for Coco.

If you complain about how being a "Loki" is not a role (unlike Spiderman) and how it should have been all 100% Tom Hiddleston, you don't get to call it selfcest as a gotcha, because you're already differentiating between the variants with different DNA. Like do y'all hate selfcest or not? Make up your mind. The series treats a Loki as an archetype of sorts, so it can be a role. Also, having the same name does not make you related because we don't know what Sylvie's parents are? And we don't even know if Sylvie is also a Jotun, a prop claims she isn't.

If you say you want Sylvie dead but claim to not be misogynistic, because you'd love if a specific love interest from the comics or mythology replaced her, STFU. You only like those because you can project whatever the fuck you want onto them.

If you claim Sylvie is a misogynistic depiction of women but salivate over characters written by cishet white men in the 1960s-1980s that made wanting to fuck Thor or being in a monogamous marriage with Loki their entire personality (there's so MANY OF THESE), STFU. Do you hear yourself? And no, it's not misogynistic of me, a woman, to criticize offensive depictions of women by cishet white men. They're not real.

Our MCU!Loki is not the young adult Ikol reincarnation currently. Of course 20-something Verity is not going to be there! The Loki show should be praise for having multiple female cast members around the same age as the protagonist and pragmatic clothing choices that allowed SdM to nurse her baby.

Selfcest isn't real and I cry tears of boredom whenever someone clutches their pearls over it.

The comics aren't perfect. As much as I loved the recent Dan Watters run (and German Peralta's art), the comics art has some very questionable tendencies, especially regarding Loki's nose when she's femme. It's associated with how some kinds of facial features are considered masculine or feminine (and racialized). Noses have no gender, ffs! Women with nose bumps exist! For some reason Loki always has a tiny button nose when she's a woman or femme. There's also the BLATANT physiognomy that has ALWAYS PLAGUED Thor comics since their inception, and Loki's facial features as they've become more "grey" and less evil is an interesting study. Peralta's far from being the only artist with this problem, and is far from being the most problematic. For comparison from Loki (2023) run:

Loki from ye olden days:

#selfcest #mcu!loki #comics!loki #mcu!sylvie #marvel comics #loki series #physiognomy #queer rep #istartshit #hot takes

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coraniaid · 9 months

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I know that Halloween isn’t really one of the very best Buffy episodes. (I mean, it’s not even the best Halloween-themed Buffy episode.) I know that its discussion of gender roles is, at best, kind of questionable; I know that Buffy’s idea of what a noblewoman would actually do all day is laughably shallow; I know that this is pretty clearly one of the early episodes when the show was mostly being written by men. I even know that the special effects aren’t that good. And I definitely know that Angel’s “you’re not like other girls (who by the way I find beneath contempt, so don’t necessarily take that as a compliment)” speech to Buffy at the end is almost certainly meant to be romantic and not the huge red flag it actually is.

But. Unfortunately I also know that I love this episode. As a certain recurring vampire would say, it’s just … neat.

A couple of interesting things have been happening over the past few episodes of this rewatch.

One is that the world of the show has been getting bigger, or rather more solid. We’re starting to see characters outside the Core Four who actually seem to have lives of their own and don’t just vanish back into the void once their episode is over. Spike and Dru are the big ones, of course (the Master is a fun enough villain but he isn’t by any stretch of the imagination a person you can imagine having a rich inner life), but in Inca Mummy Girl we also met Devon and Oz and Jonathan, all of whom will appear multiple times this season, and this episode introduces Ethan and Larry.

(Purely coincidentally, Larry and Ethan have more in common than just first appearing in this episode. They are both gay men – or at least a heavily queer-coded man, in Ethan’s case – who will recur only a few times before being written out of the show in ways that I’m actually still kind of mad about. But I’ll save that rant for later in the rewatch, assuming I get far enough.)

One of my biggest criticisms of the first season is how many times the show will introduce a new student (or group of students), insist that they’ve always been there, then completely forget about them forty-five minutes later. The only genuinely recurring minor character that season was Harmony, and she was only in two episodes and not even mentioned in any of the others. Amy will return later but so far she’s just another example of the show introducing a character, establishing that Willow’s known them for years, then insisting that they don’t exist the next episode. But that’s starting to change now, even if we’re not quite there yet – the next episode’s Lie To Me will arguably pull a variant of the exact same trick with Billy Fordham – and even if it isn’t something the show ever really grows out of completely.

Speaking of Willow, that’s the other big change that’s been happening, and the one I want to talk about most: Willow’s been slowly becoming more central to the show. This is another slow process which won’t really finish this season, but the signs are there already.

In the first season of Buffy, I’d argue that there’s a very clear hierarchy in terms of how much attention the show gives the Core Four: Buffy is, of course, the central character, but after that the writers clearly think Giles is more important than Xander who is more important than Willow.

This shows up in a few ways. Speaking time is the one that’s easiest to quantify (roughly speaking, over the whole of the first season for every four minutes Willow speaks Xander will speak for five minutes, Giles will speak for seven minutes and Buffy will speak for eleven minutes), but I think this claim is also true if we consider things like how often they get to directly impact the plot or how much attention the show gives to both their relationship to Buffy and their lives outside of Buffy. (Outside of I Robot, You Jane S1!Willow mostly exists to pine over Xander, to be rescued from danger by Buffy and to provide the sort of high school level exposition that Giles can’t deliver.)

That’s still true to a large extent in early Season 2 – Willow definitely is still pining over Xander, Buffy did go to rescue her in When She Was Bad and Willow still does get to deliver a lot of exposition – but it will stop being true by the time the season is over. From Season 3 onward, I think it’s very clear that Willow is the most important member of the Scooby Gang after Buffy herself. (In fact, in Season 6 I think you could argue that they’re almost co-protagonists. That season is Willow’s story almost as much as it is Buffy’s.)

This post-Season 2 change is reflected in all sorts of ways: Willow’s average speaking time suddenly overtakes both Xander and Giles; she starts having proper arcs of her own (learning magic, dating, coming out as a lesbian); and, of course, she starts to play increasingly active roles in the plot. And there are signs of all of this happening already, even if we’re not quite there yet.

Taking speaking time, for example. In Season 1 Willow had the fourth most speaking time of any of the Core Four in eight episodes, the third most speaking time in three episodes, and the second most speaking time in just one episode (The Pack). She only had more than 12.5% of total speaking time in two episodes (The Pack again and also I Robot, You Jane), something that Xander managed in three episodes and Giles managed in eleven. (Buffy has more than 20% speaking time in every episode of the season, as is only proper and correct.)

But although she had fourth most speaking time again in When She Was Bad, Willow did get 13.16% speaking time. And in Reptile Boy and Halloween she is second in speaking time for two episodes running for the very first time (with 14.29% and 19.61% of all speaking time respectively).

She manages that by becoming much more assertive (that is, because the writers decide to make her more assertive). She has, by now, mostly accepted that her romantic interest in Xander is doomed. In Reptile Boy, she gets to dress down both Giles and Angel for their poor treatment of Buffy before leading them to go and help her. And Halloween, more than any episode prior, really does belong to Willow.

Willow, as much as anybody else, is responsible for saving the day here. Not Xander, for all his costume-inspired military training. Not Buffy, who hides behind Willow when she sees a car and asks her fearfully “what does it want?”. And not even Giles, who does confront Ethan and break the spell but who was so busy sitting in the library pretending to enjoy cross-referencing that without Willow he wouldn’t even have known there was anything strange going on that night.

And, of course, Willow seems to be the only one of the people changed by their costumes to retain their memories of their real lives. Partly this has to be for plot reasons – somebody has to remember who they are if we’re going to figure things out before the final ad break – but I suspect there’s a little more to it than that.

For the most part, Ethan’s spell shows us who the Scooby Gang aren’t. Buffy isn’t really a helpless delicate princess who’d rather die than fight and who faints at the first sign of danger. Xander isn’t really a heroic man of action who beats up pirates and rescues damsels in distress. Giles, we’re told, isn't really the “sniveling, tweed-clad guardian of the Slayer” he’s been pretending to be.

But the increasingly self-confident and self-assured Willow we see at the very end of this episode, as Oz drives by in his van? The Willow who’s not just smart and knowledgeable but also willing to take charge in a crisis? The Willow who learns to embrace the idea of wearing different outfits and taking charge of how the world perceives her? The Willow who had more speaking time this episode than Buffy herself managed last episode?

That isn’t who Willow Rosenberg is yet. But it’s who she’s going to become.

#btvs #buffy rewatch 2023 #willow rosenberg

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