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eirikrjs · 4 years

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The Satanael Solution

An anon recently sent me their own take on Satanael in P5, beginning with this simple question:

This has been on my mind for some time, but who does Satanael’s compendium entry refer to?

An archangel who is said to be the form of Satan before he fell from Heaven. The second son of God, he rebelled against Him for freedom and bestowed free will and chaos upon humanity.

It got me thinking about it as well. About drawing from the same old wells, that is. If you recall, the book Angels: An Endangered Species by Malcolm Godwin, a tome of dubious character and specious content, seems to be why SMT claims Metatron is violent and why Gabriel became female in SMT2. Keep in mind that this is a book cited in official Atlus bibliographies!

To answer the anon’s question, the “who” is still Satanael. Unsurprisingly, the book also contains the sum total of all Atlus descriptions and depictions of Satanael. The quality of that information is a whole different story, though. If you want to take a shortcut, check out the book excerpts above and keep the Satanael profile and his role in P5 in mind while you do.

Read on to find out lots more!

First, here is the anon’s original submission:

_______________________________________________________

This has been on my mind for some time, but who does Satanael’s compendium entry refer to?

An archangel who is said to be the form of Satan before he fell from Heaven. The second son of God, he rebelled against Him for freedom and bestowed free will and chaos upon humanity.

Most of it is vague enough to be applicable to any devil figure. But the ‘second son of God’ bit kind of makes concrete identification problematic. The Bogomil Satanail, from what I can find, is the first son of God, with Michael-Jesus being the second. The 2 Enoch Satanail, if I remember correctly, never has his order of birth/creation discussed.

Then there’s this bit from Megaten wiki:

In some Gnostic traditions, Satanael is said to be an angel that once served the Demiurge. He rebelled when he realized that the Demiurge was not the true God and granted humanity the knowledge to liberate themselves from the Demiurge.

Is there any basis for this? This story is parroted on TV-tropes and in YouTube comments, but I can’t for the life of me find anything that would corroborate this tale.

Honestly, the best candidate I found is a Satan figure named Beliar from “Questions of Bartholomew”. Let's see how he stacks to the compendium entry:

An archangel who is said to be the form of Satan before he fell from Heaven. Check. Straight up, pre-fall - Satanael, post-fall - Beliar.

The second son of God, Kind of. He repeatedly says how he was the first angel. However (if I correctly understood notes on this page), the Vienna Manuscript version of “Questions of Bartholomew” has him mention that before angels were created, God had his Son. That would make Satanael the second son (if angels = sons of God).

he rebelled against Him for freedom Again, kind of. He rebelled because he refused to worship Adam, which can be interpreted as refusing to follow what he saw an arbitrary order from the authority figure, which in turn can be seen as bid for freedom.

and bestowed free will and chaos upon humanity. Yet again, kind of. He poisoned the water in Eden with his sweat (and hair in some versions), Eve drank it and it corrupted her. I guess the episode with serpent and fruit of tree of knowledge of good and evil follows after that, with Satanael implicitly being the serpent there, but don’t quote me on that. So he introduced disobedience to God, which can be synonymized with chaos and free will.

Beliar’s story contains some narrative parallels with the scenes following the first gameplay segment of Persona 5.

Beliar:

Is brought in for Bartholomew’s interrogation by a very large number of angels (the number varies between versions).

Is chained.

Gets his neck stepped on.

Gives his original angelic name. Until then we only heard his demonic one.

Is forced to recount his tale of how he fell.

Said fall started with refusal to worship Adam, even though God commanded it.

The P5 protagonist:

Is captured and brought in by a very large number of cops.

Is handcuffed.

Gets his head stepped on by the bug-eyed cop.

Gives his civilian name (or rather we give it). Until then we only hear his thief codename.

Recounts his own “crimes”.

Said “crimes” started with confronting Shido, who by the will of society or societal order, which is metaphorically the decision-making God here, has a position that implies automatic respect for him (who also believed himself to be God’s chosen, unless that’s just a Japanese turn of phrase translated too literally).

Finally, Satanael-Beliar seems to have some Gnostic leanings himself, if this quote of his is anything to go by:

And when I came from the ends of the earth Michael said: Worship thou the image of God, which he hath made according to his likeness. But I said: I am fire of fire, I was the first angel formed, and shall worship clay and matter?

Disdain for the materialistic is one of the more common tenets of Gnostic traditions. So I could see this Satanael not getting along with a very materialism-oriented Yaldabaoth, if you put them in the same room (I believe there is a bit more going on in this confrontation, but I’ll save that for another time, when I have the quotes to back up my assumptions).

So, what do you think? Is this a plausible take?

________________________________________________________

First, a fantastic exercise in research! Is it plausible? Probably not. That said, mentioning Beliar/Belial brings up an interesting aside. Here is his profile in the SMT1 remakes:

"Origin: Israel. The fallen angel Satanel. He is known as the prince of lies and swindling. He rides a chariot of fire and has the appearance of two soft-spoken angels. However, contrary to his appearance, he is one of the most evil and lowly beings that exists. It is said that he is the one who brought immorality to Sodom and Gammorah."

Like you said, the Questions of Bartholomew says that Beliar’s/Satan’s pre-fall name is Satanael. That’s the only reason for this blurb in Belial’s profile which is otherwise just the Goetia description. Unfortunately, the Questions of Bartholomew Satanael is still just another devil figure in a Christian worldview, i.e., he’s bad news. And definitely not a demiurge or associated with a demiurge.

As for how Atlus themselves sees Satanael, here’s his profile from Kaneko Pandemonium volume 1:

And machine-transcribed:

サタナエル【キリスト教】サタナエルは、サタナイルとも呼ばれる悪魔で、元は神の息子でキリストと兄弟であるとされる。一説ではうサタンの正式名称ともされている。神の座を奪おうと、サタナエルは天使の3分の1を巻き込んで谋反を起こそうとしたが、未然に発覚してしまい、神により仲間の天使たちとともに天界から追放された。このことから様な異教の神と重ね合わされ、七つの大罪 (高慢・怠惰・羨望・好色・怨念・大食・貪欲) のすべてを司る存在となった。追放されたサタナエルは仲間とともに「第二の天」であるこの世界を作ったという。【登場作品】デビルサマナーソウルハッカーズ [Lv.70/Dark-Chaos]

And machine-translated with some corrections:

Satanael [Christianity] Satanael is a devil also called Satanail and is said to be the son of God and a brother to Christ. According to one theory, it is the formal name of Satan. In order to take the throne of God, Satanael tried to provoke a rebellion involving one-third of the angels, but it was discovered and he was banished from heaven with fellow angels. For this, he was conflated with pagan gods and presided over all Seven Deadly Sins (pride, laziness, envy, lust, hatred, gluttony, and greed). The exiled Satanael is said to have created this world, the "second heaven", with his associates. [Appearances] Devil Summoner Soul Hackers [Lv.70/Dark-Chaos]

So, the non-traditional claims about Satanael are thus:

son of God, brother to Christ

equated with “fallen” deities

he who rules over the Seven Deadly Sins

the creator this world

And here’s the P5 profile for convenience, which is just a condensed version of what you just read:

An archangel who is said to be the form of Satan before he fell from Heaven. The second son of God, he rebelled against Him for freedom and bestowed free will and chaos upon humanity.

That brings us to the source, the Angels book. Note that most of the time when the book says “Satan-el,” it’s just usually as a formality, indeed as the “formal name” of vanilla “accuser” Satan, particularly Satan as angel. I think. Confusingly, note that this “Satan-el” is claimed to also contain with him “Satan”; also he is equated with all the identities and deeds of every other demon named. This use of Satan-el by Godwin seems to have caused a key mistranslation into Japanese conflating his universal figure with the Satanael of Jewish apocrypha, hence the bizarre claims about Satanael in Pandemonium.

Anyway, some revealing Angels quotes from the above scans:

As son of God, brother to Christ:

Equated with other deities:

7 sins in one:

Satan-el as the demiurge (but not creator of “second heaven”; unsure where that comes from):

They totally cribbed from Angels for this profile! And on this last excerpt Godwin seems to casually assume that the all-encompassing baddie Satan-el is absolutely the same as the Gnostic demiurge. Also throughout the whole book, anything supernatural that isn’t a god he interprets as an angel, like Sophia here (but also valkyries; see the Lucifer page). Like I said in one of the other Angels posts, this book may have informed a lot of SMT’s preferential attitude towards wild comparative equivalences.

But most distressingly, Angels does NOT have a bibliography of any kind, just a few books mentioned in its acknowledgements (I investigated those but none mention Satanael in any great capacity). So, it’s impossible to verify where Godwin got his information, if he didn’t just make stuff up. I don’t make that accusation lightly, as the book contains many examples of far-out interpretations that have no basis in tradition.

For one, check out the final paragraph of the above two-page spread on Lucifer for some classic conflation of Hell with the Norse Hel(heim) and a seemingly earnest admission from the author that Helheim is a real place (at least a cave where Norse rituals took place--where is he getting this information???). So basically, this is not a book you want to read for facts, much less one you want to rely on for accurate portrayal of angels or demons.

But besides the profile this also explains other things like the Sinful Shell in P5 that is supposed to represent all 7 sins. But that move could have been called anything; most reading this probably know that P5′s Satanael was meant to be Lucifer and Arsene was originally Mephisto, along with Yaldabaoth being called Metatron in the game files. So that original progression was "minor devil figure --> major devil figure; rebels against the angel called ‘lesser YHWH.’“ It makes a lot of sense!

But considering how broadly Godwin attributes all manner of evil things to Satanael yet is still somehow the original Satan of Judaism/Christianity, switching Lucifer to Satanael was probably about as complex as this hypothetical exchange:

A: What’s another name for Lucifer?

B: Satanael?

A: Perfect!

By the information they had at hand, Satanael is essentially just another name for the general capital-D “Devil” they seemed to want for P5 all along but changed for whatever reason, probably a result of making the first tier personas thief-themed.

As for the Gnostic connections and this quote that is on the Megaten wiki and elsewhere:

I’ve never found any basis for this. It doesn’t seem like Atlus intended for this, either. And even in Angels, Satanael is the demiurge, not a rebel against it!

My guess it’s just fan speculation from misinterpreting sources and names; also fan expectations because the previous two Persona games had comprehensive mythological theming, so P5 must have it too, right? Atlus’ reply to that seems to be “not necessarily.” Even with Lucifer and Metatron removed, the point of P5′s persona arcs still seems to be angel rebelling against deity, even if the particulars of the conflict have no basis in an actual myth.

Finally, as for Soul Hackers’ Satanael, his role is so slight and appearance so brief he doesn’t seem like an aggrandized demiurgical being. A trio with Samyaza and Azazel, this appearance falls in line as a typical Watcher/fallen angel like from 2 Enoch rather than anything more.

What a confusing mess! This one is on Godwin, I have to say. At the time the research for Soul Hackers was happening, Angels would have still been a relatively new book. Atlus just doing their best with wild interpretations and misinformation.

#satanael #persona 5 #Shin Megami Tensei #atlus #megaten #soul hackers #angels #smt #p5

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arecomicsevengood · 4 years

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A PANEGYRIC TO THE THINGS I DO NOT UNDERSTAND

I generally don’t talk about why I write criticism; I presume no one cares. The core of my contrarianism rests on the fact that many of the things I dislike or have an aversion to I think the market is set up to reward. This holds true both for what I write about and how I choose to write about it. I’m not writing about all these Drawn And Quarterly books that seem like novelty gag gifts for people who don’t actually like comics. I’m not writing about simplistic YA material put out by major publishing houses. I’m not reading superhero trademark maintenance. To me it feels like pre-chewed food I see and know to avoid. I’m also pretty put off by work that’s self-consciously “lowbrow,” but to that stuff’s credit, I don’t think it’s particularly popular. It just seems to fit into larger trends of what’s readily digestible, due to its own willingness to dismiss itself.

When it comes to criticism, I read a fair amount of other people’s writing, and collate a list of ways I don’t want to write that coincide with what I hate to read. I don’t want to read anything that’s “personal” in a way that takes the general premise of the existence of a book as an excuse for a narcissist to talk about themselves. Still, it seems like people love that. It is essentially the lingua franca for a whole type of websites, to have writers leverage their identity or trauma for the sake of hot takes. Even if no one gets paid particularly well, there is a reward in the economy of attention. People also really like writing that praises things that are already popular, because they want to be given permission to like the things they like, but no one needs that. People also like dismissive takes based around incredibly shallow surface-level impressions of something that then becomes this shorthand “common knowledge.” if you say “Chris Ware’s boring” or “Rob Liefeld can’t draw feet” there will be no shortage of people chiming up in the comments to say the same thing. People love to be given permission to not have to think about things, and while I understand that impulse completely, I’m too far gone down the hole of obsessiveness to play along.

I wish I could say all that I dislike falls into one of a fixed number of categories, but in actuality, I am all too often reading writing that makes me ask “why won’t you just shut the fuck up?” or exclaim “jesus, this is so depressing!” and it seems new ways to garner these reactions are continually being manufactured, though in general, the innovations in this area are being done in the more lucrative world of music writing. Still, many of the things I wish to avoid have been done by writers I absolutely admire, partly because they’re more prolific I am, and so can’t allow themselves the luxury of overthinking what they’re doing for the sake of avoiding trends. (I also try to avoid writing stuff that’s just plain stupid and offensive, but lord knows that gets hate-clicks, and hate-clicks are as valued as any.)

I try to engage the work that’s on the page. The best work encourages a multiplicity of readings, I write a lot with the implicit assumption that the framework I’m bringing to bear might be wrong. I believe the work that has the most ideas present inside it will be conflicted enough in depicting multiple ideas simultaneously that it doesn’t encourage a straightforward and easy read. I relate it to the paradox that the most interesting people are those who don’t talk about themselves, but ask questions of others. Presumably, those who are disinterested in others don’t interrogate themselves in their moments alone.

I might be being reductive. So many of my own thoughts might be overly simplistic, a set of half-thought-through opinions designed to arrive at a place of dismissal so I can move on. I spend a lot of time thinking about the sort of creator-owned genre comics Image traffics in these days, because I have zero interest in them, and they don’t seem appealing at all. They don’t come close to my idea of good. I generally object to the way contemporary comics are colored, but I think the issues run deeper than that. The line generally used in reference to them is to call them movie-pitch comics. But is that why they’re bad? I don’t know. Maybe the issue is just the way their writing stands in relationship to economy, where a single issue is not a satisfying story. Maybe superhero comics work better than that stuff because there’s an explicit formula established doing the heavy lifting, and if you are doing something more “high-concept” you need to spend more time with exposition and can’t just defer to the visuals of a fight scene that superhero comics demand. I don’t know! Any answer to the question of why things don’t work is going to end up with some broad statements, because the act of artmaking involves an incalculable amount of choices, any number of which could balance out or redeem any of the others. It’s almost surprising that the history of comics isn’t littered with works that were concerned failures at the time of their release but seem prescient in their storytelling choices now.

I want to write about work that is interesting to think about. What’s interesting to think about is that which I don’t understand. Obviously, writing is an attempt to make sense of something, and much of what I write about then becomes something I understand, or at least, have a take on. But I still want to engage, in some sort of honest way, the work I don’t understand, that short-circuits my brain.

A good example of something I don’t really understand is Stella Murphy’s comic Hometime, which I ordered from Domino Books. It’s a collection of single-panel gag cartoons, kinda? Every page is meant to be taken as its own entity. It’s printed and red and yellow, it feels eye-searingly bright. There’s dialogue balloons, not captions. The visual language sort of seems like it comes from underground comics, of the way underground comics relate to older cartoon styles. I’m saying all of these things like they’re sentences but if I were speaking to you there would be no hint of certainty in my voice. Another paradox: I often feel like I don’t have the language to describe what images in a comic look like unless I have an idea of what the narrative is doing. Maybe these gags feel like they work because they’re incredibly economical in their subversion of the expectation one comes to gag cartoons with. That almost seems too simplistic an explanation to count. I’m sure, if you haven’t read Murphy’s cartoons and grappled with them, that sort of conclusion seems like I’m saying literally nothing.

I’ve been reading Krazy Kat again. It’s interesting that that’s a strip which is notably formulaic, but also is all about subverting that formula or having it play out differently or avoid it altogether. It seems pretty agreed upon that the key to successful comics writing is to have a degree of economy in terms of the words on the page. This allows the images to carry their weight, but images themselves have their own weight of meaning that’s accrued over time. Think about being born on this Earth, and all of the acclimation to one’s surroundings that occurs concurrently with the acquisition of language. Talking with a computer programmer friend, his stance on writing code was, the easier it is for you, the less lines you have to write, the more code has been written by other people before you that you’re relying on. So many of the best comics are consciously written with an awareness of expectations that are then subverted. I don’t know. Generally the argument I make, when talking about “experimental” work, is to contrast it with “formulaic” work. This is my way of asserting the obvious superiority of the former. But maybe this is wrong, and the best and most effective comics, including the ones I’m labeling “experimental,” nonetheless have a formula they’re playing with? Because the truth of the matter is my use of scientific language is a pose premised on my not actually understanding math.

I imagine that a normal person wouldn’t understand why anyone would feel compelled to write comics criticism in the first place. For all the shame I feel about the fact that this is what I’m doing, I’m proud to say I don’t know what my fucking deal is.

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bubbebruja · 4 years

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JK Rowling is being an absolute monster again, so I wanna tell y’all a story.

At work, I wear a Hufflepuff lanyard. I do this because I still feel a strong connection to the fandom, and because I have obnoxious amounts of house pride, and because I need a place to put my office keys. On my lanyard, I wear a “she/they” pronoun pin and a queer/trans pride pin.

Now, mind you, I live and work in the Deep South. For those outside the US, the Deep South is the part of the US that was most reliant on plantations and slave labor in pre-Civil War America. It is made up of “red states”, and while I work in a major metropolitan area, many of my patients come from small, rural towns. Without furthering any unnecessary stereotypes - and, please, let’s all interrogate our assumptions about rural southerners - it is not uncommon for me to come across very conservative families with very conservative beliefs. This means that, for the most part, my conservative patients don’t know what my pins indicate, and they don’t ask. But to my patients who are familiar with them - and, more importantly, to my queer/trans patients who are not surrounded by affirming community - these pins indicate that I am a safe person to talk to about gender and sexuality.

On several occasions, someone has seen my pins and told me about their trans child, or come out to me about their own sexual/gender identity, or just smiled at me knowingly. On several more occasions, someone has seen my Hufflepuff lanyard, and it has launched us into a conversation about Harry Potter.

My job, at its core, is to connect with people. Many of my patients are teenagers with mental health and/or eating disorders, and while I adore them to pieces, they often aren’t too keen to talk to yet another adult. That is, until they see the lanyard. I have held conversations about favorite HP books and movies, about the differences between houses, about fan fiction. I have held conversations about JK Rowling and how she’s let us down, how she’s no longer safe, how my trans/gnc patients feel betrayed by her. I have distracted a child in the trauma bay with conversations about quidditch while doctors cut off their clothes and started poking them with needles. I have asked a child and his sister to explain their favorite characters to me to take their minds off of the conversation their mom and dad are having with the doctor, in which the doctor is revealing the news of a new cancer diagnosis.

Two weeks ago, a patient drew a picture. She didn’t have many art supplies to work with, because she was suicidal and we have to be careful about what we give our suicidal patients (they can have plain white paper, crayons, and non-toxic glue). She colored on various parts of paper with crayon, tore it up, and glued it back together in ways that created layers of texture and color. It was honestly beautiful. She showed it to me because the first time we met, we spent an hour talking about how it feels when someone who has created a world that is supposed to be a safe haven tells you you aren’t welcome there. She has a Tumblr, and she follows a lot of trans HP creators now. She doesn’t have any queer or trans friends in real life, but she has community now. I think she’s going to be okay.

Here’s what I’m saying: I hate what JK Rowling has done. I hate what she continues to do. But I love my patients. I love all the queer and trans and suicidal and anorexic babies who I have the honor of interacting with on a daily basis, who know I am safe because they I know I share this particular world with them. Who know I am safe because on top of my Harry Potter lanyard is a pronoun pin, and they didn’t know there was anyone else like them. Who know I am safe because I can match them word-for-word in a debate about Severus Snape.

So listen. Personally, I don’t give up on this fandom. I genuinely think it has saved lives. I think maybe I have come across some of the lives it has saved. And I think we can continue to make it something beautiful.

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webcricket · 5 years

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Castiel Drabbles

Characters: CastielXDemon!Reader

Bat Out of Hell Lyric Prompt: #17 - “You’ve been nothing but an angel every day of your life, and now you wonder what it’s like to be damned.”

Word Count: 1362

Requested by: @ladyofletters67

Summary: The reader uses a bit of veracity and sass to vie for an angel’s affection.

<<< >>>

Over the years, trial after trauma after countless trial compounding into a constant uncontrolled free fall toward humanity’s cause, everything Castiel thought he knew for fact dissolved into mere fiction perpetrated by his Father in a plot seemingly created solely for the entertainment of that self-same Creator.

Everything, that is, except one universal tenet of reckoning arising over and over no matter the situation: Everything comes at a cost. Nothing in life is free, least of all that will he fought fist and wing and wit whilst falling to embrace.

Which accounts for his stubborn suspicion about your motives in helping the Winchesters - not coming to their aid on one or two occasions, but rising from the fires of Hell whenever they get stuck in a rut, and just as often availing your support even when they aren’t. After all, demons don’t take day trips out of the pell-mell of perdition to offer assistance unless they want something in return.

The what is what the seraph cannot figure out. What has him both dubious and intrigued in such a manner he can’t keep his thoughts, idle or otherwise, from wandering to you and the conflict of emotion - a push and pull dance between light and dark, divinity and doom, a cosmic waltz that leaves him dizzy - he feels every time he’s in your presence.

It’s what has him summoning you for interrogation to a generically furnished motel room off the I-90 with Sam and Dean well out of the way - generic save for the addition of a demon trap fastidiously spray painted in crimson on the carpet and for which Castiel’s, or rather, Jimmy Novak’s credit card will be docked for damages after he checks out and housekeeping discovers the disturbing decor.

You’ve dodged his queries before by disappearing - an action usually preceded by a flirtatious fluttering pink smirk and a suggestive wink. The trap guarantees you won’t get away without clearing up his confusion.

You manifest in an onyx-eyed akimbo-stance huff cursing the rudeness of your summoner when they could have simply picked up the phone and called because, ‘Hello! It’s not the dark ages.’

The dissatisfied murmur ceases, a smile spreading your lips to flash the pearly whites veiled beneath when you see the angel is the source of your involuntary vexation because this particular angel intrigues you as much, if not more, than you intrigue him.

Sure, when you first sauntered into the Winchester’s wheel house uninvited it was with the idea of indebting them to you in return for some future favor; but when you laid eyes on their ally, you got a glimpse of actual glory, and although your mortal soul be damned beyond saving, all else fled your thoughts save a taste for a different type of seraphim-assisted salvation.

If he doesn’t recognize your interest - nay, overt attraction - yet through that thickly righteous skull housing his celestial grey matter, all it means is that you need to keep knock-knock-knocking at Heaven’s door a little longer and, perhaps, a little louder.

“Angelcake, to what do I owe the pleasure?” You move a step and a half in his direction, stopping short at the outer line of the circle.

The seraph didn’t doubt the tried and true tactic would hold you, but still, his chest swells with a sense of satisfaction in seeing you at his mercy. Studying your face in anticipation of a frown emerging thereon, a surprising observation surfaces from his subconscious to tickle his rational fancy that the bedlam of twisted soul behind those inky irises, a creature unrecognizable as a human anymore, appears to him as a chaos of stormy hues not sinister in disorder, but as compelling as the shifting colors of a sunset so stunning one cannot look away from it.

The thought, twitching his upper lip, tests his stolid facade.

You peer up in time to catch the subtle crack in his stoicism. Defiant of how he thinks you’ll react, your smile widens, stretching up at one corner in sultry reach toward an equally grinning gaze. “If you wanted to tie me up, all you had to do was ask.”

“What? I-” A squint dims the vibrant blaze of his blues; the lids flare after a second or two in sudden understanding of your debauched implication- “no, that’s not-”

“You really don’t know, do you? You angelic ass.” Smile and patience summarily fading, you interrupt a train of verbalized thought definitely not traveling to the destination you desire. If you stuck a Post-It note to your forehead that read, ‘Fuck me!’ in block letters you couldn’t be any more obvious; not that the feeling is strictly physical for you, that’s just the superficial iceberg of a much deeper emotion.

The hot white neon radiance of raggedly feathered wings stacked over his shoulders - clear as day to your demonic second sight - shudder in revolt of the accusation. “What are you talking about?”

Evidently he needs you to spell it out for him like a prophet writing on a wall; God’s team never did fair well without a playbook. But the problem here isn’t him knowing - that ruffling of feathers tells you on some level, he knows enough to rile him - it’s one of doubt. The problem with him is always freaking doubt. Doubt, like everything, exists in balance; the other side of fear is bravery.

You’ve witnessed first hand he isn’t lacking for courage in other areas, you just need to lube the cogs of the celestial machine enough to loosen them in your favor. “I see the way you look at me, Castiel. The way you don’t look away.”

The continued intensity of his stare and shiver of plumes scream out the truth skimmed by the statement; and yet, his tongue wields incongruous words. “I look because you’re an abomination and it’s my duty not to turn a blind eye.”

“Pshaw, duty,” you blow a puff of disenchanted air through pursed lips. Toeing the very edge of the sigil until your chest tightens in a crush of ribs, you steal a couple of extra millimeters of pain-stifled space in order to drive the point home as close to its heavenly host as possible. “An abomination according to who? You, Castiel?”

The query jars him into motion and the guilty realization you aren’t off base in asking about his assumption gravitates him nearer; demons are a species he thought he knew, but he thought he knew a lot of other things too and he was wrong. He lifts a palm to lightly press your arm to encourage you to retreat back within bounds and out of suffering, confessing in a penitence-laden lowness of tone, “No. No one.”

You swat at the kindness; wincing, arm breaching the barrier to follow his, your fingers wrap his wrist. Panting at the onslaught of pain, you yank him into the trap with you.

Instinct guides his hands to hook your waist, stabilizing you while you steady your breath.

Your body hums in gratitude for the gesture. Straightening yourself with the leverage of his lapels, peering up, you pierce his glossy blues with a blackly earnest gaze. “So then what do you really think I am? ‘Cause I think you’ve been nothing but an angel every day of your life, and now you wonder what it’s like to be damned.”

Although the interrogation didn’t go exactly to plan - things rarely ever do - your challenge to his foundation clarifies to him what it is you want, not from the Winchesters, but from him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, amid the lies programed as gospel on the day of his making, a once firmly held belief that all demons are abominations buries itself in the ruins of false reason. Reverberating in a swift smash of sweetly soft lips to yours, the truth of what he feels asserts itself in the knee-weakening, grace-revving, loin girding proof of a kiss.

Everything comes at a cost, and once in an epoch, payment is tendered in the love-bridled beating of an angel’s heart for his beautiful abomination.

Castiel tag list: (Closed, if you’d like to be removed please let me know!) @jeepangel @sammiesamness @willowing-love @roxy-davenport @blueicevalkyrie @im-the-nerdiest-of-them-a11 @thesugargalaxy @bluetina-blog @dont-trust-humanity @honeybeetrash @bucky-thorin-winchester @superwholockz @tistai @wordstothewisereaders @gill-ons @mrswhozeewhatsis @marisayouass @stone-met @castiel-savvy18 @samualmortgrim @trexrambling @magnificent-mantle @kdfrqqg @xdifsx @mandilion76 @rockfairy @peaceloveancolor @unicorntrooper @anisolatedship @itsilvermorny @aditimukul @kudosia @goofynerd-67babylove @uninspirationalsonglyrics @gray-avidan @mishascupcake @mishapanicmeow @praisecastielamen @roseyhxnt @jessikared97 @let-the-imaginationflow @warriorqueen1991 @sebastianstanslefteyebrow @hisnameisboobear @kristendanwayne @fuschiarulerinthebluebox @coolpencilpie @jenabean75 @luciathewinchestergirl @morganas-pendragons @heyitscam99 @fangirl-and-stuff @selahbela @realgreglestrade @splendidcas @pointlesscasey @i-larb-spooderman @thewhiterabbit42 @thelostverse @castieliswatchingoverme @beccollie18 @dragonett8 @dixie-chick @jtownraindancer @carowinsthings @passionghost @ladyofletters67 @futureparent @gabbie7-11 @myfandomlife-blog @dreamerkim @shamelesslydean @earthtokace @neaeri @justanormalangel @lone-loba @supernaturalymarvel @lilrubixx @wings-and-halo @thehoneybeecastielfollows @musiclovinchic93 @81mysteriouslyme @the-bottom-of-the-abyss @jaylarkson @pixiedusts @spookysculderfiles @laqueus-ludovicus @missjenniferb @lexininja @jessiekay2010 @skrratata @rhiannonj79 @calicat79

#castielxreader #castielxyou #castiel #castiel x reader #castiel x you #castiel x demon!reader #spn x reader #you x castiel #reader x castiel #cas x you #cas x reader #castiel fanfic #demon!reader fic #fic request #cricket writes cas

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polyadvice · 6 years

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What are some of Zinnia's opinions?

Hello! I see tons of asks about advise and now I'm actually wondering what are some of your opinions about the whole community? I'd like to know more about the lovely creator of this amazing blog❤️ :)

This reads to me like “please, sir, could I have some discourse?” but I, like most humans, adore being asked for my opinion, especially if it comes with some flattery, so here ya go, some Zinnia Opinions, RIP my inbox:

I think more, if not all, of us should be in therapy! I think working on our own issues and patterns is critical for healthy relationships, whether you’re polyamorous or monogamous. I think we as a culture should be fighting for more accessible mental healthcare, and one of the best things we can do for our people is help them find therapy that is helpful and affordable for them.

I miss the word '‘poly.” I fully understand why we are making a shift to polyam, and I would never put my linguistic comfort over someone else’s very real cultural hurts and needs, but I find “polyam” clunky and it makes me sad that we are facing this namespace collision right now.

I think “ground rules” and “boundaries” are incredibly misunderstood and mis-used in polyamory. I’ve almost never seen “ground rules” work out well - they’re often arbitrary, lead to unnecessary ‘betrayals,’ and let people hide behind them to avoid actually interrogating their true feelings and needs. And people need to realize that “setting a boundary” does not obligate everyone to do what you say or else they’re toxic abusers.

I think we need to do a better job with our language. I’ve written about this before, and I stand by it. I especially think we need to be very careful about words like “abuse” and “trauma,” because they really do mean things beyond ‘made me feel bad.’ I strongly recommend Sarah Schulman’s book Conflict is not Abuse as an in-depth discussion of this and think it belongs on any standard polyam reading list.

I don’t think polyamory is a better, more enlightened or truer way to be in relationship. I disagree with Dan Savage and the Sex At Dawn crowd that all humans are ‘naturally’ non-monogamous and therefore polyamory or monogamy are just personal choices anyone can make freely. Some people are better served by monogamous relationships, and polyam people need to stop evangelizing polyamory as a one-size-fits-all solution to existing problems.

That said, I think monogamy culture is pretty destructive. When practiced with intentionality and as meets the needs of the individuals in the relationship, monogamy can be plenty healthy! But I have seen so much abuse in the name of monogamy, of possessiveness, of jealousy; damage done out of fear of cheating; repression and rejection and violence - we need to better understand and interrogate the social, political, economic, religious, and sexual power structures that drive our assumptions around monogamy.

I wish we had better pride colors and/or full ownership of the infinity heart. I love symbols! I would love to be able to wear my polyam pride on my sleeve, but tons of mono people use the infinity heart to just mean “endless love,” which makes it a pretty diluted symbol, and the pride colors are not great.

I think more polyam families should become foster parents. I think more people should, honestly; but being polyam gives you an advantage in that you have more adults to help out, and most of us have already done a lot of self-work around healthy emotional management and communication styles, which is critical for foster parents. It’s not always easy to get certified as an “unconventional” family, but it is doable, and we should be doing it!

My polyamory is queer. Not all polyamory is queer, but I truly believe that polyamory can be queer, when it is a ‘queering’ of the dominant monogamous culture, a re-understanding of relationships, an individual reclamation and rejection of culturally imposed assumptions, and love as “praxis” that challenges economic, political, and sexual systems of dominance.

Polyam people need to make a lot more space for relationship anarchy in the conversation. Related to my opinion that not all polyamory is queer, but polyamory can be a queering of relationships. It’s sad to me that so many people think polyamory is only about sexual-romantic relationships, and often looks in practice a lot like monogamy culture just with more people, where the sexual-romantic relationships are prioritized in terms of values, commitment, finances, etc. Polyamory can be an invitation to re-understand relationships in a whole new way. Who say that the people we have great sex with have to be the people we live with have to be the people we co-parent with? Let’s make our own way, friends.

I think “best case scenario” daydreaming is an under-utilized tool in polyamorous relationships. Thinking through what you really want, having words for the feelings you want to have, understanding what you want your day to day life to look like - this is so helpful! We should all have a clear picture of where we’re headed, what our goals are, and what our deal-makers and deal-breakers are. I don’t know why so few people are able to really articulate what they want out of their relationships - grab a journal, or a questionnaire, or a boring work meeting, and dig in!

I think people should make my life easier when writing in to this blog. People should check my FAQ, not send me thousand-word letters that don’t include a clear question, and not do these other things. I also think it would be super swell if people contributed to my Patreon!

There we go; some of my most strongly held opinions about polyamory. I have many other opinions, like:

People should stop assigning moral value to food and eating habits and drop the food-negative fear-of-calories nonsense; diet culture is absolute bullshit, and the concern-trolling about fat bodies is cruel, disingenuous, and needs to die.

Caffeine is an addictive drug and we are way too relaxed about young children becoming dependent on it to the detriment of their sleep health.

Being critical or ironic about something does not make you smarter, more mature, or better than someone who earnestly enjoys it.

Genetic connections do not a ‘family’ make, and no one is obligated to stay connected to someone who isn’t healthy for them just because they are ‘related.' And if you are deeply connected to someone whose connection to you isn’t recognized by monogamy-culture - like a kid who isn’t genetically related, or a life partner you aren’t romantic-sexual with, that’s great! Ignore the haters.

Movie theatre popcorn is always better than anything you can make at home, and is always worth the $7 it costs at the theatre. Drinks and candy, you should smuggle in.

If someone isn’t drinking, people should leave that alone and not harass, pester, or tease them about it.

Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” music video is not cultural appropriation, because she brings in people who are skilled in those dances to perform them well, and the point of the video is that she can’t do what they do and is just being herself alongside performers she is sharing her stage with. Cultural appropriate is a real issue in pop music (and everywhere else) but I think that video is absolutely not an example of it and don’t understand why it’s constantly used as one.

Alcohol is a lot more dangerous and addictive than marijuana and the reasons it’s legal and socially acceptable are racist and classist and are not based in reality.

Tumblr and Instagram should do more (that is, literally anything) to fight pro-eating-disorder content on their platforms.

No one should feed me food with tomatoes in it, ever, ever, ever! (And I don’t want to hear about how I haven’t had a “real, good” tomato - those ones taste worse because they taste more like tomatoes!)

#about the blogger #polyamory #poly #polyam #polyamory advice

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aroacepositivityplace · 6 years

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I HATE the fact that we have to share personal details of our lifes in order to be taken seriuosly. I realised I was abused because I read about it in a book, an adults book, but at 10-11 years old I'd read any book I could find at home. Author never said 'abuse is bad' but by reading it I could easily see that it was wrong, something I never realised while it was happening to me. Stop policing what other people write or draw, stop trying to censor these issues, this is getting really dangerous

I do, too. It’s a huge reason why the idea that only survivors can like dark media and only as a coping mechanism is inherently harmful. Antis end up making assumptions about people, whether it be if they were ever abused, their gender, sexuality, etc and even after people disclose that information, which they have ZERO obligation to, it rarely does anything to appease accusers and just leaves the person being interrogated having to make a neat list of their trauma to be scrutinized. It’s almost like the anti rhetoric around protecting survivors is wholly meaningless (sarcasm, it’s hollow af).

Depicting abuse isn’t inherently glorifying it. As you said, people can recognize it’s wrong without the author making their narrator stop in the middle of the exposition and explain to the reader that what’s going on is wrong. Antis seem to go back and forth between only wanting coffee shop au’s and the former point. For some people such as yourself, it’s very important to have more realistic depictions of abuse. It can be how they recognize what happened to them, allow them to feel comfort in knowing their favorite character understands their trauma, the list goes on. There’s no one way to be a survivor. When content creators are able to be authentic, that’s when they’re able to reach the widest audience. It can result in a lot of people finding a coping mechanism just as it can leave some triggered. Again, the answer is to push for better content warnings, not to completely ban media one doesn’t personally like American PTA’s who think kids are going to commit suicide after reading Hamlet (Or you know, just want to ban books with queer themes or that depict any form of institutional violence, even if it’s meant to make the reader ask questions about the world around them in a way that might lead them to create positive change. But hey, censorship isn’t censorship if it’s done for the “right” reasons to some people.). I’d much rather be around someone who draws sebaciel or loves books written by authors whose views haven’t aged well and treats real life people well than antis who only enjoy “unproblematic” content and yet harass people.

I’d like to thank you and the others like you who have been supportive (I read the tags on posts like this). I wasn’t eager to log onto tumblr this morning and check my inbox and notes. So far, everything I’ve seen has been very positive and it means a lot.

To those who now think I’m some sort of abuse apologist for these last few posts, ta. Please just block me and move on with your life. If the things I put characters through in my writing or the fact I like fan art of people’s notps is the same as excusing real life abusers in your mind, I doubt there’s anything I’ll be able to say to change your mind until you do some introspection on why you think the conservative rhetoric you’re parroting takes on a new meaning in your mouth.

#ask #anonymous ask #not positivity #abuse mention #suicide mention

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catlady1986 · 6 years

Text

Guilty Pleasure

Chapters: 2/? Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia/Noctis Lucis Caelum Characters: Gladiolus Amicitia, Noctis Lucis Caelum, Prompto Argentum, Ignis Scientia, background characters Tags: Romance, Secret Relationship, Older/Younger Lovers, Prejudice, Student/Teacher Relationship, more later

Note: This one is longer than the last, had a lot to add to this part. If it comes off as too wordy or doesn’t flow well let me know and I’ll fix it. Also, the rating will go up next chapter. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡ – ✧) Thank you and enjoy!

Previous Next

The sound of his doorbell ringing relentlessly finally annoys Noctis into waking up, grumbling as he slides out of bed. He finds his friends on the other side of his door, them smiling and looking at him with intrigue.

“You both are jerks for ditching me.” Noctis snaps and then yawns.

“Aw, don’t be like that,” Prompto chuckles and slings an arm around his shoulder as they head inside, then gives a wink. “I bet you still had a good time without us there, maybe met someone nice?”

He did, but wait, does that mean-

“I brought you some hotcakes I made this morning.” Ignis says and hands him a Tupperware container.”

“Oh, thanks Iggy.” Noctis grabs a fork and stands against his counter, digging in and looking to his friends, them staring again with intrigue. “What?”

“So tell us, what’d you do after we left? Did you meet anyone new by chance?”

Noctis furrows his brows. His stomach begins to knot and a pang of dejection washes over him. Gladio hadn’t come over to him of his own volition, he was asked to. But something didn’t add up, he hasn’t told his friends yet that his preferences lean towards men. Hell, he just realized only a few months ago after falling hard for a male teacher he assisted. So how and why was Gladio chosen?

The black-haired man sighs while shaking his head then gives them a pointed look before taking another bite. “Yeah, I did. Guess that was your doing?”

“Oh come on bud, don’t be mad. We just wanted you to have some fun.”

“I don’t need you two to set me up on pity dates.”

“I’m sorry Noct. We thought it would help you out.” Ignis says, looking a tad remorseful. “You’re terribly shy and don’t leave our sides when out.”

“Yeah! You get really awkward and standoffish around people” Prompto chimes in.

“Plus she’s a nice young lady, just started as a receptionist at my office.”

Noctis freezes. She? The person they tried hooking him up with was a woman? So then Gladio wasn’t asked to flirt with him. He liked him for himself. This makes Noct grin smugly.

“Huh, guess you guys were wrong about me then.”

“Wait, so you met someone else?” the blonde asks, eyes widening comically. “Dude, who? Was she hot?”

“Not telling.”

“Aw, don’t be a jerk.”

“So you didn’t meet with Jessenia? Oh dear, I’m going to have to write her an apology note then. Maybe some flowers, box of chocolates too.” the glasses-wearing man says and puts a reminder on his phone.

“Come on Noct, don’t leave your bros hanging. Tell us what she was like, did you get her number? Are you two meeting up again.” Prompto asks and nudges his friend.

“Again, not telling.”

Prompto lets out an overblown whine as Ignis goes stonefaced like he’s deep in thought. Then a subtle bit of irritation flashes onto his face before his stoic mask is back on.

“It’s a man, isn’t it?”

“Wha?” Is Prompto’s reaction, looking between his two friends.

Noctis stops eating, his face turning a deep red color and eyes down-turning to the floor. Leave it to Ignis to somehow ass pull the correct assumption even though he’s usually terrible at reading the atmosphere.

He sighs and sets the container down, knowing he’s going to end up losing his appetite after the incoming barrage.

“Yeah.”

“What? Noct are you- Umm- So you're uh.” Prompto stutters before shaking his head, looking slightly hurt at his friend. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I- I really only discovered it recently myself. I thought that maybe it was just a one-time feeling but the guy I met last night, we had a connection. Sorry, I should have said something sooner.”

The blonde smiles and softly knocks his friend in the shoulder with his fist. “It’s all right dude, just next time talk to us about it. Right, Iggy?”

“Uh, yes, sure.” the man says, shifting about then giving a friendly smile. “We will always support you Noct, even if the information is, surprising.”

“Thanks, you guys.”

“So now that is out,” Prompto begins and nudges his friend like before. “what did he look like?”

Noctis chuckles softly. “As cliche as it is he was tall, dark, and handsome. Really nice too, we played pool and chatted for a while.”

“What’s his name? Does he work? Where does he live?” Ignis grills the younger man.

Noct can’t help but roll his eyes. “His name is Gladio, he works at a bookstore, and lives with his parents but is saving money to move out. He said they’re really strict.”

“How old is he?”

“Early to mid-twenties, I believe.”

The sandy-haired man’s eyebrows arch up. “And he lives with his parents still?”

“Iggy, I lived with my dad until I was twenty. Enough with the interrogation.”

“Just worried about you, you don’t know who this young man really is. For all you know he could be a prostitute or a thief preying on naive people.”

“Jeez, thanks Igs.” Noctis huffs. “If he was any of those, wouldn’t he have tried to come home with me last night?”

“That’s true.” Prompto says and gives Ignis a nudge. “Cut him some slack, this guy may actually be genuine and bring our awkward dork out of his shell.”

“Wow, I feel so loved.”

“Very well. So what do you have planned for the day?”

“Pick up my pants and blazer from the dry cleaners. Then I’m going to go over the syllabus’ for my classes tomorrow.”

“I see. Would you like for me to come over then and help you look over it? I can make us dinner?”

“You don’t have to, besides today is your day off since you got dragged in yesterday. Enjoy it and lounge around your apartment, be lazy.”

“That is a waste of time when I could be doing something fruitful.”

“And that is why you got an ulcer.”

Ignis sighs and shakes his head. “Fine, I will try to relax.”

“Well, I think it’s time for me to scoot.” Prompto says and flashes a big smile at his friend. “Congrats buddy, hope things work out for you, I mean it.”

“Thanks, Prompto.”

“I should be leaving as well, need to stop by the grocer, running low on Ebony. Have a splendid day Noct.”

“You too, see ya.”

The two men begin to leave but Ignis stops and turns back around at his friend, staring intently at his face.

“I do hope you plan on shaving, it wouldn’t be professional for you to look unkempt on your first day.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” he says and waives his friend off.

Noctis sighs and leans against his island counter, shaking his head. While it wasn’t how he had planned coming out if it proved to be true, at least it wasn’t as bad as he thought. Although there is still his father. He tosses the container into the sink and looks at his wallet, seeing a white note sticking out of it. Gladio’s number. Should he possibly try to call him? No, he may be in trouble if his parents are as strict as he said and Gladio did say to call him later. He does wonder though if he is all right, he seemed nervous when he said his parents were coming for him. Maybe he should- no, he’ll wait.

So Noct gets going for the day, taking a quick shower, then gets dressed and starts to head out. He glances at the note again, feeling a fluttering sensation in his belly and his chest become tight.

While out, he finds that his mind constantly wanders back to the young man, especially when he catches a glimpse of someone tall with brown hair or hears a deep rumbling laughter. Noct feels ridiculous, like a love-struck teen who can’t wait to see their crush after being away from them for a day. He tries to clear his head however when he arrives at the dry cleaners, he sees a bookstore down the street, remembering that Gladio works at one and should be there. Would it seem stalkerish if he stopped by to see if Gladio worked there?

Throwing caution to the wind, Noctis heads into the bookstore after picking up his items, scouring about but not finding the young man and then learning from a clerk Gladio didn’t work there. A bit downtrodden, he heads back to his car and goes to leave, but stops and looks at his phone. Maybe he could see if there were any other bookstores nearby, he could check them out, see if the young man is there and find out how he is doing.

Well, there is apparently way more bookstores then he initially thought and there was no way he could stop at them all. That would be too stalkerish and a waste of gas. So he decides to just check out the closet ones and if Gladio is not at any of them he’ll just leave it at that. He does really want to see him again though so he hopes for the best. Not at the first, nor the second, or the third. Noctis sighs deeply as he sits outside the fourth, a quaint little bookstore that isn’t like all the chain stores with their bland decorum while trying to be hip with the younger generation.

Noctis heads inside and gets a strong earthy scent along with a hint of flowers; the smell reminds him of Gladio. His heart begins to pound in his chest and he begins trembling from nerves. A female clerk walks by and smiles at him, before greeting the older man.

“Hi, anything I could help you with today?”

“Oh umm, b, by chance is there a uh, a young man named Gladio that works umm here?” he says, trying to act normal and not like a flustered dork.

The young woman gives him a once-over, then goes wide-eyed and smiles. “Just a second.” she says and scurries off to the back.

Noctis can feel his chest tighten, he becomes sweaty and nervous. Then the man steps out from the backroom. It’s like one of those cheesy scenes in the movies where the main character’s love interest enters the room and everything around them freezes while they continue to move, all the attention focused on them. But then Noctis feels his heart drop as Gladio looks at him; he doesn’t look at him with annoyance or disgust, he has a soft smile on his face along with woe. One of his cheeks was bruised and swollen like he had been hit. Despite that, Gladio still gives him that sweet look like he had the night before, making Noctis cheeks heat up.

“Hey, fancy meeting you here.”

“Yeah, I was in the area so I uh stopped in.” Noctis says and chuckles embarrassedly. “See if you by chance worked here.”

“Huh, lucky guess. Must be fate.” Gladio says and flashes a flirty look at the older man.

Noct feels his heart thump rapidly. “Yeah.” He looks up at the young man and smiles before furrowing his brows, reaching his hand up to cup his swollen cheek. “Were you hit?”

“Oh, that? No, I got angry and slammed my door shut, it knocked a plaque I had hanging over the frame down. Dumbass me just stood there and watched it fall before it thwacked me on the face.”

Noctis frowns. He doesn’t believe him, he’d seen similar things and heard similar excuses from kids being abused. But Gladio wasn’t a kid, so it’s not like he could call child services. So he dejectedly lets it go.

“So how badly are you grounded? No tv or phone?”

“No dessert too.” Gladio snorts. “It wasn’t too bad, just a lot of yelling and door slamming. Plus I have to stay at my mother’s on the weekends since my dad is at work and can’t ‘babysit’ me.”

“You really do need to get your own place, that sounds horrible.”

“Yeah, in time.” he says and bites his lip. “So I uh get done in a couple hours, would you maybe wanna get a bite to eat with me?”

“Are you even allowed too?”

“Yeah, my mom lets me have a bit more freedom then my dad does. Plus I usually get something to eat on my way home so if I’m late she doesn’t fuss.”

“Ah, okay. Where would you like to meet up?”

“There’s a diner by the bus stop down a few blocks, that sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds great.” Noctis says and smiles as his cheeks rosy. Then a thought strikes him. “Oh, since you’re staying at your mother’s on the weekend, I can give you my number then.”

“Sure. I can use the house phone so my calls can’t be monitored by my dad.”

Noctis quickly scribbles his number down onto the back of a receipt he had stuffed into his pocket and hands it over, exchanging bashful smiles. They say their goodbyes with Gladio heading back to work and Noct deciding instead of going all the way back home he’ll kill time by putzing around the nearby mall. Maybe he’ll look into some new ties while there.

An hour goes by and his phone begins to vibrate, an unknown number flashing across his screen. He’s apprehensive at first but answers it anyway.

“Hello?”

“Oh! Awesome! So you didn’t give me a fake number.” Gladio chuckles from the other end. “Hey uh, business is kinda slow so Karis is letting me leave early. Wanted to let you know I’m heading over, if you don’t mind eating around five.”

“That’s fine, I’ll stop by and pick you up. I’m over at the mall.”

“Yeah, okay, see you then.”

A wave of giddiness overcomes him. He hasn’t felt this excited since his early twenties when he and his then-girlfriend went out for the first time. That was the last time he dated or felt attracted to a woman. She broke his heart badly. Hopefully, it ends up better this time around.

Noctis finds Gladio waiting outside the bookstore and picks him up, them bantering awkwardly and flirtatiously as they head to the diner. But as they arrive, the younger man’s face goes white, his eyes widen and he bites his lower lip before quickly shifting his large frame out of sight.

“Shit.”

“Gladio? What’s wrong?”

“My fucking stepmother is there with my sister and stepbrothers.”

Noctis furrows his brows and looks through the large windows of the diner, spotting a middle-aged woman with three kids. He looks down at Gladio and catches the slight look of fear and brokenness in his eyes along with his panicked breathing, it making Noct’s stomach turn for some reason he can’t quite put his finger on. Without a word, he puts the car in reverse and drives away but Gladio remains in his hunkered over position, his breathing still frantic. In a move that would send Ignis into a tizzy, he pulls one hand away from the steering wheel and gently touches Gladio’s cheek before petting his hair. This seems to do the trick and his breathing returns to normal before sitting back up with a sigh.

“Gladio?” Noct asks with deep concern.

“Sorry, I have bad anxiety. I was afraid she’d catch us together.”

Noctis looks to him with remorse and gently rests his hand against his face again. “You want to go someplace else or do you want me to drop you off at your mother’s?”

“If, if it’s alright with you,” Gladio begins and turns to look at him, his amber eyes looking harrowed. “could we stop someplace secluded? I want to cool my head before I go home, I’ll give you gas money too.”

“You don’t have to give me money, I’ll do it. I used to take this one kid out for ice cream after school because he didn’t want to go home until his mother got done with work. Found out the neighbor that was watching him had been touching him inappropriately.”

“Ah, you sound like one of those do-gooders you read about it the paper.”

Noctis smiles. “Yeah, I like helping people. Even though I get really shy and flustered at first, I still try my best.”

“Wish there were more people like you out there in the world, maybe it wouldn’t be so rotten.”

Noct quickly glances at Gladio, noticing the pained look on his face. A thought pops into his head that would kill two birds with one stone. “Hey, I live not far from here. Why don’t we stop at my place and I’ll order out. That way you can clear your head.”

A soft blush forms on the brunette's cheeks. “Oh, yeah, that sounds good.”

Noctis continues to drive until he arrives at the carport for his apartment complex, shutting the vehicle off though neither exits right yet.

“Hey, thanks Noctis.” Gladio says and looks over at the black-haired man, smiling fondly. “Seems my gamble going and talking to you last night didn’t end in a mess.” His smile grows into one of teasing. “Or my dead corpse dumped in the river.”

“You thought I could’ve been a serial killer?” Noctis laughs.

“Hmm, people never suspect the cute ones.” Gladio’s eyes half lid as he looks at the older man, a sliver of a pink tongue swiping across his dry lips. “Hey umm, Noct?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I, can I kiss you?”

The thirty-year-old’s heart pounds in his chest and his body begins to tremble. Kiss? He hasn’t kissed anyone in years, not since his girlfriend. Will he still any good at it? Is Gladio teasing him? Is it too soon? Should he say no, that he wants to wait? His mind continues to race, even as his body begins moving on its own, leaning towards the young man who tilts his head.

Their lips brush momentarily before pressing them together in a tender kiss. It feels exhilarating and he wants more. Noctis rests his palms against Gladio’s cheeks, deepening the kiss that becomes needy and carnal, large tan hands gripping him around his waist. Tongues explore about in each other's mouths and dance about together, soft moans escaping out until Noct gasps when he gets cupped through his pants.

Blue eyes stare deeply into brown, both filled with lust, as the two pant quickly and continue to hold each other. Noctis is the first to pull back, opening his door and stepping out but he pulls Gladio with him, then he pins him to the side, capturing his lips once again as the younger man runs his hands down his back before gripping his ass. Noctis pulls back once again, their lips separating and making a loud smack, and takes hold of Gladio’s hand leading him towards the elevator. He has never done anything like this before but the feelings he’s experiencing are intoxicating and he wants more, wants to feel the pleasure of doing something scandalous. Taboo.

#final fantasy xv #my fanfiction #gladnoct #noctis lucis caelum #gladiolus amicitia #older!Noctis #younger!Gladio #Prompto and Ignis make an appearance

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circular-time · 6 years

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Intermittent Classic Who rewatch: S1E6 - The Daleks pt. 2, “Survivors”

“Ian, do you think they really are just machines?” “What do you mean?” “Well, I was going to say, do you think there's someone inside them?”

Top: the very first time viewers saw the Daleks, since the previous episode ended with the classic “heroine cowering from horrible monster [who happens to be audience POV]” cliffhanger.

Before and after the Daleks are visible, this episode keeps playing with the theme of life-threatening dangers one can’t see, a common menace in shows meant for a younger audience (Censors won’t let you show gruesome monster? Oh, well, FX aren’t half as scary as kids’ imaginations!)

The big Invisible Enemy bugaboo was radiation. It’s funny now seeing a 1960s Dalek Geiger Counter with “Danger” labeled in English (thanks, TARDIS), but it was no laughing matter. This was during the height of the Cold War, when the US, USSR and UK were detonating hundreds of nuclear tests, spreading fallout over large portions of the planet from Australia to the Arctic Circle, even outer space. The British public didn’t know every detail of these tests, but the Cuban Missile Crisis just one year before had very publicly brought the world to the brink of nuclear armageddon.

So while the Doctor is being a callous bastard deciding they need to flee to the ship without Barbara, his fears are understandable to the audience. And if he is scared, the viewers know to be scared. But of course the Daleks don’t let them run, and for the remaining scenes there’s the underlying dramatic tension that every second that ticks by is killing Our Heroes.

Also: pretty early in this episode, Ian is shot, the first time one of the regulars is seriously hurt. That was a scary moment. Theatrical as his delivery is (remember, early British TV was basically repertory theatre onscreen), I remember being shaken by his “My legs, I can’t move my legs!”

So much for the dashing action hero of early Who.

That scene of Barbara alone in the cell is brief but gets to the heart of what is really scary about traveling with the Doctor: the risk of being stranded, alone and beyond aid, on an alien world, with one’s fate in the hands of aliens. Unfortunately, she doesn’t get to do much but elicit audience sympathy, nurture, and plead for Susan’s sake (”She’s only a child!”I) in this story.

The First Doctor performs his usual morally grey first-season role: scientist, explorer, information gatherer and threat.

Just before they discover the Geiger counter and the Daleks discover them, the Doctor makes a mistake he would never make later. Puttering around in the abandoned lab:

DOCTOR: They're intelligent, anyway. Very intelligent. IAN: Yes, but how do they use their intelligence? What form does it take? DOCTOR: Oh, as if that matters. What these instruments tell us is that we're in the midst of a very, very advanced civilised society.

The Doctor’s first assumption is that the creators of this technology are like himself: intelligent, “civilised,” but his version of “civilised” is the kind that can kidnap inconvenient humans threatening to expose him, kill a cave man with a rock, or abandon Barbara to captivity to save his own skin. And yes, by those standards, the Daleks are civilised: Ayn Rand would think so, too.

He’s the brains, but not the hero: once he’s learned all he can from the Daleks, interrogating them as they interrogate him, he’s knocked out of commission. Just as in part 2 of Unearthly Child, the mysterious old man known as the Doctor has left them to their own devices. Ian, Barbara and Susan are forced to improvise without him, even though they know they can’t really escape without their pilot. But in a nice bit of drama, all the adults are incapacitated. Susan gets stuck with the hero ball.

When I was a snotty teen— the same one who didn’t properly appreciate Colin Baker— I was scornful of Susan, for her head-lolling, terrorstricken run through the forest. Come on, I thought, yes the woods can be a little scary at night, but it’s just a forest! (I guess the possibility of mutants didn’t make much of an impression on me).

But now I realise that she’s the surrogate POV character for Doctor Who’s main target audience: children. She shows what it means to bear up and do her duty despite being terrified. The parents of the kids watching Doctor Who would know that lesson very well, having lived through the Blitz and WWII. Susan shows children that it’s all right to be scared, that one can still Do The Thing. Screaming companions (not that she screams in this story) often serve that function.

Also, I now understand a little better the fear of a forest at night, since I can no longer step out my door and wander into the woods myself.

So this episode ends with her retrieving what she hopes are radiation gloves — er, drugs— from the TARDIS. Then she has to force herself away from its safety back to the forest.

And who knows when I will get to that. :P This is the rewatch that’s going to take another 40 years.

#rewatch #the daleks #Season 1 #first doctor #barbara #ian #susan #yeah sorry too lazy to crop the black frame on Britbox

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creativitytoexplore · 4 years

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Every Possible Landform and Weather Condition and Natural Disaster: An Interview with Matthew Baker https://ift.tt/3j3hMzr

Matthew Baker’s second collection of short stories, Why Visit America (out now from Henry Holt), takes ambitious aim at this country’s societal and political systems. Each story arrives through some manner of warped lens—a lens in which America, at first, appears very unfamiliar. New technologies, new borders, new pandemics. But the deeper into these stories you read, the more you recognize similar dangers at play in our own United States. The stories quickly cohere into a comprehensive map of current anxieties and existential interrogations. And that’s where the collection’s genius becomes most apparent: when you suddenly realize your expectations and assumptions about core American values have been constructively turned upside-down. I had the pleasure of interviewing Matthew Baker about his new collection over email in July.

Alexander Lumans: Let’s start with the collection’s title, Why Visit America. Since it shares titles with one of your stories, I’m curious as to when and how you arrived at this particular title. What kind of mood or impression do you hope it casts over the entire book? Does this intention reflect any of your current feelings about our country and its fractured state?

Matthew Baker: The concept for the title story came to me in 2012. At the time, I had recently moved to Ireland; I had never lived in another country before, and the subtle cultural differences between the United States and Ireland illuminated certain characteristics of the United States for me with sudden clarity. At that point I’d already written “Fighting Words” and “Appearance” and “To Be Read Backward” and had been thinking about the possibility of assembling a collection of speculative fiction. And then one night the premise for “Why Visit America” came to me. I didn’t actually write the story until years later, but to me that title seemed like the perfect organizing principle for the collection. I realized that the collection itself could function as a guidebook.

AL: Can you talk a little bit more about this notion of the collection as a “guidebook”?

MB: Each of the stories in the book is set in a different parallel-universe United States. I loved the idea, though, that over the course of the book the stories could form a composite portrait of the real United States: a Through The Looking-Glass reflection of who we are as a country.

AL: Your stories contain many elements that feel perfectly prophetic, as if they came from a more speculative-natured DeLillo. For example, in “Lost Souls,” there’s a worldwide pandemic of infants born without souls (which causes them to die), and right now our world is living through a life-threatening viral pandemic. While writing these stories, how much were you imagining the probability of these fictions becoming reality?

MB: Zero, honestly. I wasn’t trying to write prophetic fiction. Then again, I was born on an election day—maybe that gives me some seer-like ability to peer into the future of the nation.

AL: When you write, what are you searching for? Or another way to put it: from which anxieties, observations, and/or experiences did these stories rise?

MB: For this book, although all of the stories are speculative, I was specifically looking for concepts that would give me a way to write about the social and political systems of the real world. I wanted to examine the fundamental assumptions underlying the structures of American society. Take “Life Sentence,” for example. That story didn’t start with the question, “What would be an interesting way to use a technology that can erase memories?” The story started with the question, “What’s an alternative system of punishment that could be used to replace prisons?”

AL: When I first talked to you about this collection a year ago, you mentioned that one of the “rules” you gave yourself was that you had to name all fifty states somewhere in the book, and (if I remember correctly) you wanted to name them only one time. Are there other easter eggs we should look for or “rules” you worked within for the collection?

MB: Yeah, because the collection is meant to function as a guidebook of sorts, I’d decided that all fifty states needed to be included, and also that each of the stories should be set in a different city or region of the country (although there is some overlap, for instance in that “The Sponsor” begins in Massachusetts but ends in DC and “One Big Happy Family” begins in DC and ends in Florida). But that was only the beginning. I’d also decided that the collection should include as many native species of flora and fauna as possible. As many classic American foods, American sports, American styles of clothing, American genres of music. Every possible landform and weather condition and natural disaster that one can encounter in the continental United States. I had a lot of fun with that detail work. But there are some things I never found a way to include—mountain goats, or chowder, or dodgeball, for example—which haunts me.

AL: It’s immensely clear from the work how much fun you must’ve had creating these stories. When you’re writing, how do you best encourage or create the space for fun to become part of the storytelling process?

MB: It’s not always fun, to be honest. Some days—many days—are just grinding. I’ve found that reading for a while before writing can help spark that playful spirit, though. Like how watching somebody else doing tricks on a skateboard can make you want to hop onto a skateboard and try to do some tricks too.

AL: This collection absolutely demonstrates your love of lists (and I love your lists so much!). Some of them are prodigious in size (“The Tour,” “Lost Souls,” “One Big Happy Family”) while others are small and spare but then accumulate over the course of a single story (“To Be Read Backward,” “Rites,” “Life Sentence”). What is it about lists that excites you?

MB: For better or worse, I think that’s just the way that my brain operates. I love programming languages, and when I first began to code, I was amazed to discover that every programming language has a fundamental data structure—what in many programming languages is called an “array”—whose sole purpose is to store lists of information. I was so excited by that—I felt an immediate affinity—I think because lists are so fundamental to how my brain organizes and processes information about the world around me. I can’t possibly express how much that lists delight me. In prose, I especially love when a list somehow builds to a climax or a sudden subversion of expectations, like a sequence of music notes building to a finale or a sudden change of key.

AL: In many of your stories, the point of view was one step removed from the character that other writers might choose as their storytelling lens. For example, there’s the large cast of POVs (most inhabited only once) in “One Big Happy Family”; yet, even though the detective appears in essentially every scene, we inhabit his POV for only a small part of the story. What is it about these “once-removed” POVs that appeals to you? What do they allow for?

MB: That’s thanks to Gabriel García Márquez. I first read his stories at the age of twenty, and was immediately fascinated by what to me was an entirely new genre of storytelling—not the genre of “magical realism,” although that’s the category that his stories are often assigned to, but instead the genre of the “community spectacle.” Maybe the quintessential example is “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings.” Initially the most interesting character in that story might seem to be the very old man with enormous wings, and yet it’s not a story about him at all—instead it’s the story of the community in which he suddenly appears, and the various ways that the community reacts to and is changed by the spectacle of his appearance. I noticed García Márquez returning to that narrative formula again and again and again—the story of a community reacting to and being changed by some spectacle—and eventually came to realize that there was something about that setup that was profoundly compelling to me. For Why Visit America in particular, I found that “community spectacle” setup to be the perfect angle for exploring the conflict between individualism and collectivism in the United States, and the self-declared American POV of “We the People.”

AL: Gertrude Stein said that “A sentence isn’t emotional, a paragraph is,” which has intrigued me in terms of a paragraph’s various potentials. Furthermore, I’m always interested in how a writer uses their paragraphs; and I don’t think I’ve read a collection that employs paragraphs to the wild range that your collection does. You have a lot of single-line paragraphs throughout “Life Sentence,” and then you have stories with multi-page paragraphs (“The Tour,” “One Big Happy Family,” “Testimony of Your Majesty”). How exactly do paragraphs function in these stories—do you find any overlap with Stein’s quote? To you, what can a very long paragraph achieve?

MB: Maybe I do have a philosophy similar to Stein’s. I think of storytelling in terms of “units.” To me, a sentence is a unit comparable to a comic book panel and a paragraph is a unit comparable to a comic book page. In comics, as a creator, you want every panel to contain a certain amount of narrative energy, but what’s crucial is the page: you need every page to end on a panel that somehow provokes an emotional response in the reader—curiosity, fear, anger, joy, arousal, whatever—in order to entice the reader to turn to the next page to continue reading. I think about paragraphs like that: a paragraph should have a narrative arc that concludes on a sentence that provokes an emotional response in the reader, propelling the reader into the next paragraph at maximum velocity. And for that sometimes what you need is a small paragraph—even a one-liner, like a comic book splash page with a single image—but sometimes what you need is a long paragraph. There are situations in prose storytelling where that much space is required. When an editor tries to chop up a long paragraph into a bunch of smaller paragraphs simply because of some eldritch publishing superstition—“long paragraphs are bad”—it’s horrifying to me. You can kill a story that way. All of the narrative energy will bleed out through those breaks.

AL: You’ve mentioned programming languages, Gabriel Garćia Marquez, and comic books as meaningful influences on this collection. I’m curious as to what other spheres might have left their impressions here. Are there other writers or texts that, in a sense, gave you the permission to write Why Visit America?

MB: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go both had a tremendous influence on the stories in this book, along with Ursula K Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Honestly, though, maybe the biggest influence was American Short Fiction. Of the thirteen stories in the collection, “To Be Read Backward” was the first to be written, and was the first to be published in a literary magazine. I was at AWP when I got the acceptance email from American Short Fiction—I remember standing there in the middle of the book fair, staring down at the email with a sense of astonishment. I was stunned that a literary journal of that stature would be willing to publish this weird sci-fi story that I’d written—an overtly political speculative fiction that devotes entire pages to conjecture about the nature of the spacetime continuum. I’d thought of the story as an experiment, as a risk, and so the enthusiasm of the editors was profoundly encouraging. Getting to do this interview with you is special to me for that reason. In a sense, American Short Fiction was what first gave me permission to write this book.

Named one of Variety’s “10 Storytellers To Watch,” Matthew Baker is the author of the story collections Why Visit America and Hybrid Creatures and the children’s novel Key Of X, originally published as If You Find This. His stories have appeared in publications such as New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, One Story, Electric Literature, and Conjunctions, and anthologies including Best Of The Net and Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy. Born in the Great Lakes region of the United States, he currently lives in New York City.

Alexander Lumans was awarded a 2018 NEA Grant in Fiction. He also received a fellowship to the 2015 Arctic Circle Residency, and he was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. He teaches at University of Colorado Denver and at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. He’s currently at work on a novel set in the Arctic.

#American Short Fiction

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ailuronymy · 7 years

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Hello Grey! I was messing w/ the character generator, and I got "Callous apprentice molly with a grey-and-white pelt who is good at tricking others and doesn't make promises." Now, this would be *perfect* for an antagonist in my fanfic, who confesses her love for the main char, so maybe when they're warriors they can be mates, but the main char doesn't want a mate, and rejects her. She gets angry and calls out main char's BFF, convinced that she was lying to not hurt her feelings, and (cont.)

(cont.-callous grey & white molly) challenges the tom to a fight in secret, and he accepts. soon after the battle begins, main char 2 realizes she’s out for blood. now, after a scar, the fur can grow back white, and in her clan’s culture, white pelts are believed to be unlucky, & therefore unattractive. she plans to scar him badly, and that all his fur’ll grow back white, leaving the main char to choose her over him. now here’s the problem: main char is also a molly. I don’t want -cont again :I--cont. grey and white molly- I don’t want people thinking I’m putting gay chars in an evil light, but I find I prefer her as a molly than a tom. What should I do to establish I have no beef with gay/lesbian people/cats?

Hello, Ruddles! Thank you for writing in. This one is going to be a long answer, and most of it is going to be me asking you questions, I’m afraid. I’d like for you to consider them as carefully and truthfully as you can, but don’t worry, there’s not going to be quiz! They’re the kind of questions that you only have to answer to yourself, and I believe by asking these kinds of questions–whenever we’re creating–helps us become better writers and more self-aware people in general.

First of all, I’d like to ask are there other gay characters in your story? Is the protagonist gay/same-gender attracted? Is her best friend? Are any non-villainous supporting cast (with central speaking roles) gay? Having a gay villain in an otherwise straight story portrays a very different picture–and ideology–than a gay villain in a story that has a variety of other gay, non-villainous characters. The former inherently aligns gayness (and queerness) with deviant or evil behaviour–and that’s really not great. It’s also been a blatant long-time staple of Western media and a fundamental part of how character archetypes are conceptualised in film. (If you wanted to read more about that, I can recommend following up on the concept of “queer-coding.” It’s a built-in aspect of a lot of traditional mainstream television/film these days, and features prominently in Disney productions as well as many other franchises).

The second thing I’d like to ask is what is it that makes you prefer her as a molly? What we like and dislike–and especially why–can be slippery to grasp, and harder to articulate, but as a creator, it’s something that you should ask yourself from time to time. What is it about this character in this story that makes you feel the role must be female? Because characters in stories are playing roles, and I think people sometimes forget that. Often we get attached to them (which is normal and part of the creating process for many people!) but they are still only non-living creations which we place in situations we’ve invented. We are making decisions, and that makes us responsible. Therefore, much like how we might play a game of Cluedo if finding the motive was the goal, intermittently asking yourself, “Why this person, why this place, why this action?” is a good way to interrogate your own habits, biases, goals, and assumptions, and that can only help you make informed creative choices. (You can even consider it practice for the questions people–especially critics–would eventually ask you about your story and your creative process).

That’s not to say I’m encouraging you to turn her into a male character, mind you! If you did that, you would have the same story, albeit one that (unhappily) looked much more familiar to most people: an envious scorned man who acts out revenge on a woman who won’t date him, through violence against her friends/family. Although the exact details might change, I think we’ve all heard these stories in real life, about men who don’t know how to accept the answer “no.” I believe Warriors’ canon story of Ashfur isn’t too dissimilar either?–although, I admit, it’s been a very long time since I’ve read any Warriors book and my memory is foggy on specifics. Perhaps an additional question worth asking in this light is, to borrow a quote of Stanisław Jerzy Lec, is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork? Or, a more relevant version, is it feminist/equality/progress/[whatever word you prefer] if a woman is the one abusing other women, instead of a man? (My argument would firmly be no).

The third question I’d like to ask is what is your reason for this story? In other words, do you believe it needs to be told, and told in this way? Importantly: what is this story doing that isn’t adding to a history of homophobic narratives and cultural perceptions? What is it doing that is adding to those narratives and perceptions, and what can you do to change that? How will you feel and how will you react if you write this story, put it out in the world, and receive feedback that it is, in fact, hurtful or offensive? If you’re concerned that you might not be able to tell a story in a way that isn’t going to be offensive (or your worry about the possibility of criticism is greater than your conviction in the value of your story), that might be a sign that you shouldn’t tell that particular story and should instead change it to something that doesn’t hold that fear for you. It’s not failure to evaluate your work and adapt when you feel out of your depth, or uncertain, or don’t believe in what you’re doing as much as you want to, or you’re not creating to the standard you want to be. That’s self-awareness, and it’s a valuable skill. It takes humility and maturity to make mistakes (or any kind of creative misstep) and learn from them.

As far as advice goes, I feel that posing these questions to you is the best that I can offer. The short answer to the question of “how do I avoid being called homophobic for my writing?” is “don’t write homophobic narratives,” but I’m hoping that by asking these questions back to you, you–and anyone else with similar concerns and questions–can develop a practical way of thinking through these issues now and from here on. The solution isn’t not to write about gay characters: it’s to learn how to write about gay characters in a way that doesn’t mimic and perpetuate straight narratives, beliefs, and prejudices about gayness and gay characters. Learning how to do this is a skill, and it’s one I believe everyone can learn–just like learning how to use punctuation properly, or write snappy dialogue–and, like most skills, it can start off being a bit rough and difficult if you’re not used to it and things you make will probably not be perfect first go. But keep going anyway, because that’s how you become a master pianist or an athlete or a great writer. Good luck with your writing, Ruddles. I hope this helps.

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gbsoriginals-blog · 5 years

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the study of signs (w2)

This week we looked at semiology and how data for semiotic analysis can be gathered using web scraping tools.

Reading

Semiology

Chandler begins to explain semiology by showing what a broad sweep it takes in its study - it could include linguistics, art, film, written language, even music.

My favourite definition was Barthes’, who declared that 'semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification' (Barthes 1967, 9). I think of semiology as the process by which we understand what we see, and it’s interesting to think of how that extends beyond sight.

Chandler defined some other terms that crop up in analysis, I liked the definition of a ‘text’, as recorded in some way so it is physically independent of the sender or receiver. A text is something we can engage in, detached from its creator. However, it’s interesting to think of ‘dynamic’ texts - for example, I analysed an app interface last semester. The app was developed as a dynamic interface which is personalised by the user - it was impossible for my experience of it to be detached from me as the ‘receiver’.

Chandler talked about how a medium becomes transparent the more it is used by people, so we write instinctively on a computer because it has become the natural way to record things. However, media is a subject which decisively interrupts our ‘unthinking’ ways of communication. I am really interested in how using different messaging applications (e.g. Whatsapp vs. Messenger) changes the way people communicate. This research question would involve some semiotic analysis of interface design, and inextricably the message content and patterns of communication.

Using social semiotic analysis: beyond the self(ie)

Zhao, S. and Zappavigna, M. (2018) ‘Beyond the self: Intersubjectivity and the social semiotic interpretation of the selfie’, New Media & Society, 20(5), pp. 1735–1754.

This paper sets out to "problematise some fundamental assumptions of the selfie" (1748). I like the idea of a "micro-autobiography of the present moment" (Schesler, 2014) (1739). Selfies convey the 'hereness' of that person in that moment in that place. It's not just "look at this place" or "look at me" it's look at me, here in this place in this moment. The selfie is diary-esque in its logging. With snapchat it’s not even about recording or remembering, it's about capturing the fleeting moment only to be shared briefly.

It’s interesting to think about selfies in relation to the way women are seen or how they see themselves. In traditional photography there is the viewer, the subject and the photographer, in a selfie, photographer and subject are one (1741). As women grow up with an understanding that they are the ‘object’ (Berger), does the selfie subject-ify them? Is the selfie a way of reclaiming the dynamic of observed vs. observer? (1740) The selfie may tell others to look at us, but we are the artist. While we may be criticised for our vanity, we put the mirror in our own hand (ref. to Berger).

I disagreed with some of the arguments being made in this paper. The writers argue that a selfie is about showing one’s perspective, more than oneself. I think this may be true for some kinds of selfies, but as someone who has (a) taken a fair few selfies and (b) spent some time on instagram. I would argue that selfies can be about situating oneself in a situation, but seem a compromised way of showing one's perspective. Surely a thoughtfully taken photo of what you are seeing or experiencing is a better reflection of your perspective? Surely taking a picture of yourself, if that shows your perspective, suggests your focus is self-orientated, inward looking rather than outward looking? I think a photo taken by a person, says “look at what I’m seeing”, whereas a selfie says “look at me”.

Project

The accessible icon project: design activism

The project was started by Sara Hendren and Brian Glenney in Boston. Sara ran a blog called "Abler" where she wrote about "about prosthetics in the ordinary sense, but also about assistive technologies in the far less ordinary sense: low tech tools, hybrid technologies, art works, and more" (source: ablersite.org).

This project, which was originally a street art project, recognises that design influences the way we see people, and semiotics have an impact on our judgements about the world. So many of the signs (understood in the general sense, like toilet signs) we see on a daily basis are abstract or iconic symbols which we have learned to associate a meaning to, to the point where we are not conscious of the signification process. A 99% Invisible podcast episode ‘Icons for Access’ looks at this project. The podcast is about the designed world, and this specific episode explores the value of internationally recognised icons, an implicit consideration of the importance of semiotics in communication.

This project reminds me that I feel embarrassed and sad about the way us able-bodied people are willing to ‘other’ people with disabilities. Even the improved symbol draws upon a stereotype of what a person with a disability looks like. How can invisible disabilities be respresented? What compromises are we making when we choose icons to represent abstract ideas? I believe inclusive icon design is important, especially where a person is supposed to select an icon and say “yes, this is me” or walk through a door which tells them “this is where you belong. See Clue’s take on inclusive icon design.

Design activism is designed to challenge ways of thinking, and interrogate exisiting and accepted design principles. This project is activism because it speaks to a wider issue of ableism in society. The purpose of the (original) icon is to provide access to people who are disabled, allowing them to navigate public spaces designed for able-bodied people.

“Feeling nostalgic” or feeling-nostalgic.png

Task - scraping

to view the data I had to be on the page where I found it I chose a site where every image had it's own page, I couldn't figure out how to group them so I had to scrape individually chose to scrape a smaller sample to make this do-able some of the data I scraped didn't feel super useful, and the data I actually wanted (the images) I had to manually scrape. at my level of understanding, the scraper didn't feel very useful. it was cool to see the website dissected, almost in parts instead of as a functioning whole

Analysis: the name of the comic is not designed to introduce it or 'anchor' it (Barthes), it functions as a placeholder, taking words from the relay text so the image has a name. The name does not allude to the story in the comic at all.

#week 2

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femslashrevolution · 7 years

Text

On the personal as normal; on the normal as political

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

A few months ago I had a conversation about pubic hair, with a lover of mine. Your bush is super hot, my lover said. I’m blushing, I said. Then she asked: was my decision not to shave a political one, or just a “this is fckn sexy” one? And at that last question—I wasn’t sure what it was, or why it was happening, but something reared up in me. Some looming, rebellious objection. It wasn’t my lover’s fault; she is a thoughtful and considerate communicator, and had done nothing wrong. And it was strange, to feel as I did; because it wasn’t as if I was new to the idea of female body hair being a site of political dissension. I’m thirty-five years old; I was hassled by my schoolfriends in middle school for not shaving my legs and hassled by my girlfriend in high school and my Womyn’s Center mates in college for shaving them. Patti Smith’s Easter, with its iconographic pit hair has pride of place on my record shelf. I have done my time in the trenches of feminist debate, and when I was younger I spent my fair share of time agonizing over which personal grooming strategy made me “the best feminist."

But the truth is that these days, twenty years on, my selective hair removal—I shave my legs and my pits, but not my bush—feels, to me, neither politically motivated nor even particularly intentional. Instead it feels normal. It’s one of the myriad little habits that makes feel at home in my body, in that deeply comfortable and worn-in sense of "at home” that comes from being able to walk around one’s apartment barefoot, in the dark, while thinking about the last scene in one’s novel rather than where one is placing one’s feet. It’s a level of at-home-ness; of ownership and normalcy, that means conscious thought is superfluous. And though I acknowledge the usefulness, in many contexts, of interrogating received wisdom and assumptions about what constitutes “womanly” or “hygienic” female behavior, I would argue that in this world—this world which, today more than ever, teaches women never to be at home in our bodies, never to be comfortable in our bodies, never to stop thinking about our bodies and feeling guilt and shame about our bodies—that there is value to carving out spaces of normalcy, as well: space for us to breathe into all our inconsistent and idiosyncratic ways.

What does all this have to do with femslash? Glad you asked.

I am no longer a fandom newbie, but neither am I a long-time veteran of the wars. I wandered wide-eyed into fandom in my late 20s, already a full-grown adult: a near-lesbian in a foundering long-term relationship with a man, I was also a crafter and feminist and compulsive reader of literary fiction; and I was looking, with mercenary intensity, for writing which explicitly portrayed the kind of sexual complexity with which I was struggling in my personal life, and which I was pointedly not finding in published fiction. I knew zilch about fandom traditions or fandom political histories; all those fandom battles which old-timers were already heartily sick of fighting. I just knew: god! Here were people writing about sex (between men) so viscerally compellingly that even I could understand the appeal: I, who have always felt vaguely repulsed by men’s society and men’s bodies—even, inconveniently, the bodies of men I loved.

And even though my lack of fandom context led to me doing and saying some things in those early days that were, in retrospect, kind of embarrassingly naïve and lacking in nuance, I’m glad that I was ignorant of the larger fandom dynamics around lady/lady sex writing (or hey, around lady/lady writing at all [or hey, around writing about women, full stop]). Because my ignorance meant that when I discovered an entire new-to-me, female-dominated community writing complicated, explicit sex scenes, full of longing and messy exploration and bodily fluids, I could blunder right into writing about women conflictedly fucking other women; conflictedly fighting with other women; conflictedly forgiving other women and reconnecting with other women and betraying other women and taking care of other women and bittersweetly remembering other women. Because why wouldn’t I write about that? That was, to my fandom-naïve eye, the normal thing to do in this subculture into which I’d wandered.

Unsurprisingly, this provoked some interesting reactions.

Due in part to my ignorance when I came on the scene, I’ve since had a lot of interactions and internal debates, and witnessed a lot of fandom dust-ups, about those three things: writing female characters; and writing female characters in relationship to other female characters; and writing female characters fucking other female characters. (I have also written a lot about this, as well.) Some of these interactions have involved talking about why folks write queer women characters. More of them have revolved around why folks don’t; or don’t like to; or don’t think it’s a fair thing to ask; or don’t like it when I do. Common objections I’ve heard to writing and reading women fucking women include: there are fewer female characters in source media (or they’re not as interesting), so finding them and developing investment in them requires more work; f/f writing doesn’t get as much attention, and it is disheartening to choose political correctness over reader response; writing female bodies while living in a female body in a culture that hates female bodies is more emotionally difficult/traumatic; female bodies are gross; the mainstream hypersexualization of lesbians means that is it anywhere from uncomfortable to morally wrong to write sex among women, especially kinky sex; mainstream objectification of female bodies means it is anywhere from uncomfortable to morally wrong to write sex involving women, especially kinky sex; the omnipresence of sexist tropes in media mean that it is anywhere from uncomfortable to morally wrong to write female characters as anything less than morally exemplary, which is boring; the omnipresence of homophobic tropes in media mean that it is anywhere from uncomfortable to morally wrong to write a story that deviates from the anti-trope script (e.g. “happy lesbians with well-balanced relationships”), which is boring; fandom space is supposed to be escapist and fun, and including female sexuality is too close to home to be enjoyable; fandom space is supposed to be escapist and fun, and expecting hobbyists to be warriors in the army of capital-r Representation is obnoxious; fandom space is dominated by young women, and expecting them to be warriors in the army of capital-R Representation is sexist when we don’t hold middle-aged male media creators to the same standard.

I could write an essay about each of these, some of which are really complex points with some merit. But I think one thing that stands out, from a majority of my interactions on this issue through the years, is the perception that the act of writing relationships among women is inherently political, in a way that the act of writing about relationships among men is not.

The $64,000 question: do I agree with this?

Are electrons particles, or waves?

I mean, let’s get this out of the way: if writing about women is political, then writing about men is political, too. Masculinity is constructed as the default flavor of humanity in our society, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bear critical examination, nor does it mean that the actions of men aren’t informed by their socialization, or that everyone’s perceptions of men aren’t informed by power structures. Nor does it mean that men are immune from the toxic effects of life in a heteronormative patriarchy. If we as writers experience a focus on men to be a relaxing break from the stifling responsibility of depicting oppression, that is (a) pretty understandable, since that’s the myth of the (white cis hetero) male experience that’s sold to us from birth, but also (b) probably in need of some interrogation, since it doesn’t actually reflect anyone’s lived reality. Not even the lived reality of dude-bros who roll their eyes at the words “heteronormative” and “patriarchy”; and ESPECIALLY not the lived reality of queer men, who are, let’s remember, real people with a real history and a real present of active oppression due to their orientation.

As to the question of queer women: was I right or wrong, in my fandom-naïve days, to assume that writing sex and relationships among women is essentially the same as writing those things among men?

Yes. That is, I think I was right, and also wrong.

In a 1995 essay, Paula Rust enumerates many of the widely divergent and in some cases mutually incompatible interpretations of the oft-quoted second-wave feminist slogan “The personal is political”:

The personal reflects the political status quo (with the implication that the personal should be examined to provide insight into the political); the personal serves the political status quo; one can make personal choices in response to or protest against the political status quo; one’s personal life influences one’s personal politics or determines the limits of one’s understanding of the political status quo; the personal is a personal political statement; personal choices can influence the political status quo; one’s personal choices reveal or reflect one’s personal politics; one should make personal choices that are consistent with one’s personal politics; personal life and personal politics are indistinguishable; personal life and personal politics are unrelated.

If we adapt Rust’s terminology slightly to accommodate the act of reading and writing fiction, so that “the personal” becomes something more like “individualized character depictions,” then I think this passage becomes a useful tool in breaking down how we think about reading and writing women versus how we think about reading and writing men. It seems to me that often, when we are reading and writing about men (especially cis white men who are canonically assumed to be straight even if they fuck in fanfic), our attitudes tend to hang out in the spectrum ranging from, on the more nuanced end, “choices about individualized character depictions can be made in response to or protest against the status quo” to, on the less nuanced end, “individualized character depictions and personal politics are unrelated.” Since straight white men are the default, depicting them doesn’t feel primarily political. It feels normal. Things that happen to straight white male characters seem not to carry the burdensome weight of responsibility and representation that plagues female characters, especially queer female characters or female characters of color. The unspoken logic here posits that the things that happen to men, just happen! The traits men have are just traits! Men can be evaluated as individuals, because there is nothing to distract from that individuality. No matter that whiteness/straightness/maleness is not actually nothing, only an invisible something; and never mind that the completeness of the divorce between individualized character depictions and greater political realities is to a large extent illusory. The fact remains that that’s often the in-the-moment experience of reading and writing about male characters: they can exist as individuals, because their maleness is the norm.

By contrast, when we are reading and writing about women (especially queer women and women of color), our default assumptions tend to range from “individualized character depictions can influence the political status quo” to “individualized character depictions and personal politics are indistinguishable.” It is burdensome to write about queer women because we feel that every individualized queer woman character we write, in her body and her actions, must both bear the brunt of, and actively resist, all that baggage listed above. She must subvert (on a meta level) and/or stand against (on an in-story level) the tide of mainstream objectification, of lesbian hypersexualization, of sexist and homophobic tropes, of poor treatment and shoddy development at the hands of media creators, and on and on. Everything that happens to her or doesn’t happen to her, every physical trait and every mental tic, is massively overdetermined, because we feel that to write about queer women is to body forth our own personal politics into the world—and, more than that, to transform the landscape of queer female representation entire.

OBVIOUSLY, as a writer and reader this is neither fun nor possible! No character can do this.

Please let that sink in. No character can do this. No character is so well-written that she is going to transcend the Oppression Soup in which we all swim; and even if she did, she would not be enough transform the landscape of queer female representation into an egalitarian wonderland. We can stop hitching our wagons to that star because it’s not going to happen. Good news! We are not failures because we fall short of this demonstrably impossible metric! Similarly: my friends and I can install low-flow shower heads in every bathroom in every apartment we move into, from now until our deaths, but we are still not going to offset the effect of Nestlé extracting 36 million gallons of water per year from our national forests to bottle and sell at a profit. Or again: my personal choice to make my own clothes, though potentially politically meaningful to me as an individual, is never going to counteract the coercive power of a global fashion industry that earns $3 trillion a year peddling the lie that women who are larger than a size 10, or who don’t have expendable income to keep up with the latest trends, are not employable, fuckable, or worth taking seriously. This is not to say that making my own clothes can’t be politically meaningful for me personally. Nor is it to say that I am incapable of meaningful political action: I can help to take on these oppressive and exploitative industries via mass organizing: public actions, legal challenges, legislative lobbying, investigative exposés, mass boycotts. But there is absolutely nothing that I alone can do, with my body or my apartment or my novel, that will dismantle these power structures.

For one thing, this is not how institutional oppression works. Yes, the ramifications of oppressive power structures can manifest in intimate details of one’s life, and it does well to be conscious of that. But the causality doesn’t work in reverse: identifying and purging artefacts of oppression from the intimate details of one’s life, while potentially personally meaningful or satisfying, won’t meaningfully reduce the overall strength of the originating oppressive power structures in society at large. I cannot take down the fashion industry by making my own clothes. I cannot save the world from Nestlé by installing low-flow shower heads. I cannot dismantle sexism and heteronormativity by writing a queer female character who carries perfectly on her shoulders the representation of every oppression she suffers, and perfectly represents my personal authorial politics—or, indeed, by writing a host of such characters, and sharing them with a few thousand people on the internet. This needs to stop being the expectation, or even the ideal. To hold the queer female character to such a standard is to make of her even more of an unattainable exception to human existence than she already is: for none of us can stand in for All Women, or All Queers, or All Queer Women; and none of us should be asked to do so.

For another thing, this is not how fiction works. Fiction doesn’t convince through intellectual perfection. Fiction convinces through building empathy and voluntary identification in readers for characters who may or may not be wildly different from them, and may or may not be placed in radically different situations than they have ever found themselves in, but whom they the readers, on some basic human level, nonetheless recognize. Crafting an individual character who inspires that kind of gut-level recognition is difficult if the author is assembling them primarily as anti-oppression talisman rather than a flawed and complicit individual; or if the author is undermining the voluntary nature of the reader’s identification by making the character, Ayn Rand-style, a prostelytizing mouthpiece for the author’s own philosophy. I think this is part of what people mean, when they object that writing women, or queer women, or women of color, feels “too political”: the strictures of talisman-creation undermine the ability to foster empathy for a real-seeming individual. But this is not a problem with writing queer women! It’s a problem with the unrealistic expectations we’ve placed on ourselves around doing so.

I mean, for my money, the way to craft characters who do inspire this gut-level sense of recognition is to draw on one’s own experiences—one’s own passions and one’s own struggles—while also refraining from providing neat and tidy solutions to which real people (and hence characters in the moment) do not have access. People are messy; we have to be able to let our characters be messy. To paraphrase John Waters, who surely knows whereof he speaks: we have to let our characters make US uncomfortable. We have to let them make us feel queasy and ambivalent sometimes, just as we sometimes make ourselves feel that way. We have to let ourselves discover things through the journey of writing and reading that we did not know when we started out.

Does this mean there is no point in research, no point in educating ourselves about over-used tropes and the history and current reality of queer representation, no point in critiquing media that perpetuates these tropes? Of course it doesn’t mean that. The goal—my goal, anyway—is to write characters who ring true to life, who come off as real people, with real struggles. And in order to do that, a writer needs to be familiar with the toxic and un-lifelike nonsense that gets endlessly recycled in media. It’s helpful to know, for example, that the “lesbian dies, goes mad, or returns to the heterosexual fold at novel’s end” trope was originally imposed on lesbian pulp writers as a condition of publication if they wanted to avoid obscenity charges: here is an example that’s, VERY clearly, not an artefact of lesbian reality but an artificial and homophobic narrative imposed from without. I think it’s valid to make the point that maybe, in this year of our apocalypse 2017, we have reached a point where this narrative should be largely avoided.

But you know: there are a lot of artificial and homophobic narratives. And there are even more narratives that, while not intrinsically artificial or homophobic, have so often been twisted that way as to be forever tainted by suspicion and pain. And that suspicion and pain twist back into real lived experience in ways that can be complicated and unpredictable. If our culture is a house, then so many of its walls are built of tainted narratives, and so many of its other walls are built up against those tainted walls, that it’s very difficult to dismantle the structure, or determine what’s sound and what’s not. As a real-life queer woman, I have never met an anti-oppression talisman, but I have met plenty of queer women who have made me uncomfortable—myself at the top of my own list. Though I squirm at the “lesbian goes crazy” novel ending, I have known many queer women, myself included, who struggle with mental illness (as well as many who don’t). Though I have noped out of media for egregious and self-serving use of the “lesbian was just waiting for the right man” trope, I myself am a near-lesbian who once fell in love with a man, and I know others who have done the same (as well as many who haven’t). Though I share the frustration over the assumption that bisexual characters are universally flighty and commitment-averse, I also know several flighty and promiscuous bisexuals (and many bisexuals who are neither, and many flighty and promiscuous straight folks). Though I cringe a little at depictions of alcoholism and drug abuse in queer female culture, I am myself a queer woman with a history of drug and alcohol abuse. In a cringe-y catch-22, I am deeply uncomfortable with both the demonization of the working-class butch/femme subculture by the middle and upper classes of lesbian society AND ALSO with the degree of forcibly normative gender expectations I personally have encountered in butch/femme environments… so I decided to go ahead and write a whole novel about that, despite the fact that I might avoid someone else’s treatment of the same subject matter.

The pattern here is hopefully obvious: even drawing from the pool of my own personal lived stories, many verge on or overlap with narratives that are often toxic in their execution. So what are we to do? Does all this add up to a wash, a free pass for the continuation of any tired and harmful trope imaginable? No. It adds up to a call for a nuanced and subjective calculus around analyzing works of art: an acknowledgement that some versions of Narrative X or Character Y will spark that sense of recognition or that shock of injury for audience members, and others won’t, and others will for some audience members but not for others, and all of that is valid to talk about. And it also adds up to a call for writers of queer female characters—especially those of us who are queer and/or female ourselves—to allow ourselves the freedom to write individualized queer women who, though they may not body forth our personal politics, make us familiarly uncomfortable. Characters with whom we are intimate.

Characters with whom we feel at home.

Taking a larger view, I think that we need to close the gap between our reading and writing of men, especially straight white men (“individualized character depictions and personal politics are unrelated”) and our reading and writing of women, especially queer women and women of color (“individualized character depictions and personal politics are indistinguishable”). Both sides need to shift. Neither extreme is true, and we are doing a disservice to all our characters, and our works, if we disregard the nuance that lives between them. But more intensely, and more specifically, I would argue that where queer female characters are concerned we need to work toward an attitude that—however partially and strategically—begins to uncouple “individual character representation” from “personal authorial politics,” and does so with the express goal of allowing these characters normality. Weird, inconsistent, flawed, complicated, mundane normality. We need to let go of the intimidating and paralyzing attitude that queerness and femaleness raise the political stakes in such a way that mundane fuckups, either on the part of the author or the character, are no longer allowed.

To extend the analogies from earlier: if we have the water pressure to support it, we should install low-flow showerheads, not because we can thereby compensate for the evils of Nestlé, but to save on our water bills. And if we have the time and inclination we might make our own clothes, not because it will magically deliver us from the perils of the beauty industry, because it it a mode of self-expression that is also personally empowering. And if we can, we should write and read complex, flawed queer female characters, and support others who write and read them, because to do so enables us—real-life queer women, and people who know real-life queer women, and even people who might be intimidated or repulsed by real-life queer women—to feel that real-life queer women, in all their flawed and problematic glory, are more human; more at home; more recognized. Closer to the range of the normal.

None of these things is going to save the world, and we don’t need them to. They are important and life-sustaining anyway.

(The author can be found online as havingbeenbreathedout on Tumblr and breathedout on AO3. She can be found offline on the wide open beaches and labyrinthine interstates of sunny southern California, where she lives the social-justice nonprofit life and also enjoys Bloomsbury history, kissing girls, poolside cocktails, early-morning yoga, and crying about fiction with her live-in editor/BFF/queerplatonic life partner fizzygins.)

#havingbeenbreathedout #I Am Femslash #Type: Meta #Femslash February 2017 #Femslash February #submission

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cophine-mon-amour · 7 years

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*I’m totally into what you guys have to say about this matter and would love to read your responses.

Delphine Cormier. Delphine is not only my favourite character of the show (with Siobhan a close second) but my favourite character all together. It’s not original, I know, but like everyone else I have my reasons. Some say our favourite character is someone who is close to reflecting us as a person, whether it be personality or appearance. For me that might be true, I may have personal reasons but here that doesn’t matter. What matters the most is Delphine.

Now, I bet you remember months ago when we were enraged by the way certain TV shows were treating us with cheap cliffhangers and unnecessary deaths. Maybe I was in denial but for me it was difficult not knowing for sure, even though I knew (hoped) that the creators of OB weren’t silly enough to end Delphine in that way. Although I still prepared myself for that outcome just to be more on the safe side. I know we need to consider Evelyne Brochu’s schedule but if it were me I would have been begging her to come back if the original plan was to kill the character. A sigh of relief, around a year later we were relieved that Delphine is in fact still alive.

Ever since season 3 aired I have been trying to figure this character out. I’ve thought about her a lot and have come up with many theories, some improbable and even absurd but either way her past is interesting. There’s always a possibility that the unthinkable could be true. The fact that we know very little about her is exciting and it allows us to come up with many ideas of our own. If or when we are given information on this lots of ideas will be made but like many things on OB it’s difficult to develop the correct theory, because simply put; you just never know with this show. Also the extent is subjective, but I think we can agree not much is shared when it comes to the history of many of the characters.

(SPOILER) Of course, every season we learn more and we have been told that this season will include a tasty episode for all those Cosima Niehaus lovers. We love to know more, but will this be a case of ‘the more we know, the less we understand’ or will the truth we uncover finally put us at ease about Cosima? Either way I can’t wait for the fanfiction.

Back on track. If we don’t know the truth then we can at least consider the characters’ behaviour and decisions. Not entirely an assumption but one thing I’ve considered is the possibility that Delphine has lost a loved one. At an early age or later on in life, my favourite one is being fairly recent. Before I jump right to it I think it’s important we take a close look at the way she is in season 1 and 2 to season 3. Allow me to start off by saying Delphine’s turn of point was the beginning of season 3. Prior to that she made decisions that would come across as shady and as betraying Cosima, but these seem quite minor compared to season 3 – and no, I’m not just talking about the eye scene where she interrogates Rachel but her demeanour takes a turn. What I see, where some may see a cold-blooded stalker, is determination and braveness through the act of love.

Season one Delphine’s a puppet and is being pulled by the strings that belong to the DYAD institute and does her best when she’s thrown in the middle of work and love. We know she’s highly intelligent so it makes sense that she would take her work (her passion for science) seriously. We don’t know how long she had been working with the institute prior, though whether it was for a while or a short period of time perhaps she had no reason to question them. Which is why near the end she is surprised when she faces the thought of losing Cosima when what she wanted was to protect her – because she trusted the institute. To me, she remains innocent because she was unaware of the actual truth at that time.

Speaking of DYAD, it’s only fair to include Leekie and that it seems she may have had a sexual relationship with him. Though this is too innocent to judge her for, since it was before anything more than a friendship developed between her and Cosima, it’s worth considering why she had this relationship with him. It could have been a way of using him to gain promotions during her career with DYAD or let’s admit it – just an arranged decisions between them either for some fun or because there was attraction there. A more interesting one is that there could have been some information he or the institute was holding against Delphine like the situation with Paul.

Season two I feel like there’s not much to say other than she’s finding her feet and feels content. There’s opinions that clash that causes arguments but all seems well as Delphine’s choices are risks done out of good reasons for both Cosima and her sisters.

The scene when they confess their love for each other both seem sincere. I don’t need to tell you how this scene went but it’s worth mentioning the point when Cosima tells her ‘I have enough dirt on you to destroy your career’, to which at this Delphine laughs. Recently when I re-watched this I found it rather odd and pondered for a while on her response. I have a few solutions but my favourite one; there’s a slight pause, she realised how much her job doesn’t matter to her any more or how it wasn’t obvious enough for Cosima to know that. It could be nothing and that she found it simply funny and I’m reading too much into this, but little details matter me.

Season 3 was the most difficult season for me to watch. I have re-watched OB countless times but this one I have never returned to fully. If you are like me then the reasons could be quite self explanatory when the fondness for Delphine is taken into account. If you’re somebody who knows how it feels to have loved someone who doesn’t love you back (or doesn’t show it), then maybe it’s fairly easy to put yourself in Delphine shoes and understand some of her actions. Of course, it’s a great season and I won’t let the whole Shay and Cosima (and of course cophine) situation cloud my judgement. As I previously said, I have my personal reasons towards my favourite character so maybe I’m just salty. It’s just a shame there had to be a relationship involved as I have lost a fair amount of respect for Cosima for her actions. To this day I still question her actions and whether she loves Delphine, but I won’t talk about that here because I think it will be better suited in another post (I’ve tried writing here but it seemed more relevant with Cosima rather than Delphine).

From what we have seen in previous seasons Delphine doesn’t interact with a huge range of people. It’s usually in a professional manner and work related but when it’s not, it’s with Cosima. This makes it easy to understand how lonely she must have been during the season. The worst part is having nobody to confide in, but when she tries it’s with Cosima and basically gets ignored. Ouch, I’m not surprised she turned to drink for comfort. On more of a serious note, Delphine’s now the one feeling hurt and betrayed by the woman she loves. Doing whatever it takes to keep the clones safe there’s no wonder how angry she must have felt to have her efforts be taken for granted. There’s proof that she would even die for them. It’s difficult to put these thoughts into words, so in the best way I’ll put it this way; I can imagine a conversation in season 5 between Cosima and a salty Delphine. “Why did you help us?” “Because I’m the only one stupid enough to fight for what’s right.”

One thing that is worth mentioning is that Delphine mentions being in boarding school. There’s speculation about whether the girl in her suicide attempt story is actually her rather than some girl. That being said, I think there’s definitely more to this story but unless it has a huge part to play about her I doubt we will know the whole story this season. My point is, things like this could have played a part that triggered her drive to be the way she was that season.

My theory (finally) *Firstly, I would like to note that I couldn’t begin to imagine what it feels like to lose a child and this is not intended towards anyone who has been affected from this. I hope nobody is offended by this post but if you feel you could be impacted by this next paragraph, skip the one.

There’s not much to be said here. Like I said, my favourite theory is that she has lost a loved one. More specifically, a child of her own who was sick for months. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is far from the truth, but I still consider it interesting as it could seem possible. To me it makes sense. Countless times we’ve seen that Delphine would do anything in her power to help Cosima even if it meant going against her word and behind her back. Season 3 suggests to me that she was hurting deeply to the point where her past was brought back, hence her devotion to saving Cosima as well as her love for the woman. It makes sense that as a doctor she would try everything she could to save her child and feel useless as a parent and doctor when all fails. She knows how it feels to lose somebody she loves, why would she want to go through it again with Cosima? My appreciation This post is pretty much all over the place and I have probably left out a few things I should have mentioned, but I’m glad you’ve stuck out to hear what I had to say.

Orphan Black Season 5. The last season of the (add mind blowing adjective) series that has brought like-minded people together, creating friendship and even more along the way for many of us. In some cases the show has helped our lives for the better in ways we can and cannot explain. For this reason I have trouble accepting this as our last season, including the knowledge that some day the fandom will die. Maybe not soon after, but sooner than what a lot of us hope for. The worst part – most likely it will die out slowly. I’m not one for happy endings but I’m a sucker for OB and I’m not ready for it to end because I’m emotionally invested. And if you’re like me, a fussy bugger, you’ll have trouble finding a TV show as good as this ever again that includes amazing acting from brilliant actors and the best fandom I’ve been apart of for many years.

Perhaps that’s the whole point – to move on and keep this as an experience. I feel the need to include this as I have never made a post this long before, and consider this my only time on expressing my gratitude for this show and the fandom. I don’t know where I’d be without you guys and I bet that’s how a good handful of us fans feel. I would also like to add, everything I mention in this post is totally my opinion only, I’m making this clear so I don’t come across as some self-assertive ****.

Comparing season 1 to season 4, I would say there’s a significant difference and I am yet to be disappointed as they improve after every season, this includes the directing, scripts and producing. The surprises they keep rewarding us with is great, though with a few exceptions.

Conclusion Overall, we’ve seen Delphine be selfless and risk dying for what’s right, but for our last season I hope we discover her doing everything in her power to live for what she loves. I know this for sure; Delphine Cormier is one of the Bad Ass Bitches I know on TV and deserves one massive thank you party hosted by the other characters.

#holy watershed #thanks for reading #orphan black #delphine cormier #Cophine

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venetianblossom · 4 years

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Why I, a believer in God, am quite happy marrying an atheist

Inquiring minds seem to want to know how I’m quite happy and satisfied marrying an atheist even though I, myself, believe in God and would venture to call myself a Christian. I’m sure to most people, this probably doesn’t register on their radar of important things because indeed, it really isn’t that big of a deal or that important. But since I’ve gotten asked by a few friends and peers about whether my fiance is a believer, I just thought I’d go ahead and elaborate on my thoughts and why, without prescribing my choices to anyone else, I’m quite happy in this relationship. Maybe some people might want to know if they can make their own relationship work with someone who has different theological views. Maybe this can provide a wee bit of insight. Just remember every relationship is different. The short and simple answer to this is: he’s not a dick to me about believing there’s a God and when he’s willing to play along with the assumption, tends to rather agree with me about the metaphysics of a creator God; in turn I’m not a dick to him about not having adequate evidence in his mind to believe in one because I understand what it took for me to search and find things that were good enough for me to hedge my bet on God existing. It kind of is that simple. Now I’ve had relationships with atheists in the past that weren’t so smooth, partly because I was much more attached to my theology as my central sense of self and so any criticisms of my theology cut a lot deeper. I felt like I needed my partner to have faith in order for me to feel like my faith was valid. I’ve since grown out of that. I’ve developed my own faith alone and single and can hold onto it by myself (not that there’s anything wrong with it if others prefer to share their faith with their partner more closely). Secondly, the criticisms were a lot harsher, because those atheists were kind of dicks about it or they seemed rather angry about the idea of God and that anger just so happened to bleed onto me. By contrast, my partner never tells me not to believe and has gone so far to say he admires my faith, which gives me more than enough support. Now, for the longer and more complex answer, I just don’t tend to share all or most of my values with most of the Christian men I had happened to come across. I’m not trying to bash anyone. Even if I met such Christian men who held certain views that I felt were dead wrong or harmful, I could still see that they had an overall good character and meant well and did their own darndest to be like Christ in a dark world. What more can any of us do, right? I was still happy to call some of these men my friends. But still, that doesn’t make them compatible partners for life. What I’m going to say next, please don’t assume I’m talking about all Christian men, just the majority of ones I’ve met in my limited geography, that I had any potential physical attraction to. Quite bluntly, I accept evolution and in general, most science that flies in the face of scripture because I trust the scientific method (if it was actually used properly and repeat studies have been done). I adapt my faith around my scientific understanding of the world. I don’t view the bible as inerrant. Holy, but in my mind, not inerrant. And I think the only way to grow is to change my views in light of new information. As I’ve shared with a friend of mine studying marine biology who apparently feels the same, the more science I study the more spiritual I feel at times. The natural world is awe-inspiring and it speaks to my spirit in a language I can understand and know well: artistry. Science makes me appreciate God’s artistry. I am pro-choice. I do not celebrate abortion. I have an ongoing health obstacle that would make pregnancy potentially dangerous to me; not just the labor but the pregnancy itself. I take very careful measures to keep pregnancy from occurring but if it ever did before I am ready physically, I would not wait until that potential life formed into anything more complex. I don’t know if humanity can ever agree on a cut-off line when a growing life is too human-like but I know I could sleep at night if I lost a blastocyst or 2 week pregnancy as compared to a 1.5 month or 2 month pregnancy. And I needed a partner that was going to understand this, not call me a baby-murderer, and care about my health and safety. I do not regret losing my virginity before I was married. I never have been able to bring myself to regret something that, for all intents and purposes, was done with love. Sure, that one didn’t work out but that doesn’t make me scarred or damaged or laden with baggage. I’ve long moved on from that relationship and though it was rocky I was better off for it. I can’t have a partner that expects me to be sorry for this or expects me to be his before he’s ever even met me. Now, not everyone that has romantic ideas of being their wife’s first is abusive. Not at all. But something about the notion of a person acting entitled to my body and sexuality and love before ever meeting me, sets off huge alarm bells in my head that remind me of my ex abuser and his interrogations. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to feel any other way about that kind of behavior. It just freaks me out and plain feels too entitled. I was not upset about my partner’s past sex life, nor was he upset about mine. And just like that, it’s not a problem for us to worry about. It’s also important for me to establish that I do have sexual chemistry with a person before marrying them. I don’t sleep with anyone on first dates or even second dates; and I’ve had boyfriends that I actually never slept with. But if everything is good on paper, I need to make sure everything is good physically because yes, I have had that be a deal breaker problem before. There are other compatibility obstacles but I’d say these are the main sticking points. With these sticking points, as you can imagine, your average “save yourself for marriage, pro-life, evolution-denying” Christian male is probably not thinking I seem like a great partner either. And that is perfectly reasonable. We all need partners that we can share our lives with, without these things turning into a minefield of constant stress. So, alas, my choices were probably going to be to marry a more liberal/progressive Christian, another agnostic theist like myself, or a supportive agnostic atheist. I landed on the third one. He has told me on more than one occasion that I shouldn’t stop calling myself a Christian because of others. He asked me what I thought the core tenets and message of Christianity was. I told him. He asked if I believed them. I said yes. And he said, “well then sweetheart, you’re a Christian”. And he’s never made me feel bad for this. And of course, there’s so much more to our relationship and who my partner is as a person, than just his thoughts on the universe or a creator. Ah, it also helps that I don’t believe in a deity that punishes people in an eternal conscious torment pit for lacking adequate evidence to satisfy their thirst for knowledge of such a deity. So, for anyone who really wanted to know, this is why I’m happy with my atheist. If any of my sticking points offended you, please know, if you’re a friend who stands in opposition to some of those things, that’s okay. I probably already know that about you, and still love you for the friend you are. These are just my explanations for my partner selection, which is much more stringent when it comes to worldview, necessarily-so, than my friend-selection. I INTENTIONALLY have friends who think differently than I do and happily walk on whatever common ground I can with them.

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