The Abyss Also Stares

— Justin D. Edwards, "Mapping Tropical Gothic in the Americas" in Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture.

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the word "zombie" is never used in Night of the Living Dead. the word used is "ghoul," which originated in Arabic folklore. reports of ghouls' origin and nature varied widely by culture but agreed that they were hostile and they ate human flesh, which to my mind makes the name more appropriate for the American movie creatures. after all, besides being animated corpses, our "zombies" really are nothing like the Haitian sort, who inspire in me nothing but the deepest pity -- enslaved people subjected to the final indignity, denied rest and freedom even in death.

Here's the thing about Jareth from Labyrinth right?

He's made up.

That's not necessarily the same thing as not REAL. But he, just like all her friends who show up in her room before her adventure as toys and figurines, exist in relation to her, in response to what she wanted and needed. She told the story and there he was, there he always had been. But she's a teenage girl who doesn't know what she wants yet, and Jareth kind of pays the price.

"but the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and had given her certain powers." He's an archetypal oxymoron. He's both the dastardly baby stealing villain and the royal love interest trying to relieve the heroine's suffering, Cinderella style. He's fucked either way by being both. She doesn't know if SHE wants to be the villain or the heroine until he shows up and then she decides on the heroine, so he has to sneer and menace and challenge but it's too late for him!! it's too late, The King Of The Goblins Had Fallen In Love With the Girl, he's Cinderella's prince too and he has to try, he gives her a poofy dress and takes her to fucking goblin prom, sweeps her around the room like a music box with perfect posture and room for Jesus.

But it doesn't work buddy, it can't work. You're just a story for a teen girl to grow up in, and as the villain you have to be defeated. He's so complex because his tropes contradict themselves, and he doesn't understand why he has to lose when he was only doing the job he was given. In his last scene he is pale as death with shadows under his eyes, backing away and begging for his happy ending with nonsense mishmash promises that belong to both halves of him.

"I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me." I'm sure you are, Jareth. No wonder.

But of course! That's what his song is about!

Actually, I see a nice paralell here with The Neverending Story's AURYN. You remember what's written on it's back?

"Do What You Wish"

And no, it doesn't mean you should fool around and just wish away whatever you have on your mind. As the Ruler of the Desert of Colors, Gograman explains it to Bastian, it is about following your True Wish.

Bastian thinks he knows what his true wish is. You see? Same as for Sarah. She thinks she knows what she wants. As Jareth points it out to her, "everything I've done, I've done for you" - he kidnapped Toby just as she wished. He gave her a chance to get him back.

"I move the stars for no-one"

This. This is where he becomes threatening. FOR REAL. He is warning her.

Sarah : Give me the child.

Jareth : Sarah, beware. I have been generous up 'til now. I can be cruel.

Sarah : Generous? What have you done that's generous?

Jareth : *Everything*! Everything that you wanted I have done. You asked that the child be taken. I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for *you*! I am exhausted from living up to your expectations. Isn't that generous?

What Sarah and Bastian both have in common; they don't realize that wishes have CONSEQUENCES.

How you turn my world

You precious thing

You starve and near exhaust me

Everything I've done

I've done for you

I move the stars for no one

You've run so long

You've run so far

Your eyes can be so cruel

Just as I can be so cruel

Oh I do believe in you

Yes I do

Live without your sunlight

Love without your heartbeat

I, I can't live within you

I can't live within you

I, I can't live within you.

#the line you expect#the line he should sing#because it’s a love song right?#it’s almost a love song#the line you want to hear is ‘i can’t live without you’#but instead it’s ‘i can’t live within you’ because he’s a concept stretched too thin#he’s fantasy and sexuality and girlhood and hero and villain and freedom and entrapment and salvation and destruction#goblin and king#and she’ll grow up and change#But he never will#because she needed him THEN#jareth is literally the character of all time he makes me insane indane insane (tags via @lestatslestits)

🎉🎉HAPPY DIVORCE! 🎉🎉

I'm just gonna copy paste my ramblings over here. One of the main reasons it took me so long finishing the P2 duology is that I keep having to pause the game to type up some paragraphs about how it complements P5 really well.

Spoilers for both Persona 2 duology and P5R below cut

CONGRATS ON FINISHING!

Tutorial on how I proportion cosplays on my very short body!

I want to take a moment to try to express why i appreciate Haru's sadism as an actual serious part of her characterization and not just a funny contrast joke and 'yay girl violence!' don't get me wrong i love me some yay girl violence for the sake of it, but like. i think there's a lot to work with there for genuine drama writing, too, not just comic relief and i want to talk about it! (cw sugimura)

Cringe started as a verb describing a physical reaction, i.e.: "I cringe when I see [x]."

Modern slang has turned cringe into an adjective describing anything to which a person might have such a reaction.

.

This shift in language is illustrative of a shift in culture.

.

For a while there, in the early 2000s, there was this big sex positivity movement and we talked openly about kink and queer sexuality and creating a culture of consent that broke away from traditional conservative ideas of moral respectability.

And now we are in the midst of this giant purity culture backlash, this giant push for rigid conformity all over the internet. Anything that deviates from the norm even remotely is ridiculed.

And this cultural shift is perfectly encapsulated in this singular linguistic shift, this verb becoming a noun.

The Revenge of the Pearl Clutchers

That's what "cringing" is. It's pearl clutching.

When the pearl clutchers turned cringe into an adjective, they turned a reaction into an accusation. The pearl clutchers don't want to take responsibility for their own kneejerk emotions. They want to blame YOU.

They are saying, "My disgust isn't the fault of my own backwards prejudices. It is YOU who are inherently disgusting. My inability to cope with even the slightest deviation from norm is not the problem here. YOUR refusal to rigidly conform is the problem. I am not the one who is cringing. YOU are the one who is cringe."

Fuck 'em.

.

Take the word back.

Cringe is not something people are.

It's something judgmental assholes do.

This. THANK YOU.

I think chapter 2 of TriMax Volume 6 might just be my favorite thus far. Everything in it hinges on this one iconic scene.

This isn't the first time Wolfwood has pointed a gun at Vash's head. Maybe it won't even be the last. But it holds a bit more weight here because just a few pages ago, we saw a flashback where Wolfwood pointed his gun at someone else's head.

His hand shakes as he aims at Knives. His breath is heavy, and the memory of the Fifth Moon incident is fresh in his mind. He knows if he can just pull the trigger, he can end it here. This being of destruction will be gone, and maybe this time his fancy scientists won't be able to bring him back.

But then Knives does Plant things, and under the weight of it Wolfwood finds he just can't follow through. He fears his own death too much, and Knives will surely kill him.

When he points his gun at Vash, it's different. His hand is steady, his breath calm. The memory of everything that happened at the Dragon's Nest is fresh in his mind; just this morning he warned Meryl that she and Milly should remember that, despite his ideals, Vash is still a loose cannon that they'd do well to avoid. He thinks to himself that if he can just pull the trigger, if he can just take out the less intimidating of the brothers, then one of these monstrous twins and half of the problem will be gone.

This time, there's no crushing sensation of oppression. There's no air of fear and malice. There are no threats or memories of twisted promises. There's only a look, wary and concerned...

...but even by the time this happens, Wolfwood has already lowered his gun. He's decided not to pull the trigger, not because of an immediate threat on his life, but because... well, it's Vash.

Wolfwood surely knows that if he pulls that trigger, he catastrophically fails his mission, and whatever consequences might await him on the far side of such a failure aren't going to be anywhere near pleasant. But it doesn't seem like it's fear of Knives that makes him lower his gun. At the very, very least, Wolfwood knows no one stands a better chance at taking down Knives, but he also knows Vash. He's seen Vash's fake smiles and knows his real ones. He understands Vash's ideals despite very much not wanting to and not knowing how he could possibly accept them for himself. He's fought side by side with Vash, and been standing at his back since day 1.

And before this night is out, only a few minutes after pulling a gun on Vash, Wolfwood's right back there again, moving in tandem with Vash, being a human shield so they can accomplish Vash's goals together.

It's only when the fight comes to a close that Wolfwood realizes that's what he's been doing. He didn't put any thought into falling in step behind Vash, didn't dwell on the fact that Vash trusted and moved with him during the fight. It's only afterwards, when they stop to catch their breath, that he realizes Vash hasn't looked his way through the whole battle. That Vash didn't need to look his way through the whole battle.

Not only did Vash trust Wolfwood at his back, but he knows Wolfwood well enough to move intuitively around him, not hesitating and always understanding what Wolfwood's about to do. And at that moment, Wolfwood realizes two things:

First, that there's no way Vash didn't notice when Wolfwood pointed a gun at him. If Knives could figure it out while half dead and barely knowing Wolfwood, then Vash, who's awake, alert, and has spent plenty of time with Wolfwood, can surely figure it out.

And second, that when he's fighting back to back with Vash, nothing else really matters. All his (quite legitimate) fears about what Vash is and how dangerous he can be, about Knives, about finishing his job, about what he himself has become... they all melt away. He's where he needs to be, where he should be, and that's all there is to it.

When it comes to fears there's like. A big difference between not being scared/disturbed and being disturbed and fascinated.

I don't get eldritch horror. As in. It neither fascinate or disturbs me. (This probably has something to do with the fact I never cared about space or dinosaur as a child but was much more impressed by more mundane science facts like refraction and rainbows.)

On the other hand. I do have a fear of bugs. But the fear increases my fascination. So I love learning about them and looking at photos and videos of them. So my friends are like "not everyone's got a thick skin like you." Yet bugs are still a reoccuring element in my nightmares.

My friends are perhaps only mildly afraid of bugs, but still don't wanna see/hear about it. While I am actually terrified, but still find them interesting.

I think for both horror and squicks, there's like. The 3 reactions. "Yikes, yes." "Sure. Whatever." And "Yikes, no."

When people ask me about subject matters, like "are you comfortable with X" when it comes to dark fics, it's like "no I'm not even comfortable with vanilla sex, but being disturbed is not necessarily a hindrance to my enjoyment".

also ALSO. wolfwood+livio relationship set against nai+vash. even when they were kids the way wolfwood relates to livio has always been so different than the way nai relates to vash even if its motivated by the same desperate desire to protect their little sibling from the world

glad to see everybody having a normal one in my notes

Crying about how both of Ryuji’s Personas are things he’s been called derogatorily his whole life by other people, recontextualized into this deeply personal, inarguably cool and amazing and powerful and good thing. “You’re a rebel and a criminal! You’re a loud and obnoxious monkey!” Okay I’m Captain Kidd the infamous pirate and Sun Wukong the most remarkable monkey of all time, and I’m going to reshape society and kill God.

THIS!! And the fact that Captain Kidd has a peg leg representing Ryuji's injured leg, showing how despite all of the hardships he went through, he was able to get up over and over again and continued to put up a fight for himself and those who are important to him ;-;

Obligatory disclaimer that the whaling industry was terrible and cruel and decimated populations of an amazing animal that has yet to recover almost 200 years later.

But it is just so fascinating to me. The only sea occupation where your destination was literally just THE SEA. That’s it. You go out there and you don’t come back until it’s somewhat worth it, however long that takes. There are familiar grounds one would go to first, yes, but no routes, no schedules, no final destinations, no sense of when one comes back if one ever comes back. Just going to lonelier and lonelier places that no other ship is going to nor has need to go to. And when one finally happens to see another whaler it was a cause for an extended social event in ways that other maritime jobs just DID NOT have time for.

Highly diverse crews that were, of course, not without racism and inequity by any means (the entire job was…rife with inequity since idle agents ashore were already taking around 60% of the cut), but also one where one’s rank was ultimately determined by ‘can you kill a whale?’. And where the social component was so closely intertwined the fact that one would be at sea likely 3-4 years and if there was ANY surviving it and ANY success of it everyone had to more-or-less get along with each other.

And over the course of those years and years staring down aimless stretches of boredom you get the most fascinating folk art. And folk art that is so often tied to domestics. Making yarn swifts and pie crimpers and valentines for your girl outta BONES. Bones that came from the moments where that boredom was punctuated by Complete Terror.

An industry that was just like…SO violent and bloody and brutal, all for the aim of bringing back materials to make things that were so staid and domestic. Lamp oil. Candles. Corset Stays. Perfume Bases. Soaps. Just…candles paid for by so much blood from people, from animals. And was something that for such a fleeting moment was one of THE American industries, before settling, mercifully, into obscurity.

IT’S REALLY FASCINATING TO ME and so unlike any other maritime professions. I feel like piracy is the thing that comes closest to whaling in terms of all of the componants above, in a weird way, but whaling is such a thing of its own. UNIQUE AND TERRIBLE CREATURE.

Fuckin love this tag.

There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people. 

A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.

Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.    

Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast  – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.                          

That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?

It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.      

And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.                            

I’ve had people fuss at me for writing sassy effeminate gay men.

My bff in college was a sassy effeminate gay man. I write them being cool because of someone I love and miss who was very goddamn cool, thank you very much.

If you avoid stereotypes, you create obligations. “No effeminate gay men” means compulsory masculinity for them, and no representation for the ones that actually exist. “No angry black women” = black women not allowed anger. “No bury your gays, no dead women that’s fridging” or the like limits one’s ability to genderswap characters or put a same-sex romance into a story if the character in question is dying. “No queerbaiting or anything that can be accused of it” means bisexual characters can’t end up with the opposite-sex love interest if there’s a same-sex one around.

Obligations are a shitty thing to do to a story, and even worse to do to actual living people.

The real solution is more stories with more representation so the stereotype-hitting ones are a fraction of the total message, but also, well-rounded characters whose stories are built to showcase them as real whole people whose coincidence with a stereotype is only a part of them, should not be thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak.

The opposite of stereotyping is not puritanical avoidance of stereotypes. The opposite of stereotyping is complexity.

just a reminder for myself to ramble about the naoto and Kanji matter because I have some (coherent) thoughts but I need to note down the conclusion of whatever's happening with Akechi and Sojiro first (which is surprisingly normal, I guess you can bond if you hate the same guy, good for you)

ok I'm too lazy to be elaborate but tl:dr seems most of the discourse hinges on the idea that Naoto and Kanji's storylines can only be about one or another matter when they actually can be about both and especially the queer interpretations are directly linked to the not-necessary queer interpretation so even if you favour the queer one it is always linked to the other one. Gender roles and expectations are just tied to queerness in a way that going with the queer take (Naoto is trans, Kanji is gay) doesn't invalidate/exclude the other points about conforming to gender roles, it's the opposite: If Kanji is gay then the whole matter of toxic masculinity and trying to avoid stereotypes/a certain image is an extra layer of that.

And for Naoto especially if you look at it as a trans guy who doesn't wish to physically transition it works still perfectly with the idea of not needing to change yourself to conform to what other people think you should be like to match a gender and the associated expectations etc. something something even if it is not the intention of the writer it's not that uncommon for ppl to accidentally write a queer character it's more a pov thing. Like if you aren't queer you might not see it but if you are it's very blatant so it's more a matter of lack of knowledge/understanding of queer stuff from the writer? In very similar way to how many ppl figure out their identity not by changing who hey are but just by learning that lots of gender and sexuality isn't as rigid and stricly defined as they thought and that what they are actually fits under the umbrella. For me it was pretty much just going "oh this word can actually apply to me? I'm allowed to use that despite not matching X criteria that I assumed before were necessary?" and it was both "oh being trans doesnt require me to be x" as well as "oh being a guy doesn't require me to like all stereotypically male interests"

I'd say in regard to Naoto there's also most cis-people looking at gender based discrimination won't think "ok I'll present myself as a different gender" they may try adapting traits to prove they are equal but not completely hiding their gender because that'd defeat the purpose (exception of course if it's a life or death matter but that's very not the case here)

like i cannot get over the fact that goro akechi of all people got pushed as a coded love interest and then atlus didn’t tone down how fucking batshit he is. like. jun??? pretty. feminine. full of soft and tender feelings. yosuke?? kind of a huge dweeb and petty when he’s insecure, but also really basically a good person with a good heart, and the character designer did say that he designed yosuke to be sort of a pretty boy.

and for years p5 fandom was drawing akechi as standoff-ish on the outside, but really underneath he’s a soft uwu baby. look at his long hair!! his cute face!! all his little feminine traits!! surely under his stiff plastic exterior, he’s really just a pretty-boy softie who means no harm, and this is why shuake is good and this is why akira likes him.

and then atlus was like yeah we’re gonna make it canon in royal that shuake is good and akira does like him!! also akechi spends the entirety of royal like this:

this is everything i always loved about akechi: angry and seething and determined, ruthlessly so, who will not waver from his convictions. that’s the akechi i knew and understood, and fandom’s watering him down to uwu baby was… more than a little frustrating.

because no, y’all. no. akeshu is enemy lovers. akeshu has nuance and darkness and complexity and melodramatic stakes and that’s fucking perfect. that’s what makes them so compelling: they’re opponents! rivals! they’re constantly competing against each other! ren sees the anger and the frustration and the cleverness and the hellbent determination beneath akechi’s more refined, socially acceptable mask and he loves him for it. that’s the akechi he wants.