Hello yes this complaintblog is for my personal screaming into the void purposes.
I am not trying to start discourse.
I am not saying that the media I talk about here has no redeeming qualities.
I am not saying that anyone who likes the media I complain about is foolish, stupid, evil, or anything else. These are my personal complaints not a statement of the worth of the people who don't agree.
I like some of the media I'm commenting about, but I always have some complaints and I wanted somewhere to just shout into the void without people getting pissed on my main blog about it.
These are, as stated, opinions. I like to think my opinions are well-founded but so does everyone else so that means nothing. If you disagree, or if you see what I'm saying but don't think it's as big of a deal as I'm making it out to be, that's chill. So be chill.
You cannot tell me that a cannon trans/nonbinary character is cis or a different trans/nonbinary identity. You can't say "because of how they act I actually think they're XYZ instead of what the author explicitly said"
You just can't man you know how that looks? You know how that looks when you look at a feminine-looking trans man or a masculine looking trans woman and you say "I headcannon them as nonbinary <3"
You know that just tells me that you don't respect that they could be a man or a woman because they don't look enough like what they said they are so now you're like "I'll grant you nonbinary, as a treat"
If there's no statement of their gender in the series or by the author speculate all you want, especially if the character would generally be assumed to be cis. That's cool. But we don't gotta be looking at cannon characters and snatching them from each other or putting them in different boxes because we don't think they fit in the one they explicitly are stated to be in.
Like you can explore other gender identities for them in art and fic and etc etc etc right that's fantastic but do NOT look me in the eyes and tell me that in cannon you think that character is actually nonbinary because I will think you're transphobic actually.
Mine is: The thing people always say about the series being about the whole world settling real issues with children's card games that magically hurt people only applies to the sequels.
The original (duel monsters) made clear that most of the world wasn't like that, most of the things being decided by card games was because they were specifically about people participating in tournaments not because the world was based on card games. The original had reasons for which games could hurt people and a comprehensive magic system as to why. (Season 0 is even further removed from the statement, but that's beside the point)
The sequels took all nuance and actually made the reductive "in this world wars are decided by card games for some reason and also the cards actually hurt people" statement a reality.
Tbf, DM took place around the time the card game released and became a popular subject in the public, but it did establish that Duel Spirits actually exist with some having the very power to destroy the world or the universe itself if you may ask. So Iʼd say it would make sense that world-ending conflicts are solved via card-game duels, Its basically YGOʼs Power system, and its more effective than anything else. Especially with GX and 5ds existing in the same world as anime DM, which established a Duel Spirits world and a world-ending conflict solved by dueling (and most YGO fans were exposed to it as kids to begin with), with the former two emphasizing on that concept even more.
The other series take place in completely different timelines and have different reasons as to why the card game exists and is a world-ending conflict already, but Iʼd say the “Card games are the main medium for global human wars” only really applied to Arc-V, and frankly this is why the show was doomed from the start, the premise was way too dumb and the execution made things so much worse. Zexal had the war between the Astral and Barian worlds but the conflict itself was just “Heaven and Hell want to destroy each other.” and solving their conflict using the effective duel spirits rather than what Arc-V did was so much more easier to consume.
Duel spirits were established in season 4 of the yugioh anime, which is first, non-cannon and second, explicitly against the cannon of the actual dm plot line. In dm there were no duel spirits, there was Ka and Ba, the Egyptian concept of the soul, and the only cards which contained their own wills in the form of said spirits were 1. the Egyptian god cards which were like that because the entire magic system was Egypt based and the gods were real and 2. yugi's dark magician specifically, because he was literally the soul of Mahado, who was a priest who served under Pharaoh Atem.
In GX random cards just have duel spirits for no reason, completely unconnected with Ka and Ba. They have three other random cards that are just knockoff Egyptian god cards that also supposedly house gods in them, but they aren't established gods and they sure as hell aren't connected to Egypt.
Mine is: The thing people always say about the series being about the whole world settling real issues with children's card games that magically hurt people only applies to the sequels.
The original (duel monsters) made clear that most of the world wasn't like that, most of the things being decided by card games was because they were specifically about people participating in tournaments not because the world was based on card games. The original had reasons for which games could hurt people and a comprehensive magic system as to why. (Season 0 is even further removed from the statement, but that's beside the point)
The sequels took all nuance and actually made the reductive "in this world wars are decided by card games for some reason and also the cards actually hurt people" statement a reality.
I have a million and one posts about Light Yagami from Deathnote and how he's not as smart as he or anyone else thinks he is, but we'll start with just this:
When Light loses his memories of the deathnote and reverts to his "nice young man" self, a lot of people take that to mean that at base Light is a good guy, and if he had never been exposed to the deathnote then he would have been a nice guy throughout his life.
This is, demonstrably, incorrect.
Light Yagami does not have "good morals" what he has is a god complex. And before he had the deathnote to back it up, he just had a superiority complex.
Now, when you live in A Society one of the best ways to get people to agree with you being the best is to be the best by society's standards.
I'm sure we've all met someone who performatively talks about equality or the evils of sexism, transphobia, homophobia, racism, etc. And they do all the good virtue-signaling things, but if you really get to know them it quickly becomes clear that it's not that they care about any of that, it's about being better than everyone else. They get to claim moral superiority because of those beliefs, and that's the only reason they hold them.
Now Light Yagami, before he gets the notebook and when he has his memories of it wiped, acts like a perfectly respectable young man. Things like "lying is bad" and "I would never lead on a woman" and "I can see the thought behind Kira's actions but no person has the power of a god and therefore this is wrong".
Except. We saw how quickly he abandoned those ideals when he got the deathnote. It was by episode two. That makes it pretty clear that it wasn't about the ideals, it was about being the Most Correct Person in Society.
Except if you're a god, you don't have to worry about that. You're the person who makes the rules, who decides what's morally correct. Therefore everything you believe is the most morally correct thing to do.
Which means that the way Light acted when he was "god" was the way he really felt and wanted to act the whole time.
So yeah, if Light had never gotten the deathnote he probably would have lived his whole life projecting the image of the nicest, most respectful, best husband, father, and overall person you've ever met. But don't let that trick you into thinking he was anything but a raging sociopathic narcissist from the get go.
The great tragedy of Red Rising is that it could have been fantastic, were it not written by a raging misogynist who clearly thought that physical strength is the only strength that matters.
There are simply so many things to complain about that I'm going to just write about them as they occur to me, but the two big sections are: Darrow himself and the rampant sexism in the world. Beware of so, so many spoilers ahead. This will be more like an essay with receipts than a review.
One of Darrow's core traits, according to himself, is his love for his wife. This whole book happens, ostensibly, because he loves her and cares about her dream.
But this is what he says to her after she points out to him that they're both being treated as slaves:
"You may be a slave," I snap. "But I am not. I don't beg. I earn."
Which is interesting, seeing as this is something he thinks quite often before that:
Without me, she would not eat. Without her, I would not live.
So. Eo doesn't earn anything (even though she has a job too, btw), she's completely reliant on Darrow. And Darrow is completely content to think of his wife as a slave... to him, presumably, since as stated he's the one keeping her alive.
Now, he has the whole thing about not living without her. In the garden the conversation goes like this:
Eo tells him how the world is. Darrow gets mad. She gets mad back. Darrow demands what she wants, says that all he wants is for her to be happy. She basically says "okay well I'm not happy, I'm literally a slave" and he immediately backtracks and says "well I don't care if you're happy, I only want you to be alive." In fact he doesn't respect her thoughts, he says
I hate the abstracts she lives for.
And then she orchestrates her own death so Darrow will be forced to "live for more". And yet, Darrow disregards her dream and these are his last thoughts before he dies.
This is not my victory. This is selfish. She told me to live for more. She wanted me to fight. But here I am, dying despite what she wanted. Giving up because of the pain.
His last thoughts are about how he doesn't care that her dream is dying.
What about after that? Lets see how he thinks of Eo after her death, as he's ostensibly doing everything for her dream:
My dreams are cruel things to wake from. In them, Eo comforts me
Read: they have sex in his dream
I miss her warmth in bed beside me
Read: he's thinking about sex
Eo was beautiful. I still remember the flush of blood in her cheeks as she danced.
Eo. I miss her warmth in the bed beside me. I miss her neck. I miss kissing her soft skin, smelling her hair, tasting her mouth as she whispered how she loved me.
I chase the thought away, and summon the sight of Eo's mischievous lips.
Read: he's only thinking about her physical body
And here's how he thinks about her in relation to that dream:
Freedom costs too much.
But Eo disagreed.
Damn her.
They stole her. But she let them. She left me. She left me tears and pain and longing. She left me to give me anger, and I cannot help but hate her for a moment even though beyond that moment there is only love.
He hates Eo for forcing him to fulfill her dream, and only thinks of her outside of that when wishing they were having sex instead of whatever thing he's doing.
Cheering for the Underdog
The basis of a good book for me is the main character. I love a good underdog. A good flawed protagonist. Someone who I don't see how they could win, but I want them to. In fact, Darrow says something to this effect pretty early on in the book
A curse of birth, I suppose. I am a product of my upbringing. I cheer for the underdog.
Which is really interesting, seeing as Darrow spends the entire rest of the book judging people's worth based on how large and strong and beautiful they are, and consistently dismissing Sevro who is the underdog in this whole place-he's small, he's not conventionally attractive, he has strange mannerisms. Once he brings Sevro along to a diplomatic mission and this is the stated reason:
I do not want House Diana intimidated. That's why I let Sevro come. He looks ridiculous and childish
And this is what he says about Fitchner, who he has decided is an outsider and a loser for ??? reasons.
"You are ugly and you eat like a pig, Fitchner, but you chew metabolizers when you could just go to a Carver and fix yourself to look like the others. They could take care of that paunch in a second."
"Why should I have to visit a Carver?" he hisses suddenly. "I can kill an Obsidian with my bare hands. An Obsidian. I can outwit a Silver in parlance and negotiation. I can do math Greens only dream of. Why should I make myself look any different?"
"Because it is what holds you back."
So. He randomly attacks Fitchner's appearance despite that having not been what they were talking about at all, and then declares that that, for sure, is the one thing holding him back from being something more than he is.
So that's weird and, as you'll learn pretty quickly if you read this book, extremely common. Darrow very often states out loud ideals and opinions that he then never thinks about, and if you look at his actions they are completely opposed to those ideas (see: sexism. We'll talk a lot about that later)
All of this because unfortunately for us, Mr Darrow Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is simply too tall and too beautiful and too strong and too charismatic and too fast and too dextrous and everyone hates him for it, including himself 😭
His eyes go blank. Fear rises in my belly. My body is so strong.
And it's so strange, because it would have been SO easy to make him interesting after the carver. He could have been shorter than most golds, or weaker, constrained by what they could manage to do on the base of his original body. He could have been average at best in most areas but then his dexterity off the charts due to his work in the mines. But instead they decided to make him perfect, better than the average gold in every way, and yet still angsty as hell about his abilities.
Darrow as Frankenstein's Monster
Speaking of his body issues, lets talk about Darrow's Frankenstein's monster complex, and why it is exactly backwards. In Frankenstein, the monster is an eloquent and lovely soul who was created in a giant, grotesque shell, who then decides to be a monster because everyone is treating him like one.
Darrow, on the other hand, is now a statuesque, beautiful man who people are scared of not because he now looks like a gold but because he's always acted like one and now he's got the body to back it up.
Take for instance this line, after he trains enough that he can crush stones with his bare hands:
No one shakes my hand any longer.
Awwww, poor Darrow, right?
Wrong.
Look, this is the one time we saw him shaking hands before the transformation, when first meeting Harmony:
I grab her hand and squeeze. Her bones are brittle as hollow plastic in a Helldiver's hand.
Hm. It's almost like he's always used shaking hands as a power move to prove how strong he is, and now people are refusing to do it not because they're afraid he can't control his strength but because they know he won't.
In fact, there's not a single time Darrow shakes someone's hand in the book that he doesn't turn it into an attempt to crush their hands. Have a small sample from the text:
When first meeting Cassius:
I squeeze his hand till he jerks it back.
When first meeting Titus:
He's surprised when I nearly break his hand, but damn is his grip strong.
Fitchner:
Then he winces at the pressure my hand is putting on his.
It's literally every single time.
It's almost like people aren't afraid because of what his body looks like, but what he uses it to do which is exactly opposite what happened with Frankenstein.
Darrow the Unreliable Narrator
On that same vein, I would like to know if the author is aware that he's written an unreliable narrator. If he is then I would applaud him--if we were supposed to understand that Darrow is the problem and that he is looking down on everyone in his life for no reason other than his god and persecution complex. But the text clearly portrays him as Always Right, even when everything else in logic and other people's action indicate otherwise. I have three examples of this to highlight:
His wife's sacrifice.
So Eo brings Darrow to the garden and tries to explain to him exactly what this means for them. He can't understand what she's getting at or doesn't care.
"This place exists, but they don't let us come here, Darrow. The Grays must use it for themselves. They don't share."
She doesn't need to see the city on the surface to understand what the garden means, but Darrow does. And when he does he breaks down about how their labor has been stolen, and instead of thinking "oh god this is what Eo was trying to tell me, this is what she cared enough to die for" he thinks this:
Eo always preached something of the like, though she never knew the truth. If she had known this, how much more passionately would she have spoken? This existence is worse than she ever could have imagined.
Wow. Like, yeah, she probably didn't know about the cities. But she didn't need to, she knew what the garden meant. And instead of admitting that, Darrow infantilizes her by insisting that she would have cared more and done more had she known. Dude, she died for this, what more did you want her to do?
2. Mickey and frankenstein
Back to frankenstein. He starts on this metaphor after Mickey gets into a shouting match with Dancer about pushing Darrow's new body too far and if they do he'll be ruined, which ends with Dancer saying that's too damn bad, if he can make it he will survive.
"There's a science to this, you wicked little witch," Mickey is shouting. "He will be a work of art, but not if you pour water on the paint before it's set. Do not ruin him!...Do not let her ruin my boy."
Does the phrase "my boy" sound like something the og dr Frankenstein would say? I daresay not, that man was a coward afraid of his own creations, and Mickey has proven himself to be an insane fanatic about beauty and his creations. And yet, two paragraphs later Darrow says this like it's fact:
He has grown distant these last weeks, no longer telling me stories—as though he fears what he has created, now that I'm taking fuller shape.
Which doesn't make sense to me. You know what does make sense, as a creator myself? Mickey is afraid his masterpiece will fall apart before his eyes, so he's distancing himself to he doesn't get hurt. He's not afraid of Darrow because he's "too perfect" or whatever nonsense Darrow has in his head, and in fact Mickey continues acting thrilled about his accomplishments after this moment and on his final day there Mickey does this:
He comes up behind me as I sit staring into the mirror. His hands go to my shoulders and he speaks down at my head, resting his chin upon it as though I am his property.
Because of course cuddling is something Frankenstein did with the monster he hated.
Then of course Darrow physically assaults him and uses his fear about that as reason to believe the frankenstein thing, when again all of Mickey's action indicates he's thrilled about his accomplishments with Darrow's body, and any fear stems from Darrow's actions
I reach up and grab his wrists so that he cannot move. He stares at me in the mirror's reflection, struggling against my hold. Nothing is stronger than a Helldiver's grip. I smile into the mirror, locking my golden eyes with his violet ones. He smells like fear. Primal terror. Like a mouse cornered by a lion.
3. Not being at fault for Julian
Lets talk about how Darrow keeps saying he had no choice to kill Julian. Did he? No, of course not. They would have made him. But he didn't hesitate to do it, didn't look for half a moment for another solution, and when Julian manages to hit his face it's "timid and slow" but still this is the next line:
Rage overtakes me.
And then he beats Julian to death.
This wasn't a quick death. This wasn't a merciful death. This was him beating a man to death because he was mad. And then he cries about it afterwards, as if we should simply forget that he did it in that moment not because he was made to, but because he was angry at being hit even by a fist that he considered to be no threat.
In fact, Cassius points this out later:
"It's how you killed him." He's quiet for a moment. "We come as princes and this school is supposed to teach us to become beasts. But you came a beast."
In fact Darrow's insistence that he's not at fault for Julian extends so far that even though he often informs the reader that he feels bad about it, the way he reacts to Cassius' learning of it makes clear what he really thinks.
He equates his killing Julian (who was his friend, a good person, trying to talk him into a way they could both survive, and as Darrow's internal monologue made insistently clear far weaker than Darrow himself) to Cassius killing Titus (who was a criminal, rapist, murderer, far larger and stronger than Cassius, and trying to kill Cassius back with all intention). These are the same things to Darrow. Now that might say more about what Darrow thinks about Titus (keep that in mind for the chock-full-of-sexism section of this review), but the point is that Darrow clearly doesn't put much weight on the death. In fact, he never actually apologizes for it. He says the Jackal is the real enemy, that they should fight together, that he thought he got away with pinning it on Titus, that he didn't have a choice, and that Cassius would have done the same. And then Cassius stabs him, as is his god-given right because truly, how could Darrow not even show the slightest bit of regret for that? How could he not fall to the ground and beg for forgiveness, instead of staying on his high horse until he's cut down?
And then, this is how he thinks of Cassius after that
Rot in hell, Cassius. I was your friend. I might have killed your brother, but I had no choice. You did. You arrogant slag. I hate him.
Man didn't even try to make right, and yet he still feels entitled to Cassius' forgiveness.
And then at the end of the book Cassius' state informs the reader that Darrow is right-because why else would he be so eaten up by guilt that he gives up winning the game, he becomes a terrible leader, even his girlfriend leaves him for some other guy. Only then does Darrow apologize for Julian, more than a hundred pages too late, and only when he can confidently say that he pities Cassius.
Needless to say the apology feels less like he's actually torn up about the murder and more like he's a god condescending down to poor pitiful Cassius' level and offering an olive branch. At the very least, I'm glad Cassius didn't take it.
Darrow Literally Did Nothing This Whole Book
First of all I am convinced that Sevro was originally intended to be the main character of this series (which would vastly improve it btw) but then the author was so distressed that his self insert could be described as short and not conventionally attractive that he scrapped the idea, but he still wanted all of the asthetics applied to him (wearing the wolf pelt, howling) and so instead he just had Darrow steal his look halfway through the book and claim it as his own.
In fact let's talk about the fact that Darrow didn't actually do anything in this book. All he did was stand there while other people (usually Sevro or Mustang) did things, and then say "I won" after they succeeded.
He did not join the rebellion after his wife died. He explicitly decides to damn her dream because he's sad and die with her; it's his uncle that saves him (the uncle, by the way, that he calls a drunk and a coward and badmouths through the entire book even after learning this)
The rebellion comes up with the plan for entering the institute.
Mickey the Carver creates his beauty and perfect body (yes he did have to train to adapt to it but after the one chapter talking about how hard that was he never has another problem with it, so this isn't really a problem he has to overcome in the book)
Most of those are in fact portrayed as out of his control. It's after he enters the academy that it gets bad.
he can't take down Titus. Even though they literally discuss a plan by which they steal his forces by offering them food, they literally never try this. We know that for sure because of this line after Titus is taken care of by Mustang:
My tribe pretends it's the first meal they've had in weeks.
The other tribes didn't even know they had matches, much less good meals. They never tried to stop Titus.
2. He didn't save their standard from Mustang, Sevro did. He didn't have a plan to get her out after she took care of Titus, Sevro did. They never would have got her standard save for him. In fact if Sevro hadn't stepped in Darrow and Cassius would have frozen to death and the rest would have been enslaved to Minerva in the hour. We've literally been sitting with Darrow doing nothing but crying about how they can't do anything to stop Titus while Sevro becomes the leader of a wolf pack, gathers crucial intel on the surrounding castles, and fixes holes in plans that he wasn't even told.
3. It's Cassius' charisma that unites the people after Titus is taken care of, and then Darrow takes control by being more physically imposing, as usual.
4. Cassius is the one who kills Titus for his actions (this was a mistake in universe and in a meta way, but we'll talk about that in the sexism section because Darrow thinks it should have been him and it should NOT have)
5. Darrow realizes they need to make an allegiance with another house, but Sevro's the one who knows enough about war tactics to plan who they should do it with and against.
"Against whom?" Sevro asks. "Hypothetically."
"Against Minerva," Roque answers.
"Stupid idea," Sevro grunts, and cleans a knife and slides it into his black sleeve. "Their castle is tactically inconsequential. No value. None. The land we need is near the river."
Darrow completely disregards the extremely sound advice and is instead hyperfocused on Mustang, and when Sevro points it out Darrow, as usual, turns to violence
I snatch Sevro's collar and lift him up into the air with one hand. He tries to dart away, but he's not as fast as me, so he dangles from my grip, two feet off the ground.
And then of course they attack Minverva as Darrow wants, instead of the more strategic options.
6. He fights Pax, but he's a distraction as, once again, it's Sevro and his people who take Mustang's castle.
7. Tactus is the one who kills Diana's prime. Who is a woman, by the way, and is one of the only people who is killed by trickery instead of a fair fight. (The other one I remember who dies like this is also a woman)
8. Darrow doesn't win against Cassius, he's only alive because Mustang saved him
9. Mustang is only saved because Fitchner gives him an antibiotic for her, Darrow didn't do anything to earn it even just threatens him.
10. Mustang is the one who comes up with the plan to not keep slaves, and to collect the drags like they do even though somehow Darrow ends up leader of the army and she's primarily his nurse from that point on
11. He gets Mars' slaves because said slaves let him
12. He's at least present for the taking of house Ceres, but this is where they completely steal Sevro's look. As if the pelt and calling each other pack situation wasn't egregious enough.
They begin to howl, not because I told them to, not because they think they are Sevro's Howlers, but because it was the sound they heard when my soldiers cut their way out of horses' bellies, the sound that made their hearts sink as they were conquered.
Really. Seriously, the soldiers in the horses bellies were working for Darrow, but they were howling because they were Sevros pack. These new people don't howl because Sevro howls, they howl because... Sevro... howls...
13. They reunite with Sevro after farting around for weeks doing nothing but talking about how cool The Reaper^TM is in an attempt to turn Darrow into a god, and we learn that Sevro has been collecting intel, he literally went and tracked down The Jackal and got into a fight that resulted in the loss of an eye and his having to jump off a cliff to escape. Literally why was I not there for that.
14. Darrow acts as nothing more than a distraction while Sevro, once again, takes Apollo off screen. Darrow gets there in time to fight a huge guy so we see how strong he is, but does nothing else.
15. Darrow doesn't take Jupiter, the Jackal takes it and hands it over as part of a ploy.
16. Darrow doesn't even fight the Jackal, Mustang takes him down completely off screen. And then, Darrow doesn't even have the grace to give a little "we" as a nod to the fact that this was Very Much a group effort:
I have won.
And the thing is, if this was it, if I just hated Darrow with every fiber of my being, I would have rated the book 3 stars. Because hey, the world is still interesting, the other characters are still fun. It's not super well thought out and I don't think it really gets at the point it's desperately trying to make, but it would have been a good romp at the very least.
Except.
Insane Levels of Sexism and Misogyny
This author writes like a man desperately trying to avoid the accusations of men writing women who has completely missed the point. I don't recall him ever writing about a woman's breasts and how they moved or her butt as she bent over or anything egregious like that, to his credit. And yet, every single woman in this book is radiantly beautiful, and delicate, and lovely, and soft, and kind, and and and (except the ones who are literal demons who scalp men for fun, for variety~ there's no in between). There are just so many flavors of misogyny in here that I'll have to break them into sections, so bear with me.
Societal Inequity in Red Culture
So down in the mines men and women both work, and yet from Darrow's internal monologue about how he's the only reason Eo has food I am forced to assume that only the men are paid or rewarded for said work. In fact if a woman turns 14 and doesn't marry right off she suffers restricted rations as punishment
They wanted to marry her off when she turned fourteen, like all girls of the clans. But she took the short rations and waited for me
(presumably because the golds want to encourage marriage and children to continue their slaves clans).
Plus, there's all that time Darrow spends thinking about how he's the only reason Eo has food on her table. She works. Why is she apparently not getting rations for her work? Do none of the women get paid even in food? Is the mining the only thing with standards, and the collecting of the silk stuff just... what? For fun?
This could make sense in universe and isn't instantly a mark against Darrow or the author, except that it's never addressed. Darrow should have come above ground and learned that gold women are accepted to the academy and put in positions of power etc etc and maybe he still wouldn't think of it but I, as the reader, would be able to extrapolate that we aren't saying that's just the way the world works. Except that never happens, because even at the academy, even with physically superior golds, none of the women are ever treated as equals.
The Idea That Women Must Be Beautiful
Thinking women are beautiful isn't a crime, of course. But in Red Rising, all of the women are beautiful in the same way, regardless of how they should physically be.
For instance here's a description of the red women at the festival:
After a day in the Webbery harvesting spiderworm silk, I don't know how the wives manage to look so lovely. I was born handsome, face angular and slim, but the mines have done their part to change me. I'm tall, still growing. Hair still like old blood, irises still as rust-red as Octavia au Lune's are golden. My skin is tight and pale, but I'm pocked with scars—burns, cuts. Won't be long till I look hard as Dago or tired as Uncle Narol. But the women, they're beyond us, beyond me. Lovely and spry despite the Webbery, despite the children they bear.
The women are workers as well. Collecting silk isn't quite as physically taxing as the drill, but these women are workers. Instead of just talking about how soft and spry and unaffected by their circumstances they are, why can't we have some acknowledgment that their hands are also rough, that their arms are muscled, that they too look tired behind their smiles?
Meanwhile the first woman we meet with a physical deformity is Harmony, who has a steam burn over half of her face. Which means she has a super cool gnarly scar, and how does Darrow respond to this?
He takes just enough time to think steam burns are rare on women because they're not often on drill teams, and then immediately begins waxing poetic about the other side of her face
Yet it is the unburned side of her face that startles. She is beautiful, more beautiful even than Eo. Skin soft, pale as milk, bones prominent and delicate.
Seriously? His wife died less than a day ago and author is like "she's more beautiful than Eo" is the perfect thing to say here because he Definitely Loves His Wife. Also we're immediately applying the word "delicate" to this woman who is scarred and hard and angry, because that's how he thinks about all women, no matter what.
And then we get to the physically enhanced golds, and you'd think we could have some appreciations of arm muscles or strong legs or stature and heft for some ladies of a warrior race. In fact gold society is such that the men and women are sharing locker rooms--presumably because the women are supposed to be seen as equals, and gender at this point in their society should be irrelevant. Except it seems the only real reason the author did it was to let Darrow see his gold love interest entirely naked right after they first met.
She's beautiful—heart-shaped face, full lips, eyes that laugh at you.
And again, all he has to say is this. Nothing about an impressive physique, although nothing to do with her breasts again to the author's credit.
Anyway, here are some other descriptions of the gold women who passed all the same physical and mental tests as the men to get into this institute, who have all the same physical enhancements:
First time seeing Mustang on the battlefield, who, for the record, is one of the strongest and most capable women in the story:
She is small, delicate.
During the raid on Minerva:
A girl runs into the warroom. I nearly make her faint as I lift my axe.
Nyla:
I speak with Nyla, the Ceres girl, in private. She's a quiet one. Smart as a whip, but not physical in any way. Like a shuddering songbird, like Lea.
SHE LITERALLY KILLED SOMEONE TO GET IN HERE
The women are called small, delicate, prone to fainting, compared to birds with fragile bones. Never, not once, does he think about a single woman's physical strength. Never does a gold woman fight him, and never, ever, does one have the possibility to even land a hit.
Infantilization
This connects somewhat to the previous section about beauty, in that because women are only expected to be beautiful they are treated as nothing more than objects to be acted upon and things to be protected.
Darrow refers to his actual wife as a child and a young girl and "little Eo" multiple times. First of all calling your wife a child is every level of yikes already, but it's even worse because not only are they the same age, but Eo is actually more socially mature than him, by their standards.
How do I come to this conclusion? Easy. Marriageable age for women in their society is 14. For men, it's 16. Therefore Eo has been considered something of an adult in their society for 2 years, and the fact that she was given the choice to refuse marriage for two years (until Darrow was old enough) shows that she was respected at least enough to make that choice instead of being married off to someone old enough.
Later at Mickey's Darrow sees the girl with wings for the first time:
A pretty young girl, no older than Eo, sits looking at me with emerald eyes.
When I started this sentence I expected the horrifying realization that Mickey was modding 12 year olds, seeing as the speaker is only 16 and "young girl" from a 16 year old should not mean another 16 year old. As I already stated, that girl could have been married for TWO YEARS in Darrow's society, which is fucked up in and of itself of course but also means that Darrow has exactly no reasons to think of her in such diminutives, especially because he's their same age and he never considers himself a child.
This is probably the most benign form of sexism in the book, so watch out because it only gets worse from here.
Contempt for sex workers
Alright, lets take a look at what they say about Pinks, the sex worker class. Remember that "little girl" Darrow was thinking about earlier? This is something he thinks about her later on:
she looks like an angel. Innocent and pure. But she's not innocent, not pure. She's a Pink. They breed them for pleasure, for the curves of their breasts and hips, for the tautness of their stomachs and the plump folds of their lips.
She looks innocent, but she's not. And why not? Because she's a sex object. That's the only reason. Darrow has no reason to believe that she sells herself in that way other than her color and her shape, which is beyond her control, and even if she does then why exactly does that have any bearing on how he thinks of her? It's gross.
And a clear statement about abuse of sex workers being earned by virtue of them not earning better:
"If he is treating them like Pinks, then it is because they merited no better in this little world than Pinks do in our big world."
This is something that several of the characters disagree with when it's said, but this is specifically about raping gold women. Several of the characters who draw the line there (and at least there is that) use "pink" as an insult often.
"Novas, you little girl!" I shout. "You sniveling Pink."
This one's a double header even, because even though Pink is a non-gendered title, it is associated with femininity. In fact the one pink man we meet is shown to be a talented and regal man who teaches Darrow many important skills such as etiquette and dance, whereas all the women pinks we see are portrayed as nothing more than sex objects.
Here's something Darrow says to his literal love interest:
"You know, when we graduate, maybe you should look into being a Pink. Your touch is so tender."
This is meant to be a light-hearted jibe. But you're gonna look me in the eyes and tell me that a guy telling the lady he likes that she should look into being a prostitute is something to laugh about instead of the biggest red flag in the world?
Contempt for Femininity
You'd think in a futuristic society we would have moved past the gender essentialism, but of course several quotes before have indicated not.
Emotion, first of all, is inherently feminine:
Kieran bawled like a girl
Right. Because crying when your father is hanged in front of you is disgraceful. And anything disgraceful is feminine.
This is what Darrow says when Eo is about to be hanged:
Women are crying. Men wipe their eyes.
At first I was like "ugh, everyone's crying but we can't possibly say that, we have to be More Masculine about it" but now I'm wondering if perhaps the men are wiping the women's eyes? Unclear, but the point is that crying is women's work.
Laughing for too long is also feminine:
Pax's laugh is infectious. It booms out of him and then turns into something feminine as it continues past two seconds.
[...]
Pax won't stop laughing like a girl.
And you know it's bad because it's not just the men who do this. The author has the women in this make derogatory comments about femininity as well.
Antonia and Mustang have this exchange:
"The Golden stock ...," Mustang murmurs. "How can you be so cold?"
"Little girl," Antonia sighs, "Gold is a cold metal."
And Mustang says this to Darrow at one piont:
"You sound like a girl. Thought martyrs were tough."
Homophobia
For anyone who's in the community, you know that feminism and equality for any other group is intertwined. If femininity is disgraceful, then of course a man taking the "feminine" role in a relationship is disgraceful.
We can just barely see Tactus curled into the hollow of Pax's armpit. The two men snuggle together and wake like lovers, only to flinch away from one another when their ice-crusted eyelids flutter open.
"Wonder which is Romeo," Mustang whispers, her throat raspy.
Really? A "which one of you is the man in the relationship" joke? In the year, what, 4000 something?
Anyway I'm not gonna go through and find more for this, because I feel like the "contempt for femininity" examples are enough for this. If a society hates femininity and thrives on toxic masculinity, then that society will hate gay people because they will be seen as feminine even if they're the biggest manliest men out there.
Women as Objects Instead of Actors
One of the consistent things in this book is that women are never shown as able to save themselves from attacks.
When Harmony makes a tasteless comment about Eo, Darrow starts to choke her (which is a very gendered form of violence, btw. If a man had said the same I have no doubt he would have just punched the offender) and he only lets her go because the men around him demand he does so. Then she goes to stab him for it.
But she had that knife the whole time. Why did she not get to stab Darrow so he dropped her? Why did she have to be saved by the men in the room, and only be allowed to pull the knife afterwards as a poor attempt by the author to show her strength.
I promise not to choke her and she promises not to stab me.
The text says, as if these are equal. But Darrow did choke Harmony, and Harmony did not get to stab him in return.
Also as mentioned earlier, there are no instances to my recollection of men being killed outside of battle, or as a tactic for something else. Meanwhile we have three examples just from the the top of my head:
The captured Ceres girl who was hidden underneath some brush and trampled by her own people as they rode to save her
Tamara who died because her saddle was cut, also trampled by her own people
Lea, whose throat was slit in lieu of Darrow's.
The most egregious example, though, deserves a section all its own.
Indelicate Handling of Rape
This is. The meat of the problem. I cannot believe the amount of rape this book had, and even worse how easily it was dismissed. I do not think the author of this book is a safe person to talk about this topic with, I do not think he has ever actually talked to a victim of rape and if he did I don't believe he was what they needed at the time.
It should also be noted that only women were raped in this book. They had male slaves too, but never is it once mentioned as a possibility.
The Titus Incident
God I could write an entire dissertation just using this incident.
Okay so first of all there's this exchange where they're demanding the proctors do something about the happenings:
"Then prove you're a man and stop him," Fitchner says. "As long as he's not murdering them one by one, it is not our concern. All wounds heal. Even these."
"That's a lie," I tell him. I'll never be healed of Eo. That pain will last forever. "Some things do not fade. Some things can never be made right."
"Yet we do nothing because he has more fighters," Cassius spits.
First of all, Darrow sounds like he's actually empathizing for once, but he's just thinking about Eo again, which is in no way similar to what's happening to the ladies under Titus' control.
This is the damning thing though. We're supposed to understand that Fitchner's response is Bad at least, and it is. But we're supposed to take Darrow and Cassius' anger at face value and go "oh they would have stopped it if they could have!"
Except they didn't try. As I mentioned above, they had a plan to steal Titus' forces from under him by bribing them with food and warm meals, and they never tried to do it. So Cassius' complaint about them not acting because he has more fighters? Now extremely suspect.
Lets talk about their plan as well. It starts with getting Antonia on their side:
The plan starts with a concession only someone once a husband could make. Cassius cannot stop laughing when I tell him the details. Even Quinn snorts a laugh the next morning. Then she's off, running like a deer to Deimos Tower to bring my formal apology to Antonia.
So. A man would only ever consider apologizing to a woman if he had been married to one before. Because, of course, women are creatures not worthy of apologies, and a man only learns to utilize them when he learns he can get More Sex if he pretends a woman is right. Interesting.
Etc etc, Darrow being useless, Mustang taking down Titus, Sevro being the only reason they have any chance of coming back from this, etc fast forward to Mustang learning what was happening in their castle.
He returns to take his castle back and Mustang, who before this point was treating this whole thing as a game, is Not Amused about the whole affair.
"Rape? Mutilation? Murder?" She spits.
"I did nothing," I say. "And neither did the Proctors."
Interesting use of words here. The word nothing is being used as a zeugma, meaning it means different things in different parts of this sentence. Seeing as "I did nothing" is presumably meant to indicate "Darrow did not rape, mutilate, or murder anyone" and yet it's next to "and neither did the Proctors" which is to mean "and the proctors didn't stop it"
And yet it's in the same sentence, highlighting that, yes, Darrow also did nothing to stop it. And him stating that in the same breath as the proctors is not an accusation to the proctors, but a defense for himself; Darrow may not have stopped it, but neither did those people who enforce the rules. Who's in the right, he's asking, if I'm aligning with the rules?
This is also a particularly interesting response because the stated purpose of letting their castle fall to Mustang was to stop Titus from perpetrating these crimes, so wouldn't it make sense for Darrow to admit that they lacked the support to stop him but wanted him stopped, and that was why they had pointed her to their keep?
It isn't about not appearing weak either, because it certainly looks worse for Darrow that he was in charge of the keep (as others assume) and let Titus get away with this and then lost it to Mustang. It would look much better for him if he admitted he hadn't had the support but cleverly used someone else to take down his biggest rival and take the moral high ground at the same time.
And after that. They stole Mustang's standard so they would have leverage to get them out of the castle--a negotiation tactic, supposedly. Except in the middle of this conversation they start a fight for ???? reasons???? Presumably just so Darrow can prove he can beat Pax in a fight because he's So Strong^TM
After that completely senseless battle, Darrow, Roque, and Antonia go to negotiate like they said they were going to in the beginning.
At this point Mustang doesn't care about the game or the standard or keeping the castle. She cares that the women who were raped won't stop crying, and the fact that so many people watched this happen and didn't care. Antonia, on Darrow's side, dismisses their suffering and says they will heal and Darrow doesn't bother to correct it when she says that, not like he did when the proctor did. Almost like when he talked back to Fitchner it wasn't about the pain others were suffering, it was just about talking back to an authority figure. And now that someone under his command is speaking like that, he doesn't see a problem with it.
In fact when Mustang says that's fucked up this is what Darrow thinks:
I don't have a mind to be lectured by an Aureate about morality.
And when she says this is a game and there are limits:
I snap. "There are no goddamned limits."
[...]
In the end, giving us back our horrible castle won't cost her anything; trying to keep it would. She might even end up like one of the girls in the high tower. She never thought of that before.
He's content with letting Mustang think that if she were captured by Darrow and his army, they would treat her the same way that Titus treated his captives. He does nothing to dissuade her from this way of thinking.
She wants to keep the slaves. Barring that, she just wants to keep Titus. She doesn't care about the game at this point, she just wants him off the field. When Darrow refuses both demands she explains
"I want assurances they are safe. I want Titus to pay."
She doesn't care who has Titus. She just wants him to not hurt anyone else. And yet.
"It doesn't matter a flying piss what you want. Here you get what you take. That's part of the lesson plan." I pull out my slingBlade and set its tip into the soil. "Titus is of House Mars. He is ours. So please, try and take him."
Darrow doesn't mention the assault. Doesn't mention retribution. He doesn't care. As usual, he cares about power. As he said earlier
Gods don't come down in life to mete out justice. The powerful do it.
And interesting, in this case, that Darrow has found himself in the position of power, and his decision here is that he doesn't care about justice. In fact Roque tries to say something to comfort her, and this is the result:
"He'll be brought to justice," Roque says to Mustang to reassure her.
I turn to him, eyes blazing. "Shut up."
He looks down, knowing he should not have spoken.
He takes issue with the idea that Roque is promising that. Why? Because it is an imposition on his power in the situation. Because Darrow is not planning on punishing Titus, he's planning on using his strength, and he will not be forced into abandoning his plans because someone beneath him made some promise.
But wait, you say, he does sentence Titus to death, remember?
Aha, but do you remember why?
Lets see what happens after Mustang vacates the place. They throw Titus in the cellar. Mars is now "united" and yet:
Titus's tribe sits in quiet groups. The girls will not speak to the boys because of what they've seen some of them do. All eat with their heads down. There's shame there. Antonia's people sit with mine and glare at Titus's. Disgust fills their eyes. Betrayal too, even as they fill their bellies. Several scuffles have already escalated from minor words to thrown fists. I thought the victory might bring them together. But it did not. The division is worse than ever, only now I cannot define it
Somehow he can't define it. He doesn't understand what's dividing the groups.
That's because the divide is "people who care that raping was happening and people who don't" and as one of the people who doesn't, he can't put his finger on why everyone is so on edge.
And yet when he goes to talk to titus, to decide what to do with him, he only talks about the killing. "How many did you kill?" "How many did you kill?" "Why did you kill them?" Finally he brings up the rape, far into the conversation, and only once. He doesn't press like he does with the killing.
And then he learns that someone Titus loved was raped by golds, and consequently realizes the he's a red too.
A rebellion with Titus at the helm would fail in weeks. Worse, if Titus continues this way, continues unstably, he puts me at risk. [...] Titus's instability puts every Red ever carved into a Gold at risk. He puts Eo's dream at risk. And that is something I cannot abide. Eo did not die so that Titus can kill a few kids.
I sob in the armory as I resolve what must be done.
More blood will stain these hands, because Titus is a mad dog and must be put down.
Titus is sentenced to death because he is a red and his living puts Darrow at risk. When thinking about his crimes Darrow again only mentions the killing, not the rape. He cries for Titus, and what he's decided to do--not for justice, but for his own self preservation.
This is what Darrow says out loud about the sentencing:
"For crimes of rape, mutilation, and attempted murder of fellow House members, I sentence Titus au Ladros to death."
This, however, is what he thinks about it a few paragraphs later:
I will make a Red die because he killed Golds. He dug the earth like me. He has a soul like mine.
Because he killed Golds. Darrow doesn't think the rape important enough to even recall. He is too busy sympathizing with Titus.
And then Darrow allows Cassius to be the one to kill Titus, and the death is carried out in Julius' name, for his sake. For the sake of a murder that never happened (or at least that Titus didn't commit, that was Darrow), not the sake of the women who are still here.
So lets see how Darrow thinks of this murdering, mutilating, rapist during these events:
This was meant for me. Not for my poor brother, Titus—if that was ever really his name. He deserved better than this.
[...]
Poor Titus. I bury him in a grove near the river. I hope it speeds him on his way to the vale.
[...]
His pain is my own. His pain broke him as mine broke me on the scaffold. But I was given a second chance. Where was his?
Poor Titus. He didn't deserve that. Darrow claims him as a brother. He says Titus should have received a second chance.
Had Titus not been a danger to revealing Darrow's own color, there is no doubt in my mind that he would not have killed him. He would have deputized him for his strength.
The Attempted Rape of Mustang
In case all that Titus nonsense wasn't enough, here's another thing that happens. In case you were thinking "no no, I'm sure he cared when Mustang was about to be raped". He's a tidbit more.
When he sees and understands what is about to happen to Mustang, this is what he thinks:
My thoughts are primal, wolflike. A terrifying emotion sweeps over me, one that I did not know I had for this girl.
Interesting, I think, that he takes his rage at what's about to happen as an indication that he holds feelings for Mustang. It's almost as if he doesn't care about rape as an action, but only about protecting what's his.
The Tactus Incident
When Darrow learns that Tactus attempted to rape a woman and that people are chomping at the bit to castrate him, this is what he says about it:
"They're mad enough to fight Pax?"
He doesn't understand why they're that angry. It was an attempted rape, and yet they're mad enough to take on the biggest man in the army? No shit dumbass. Just tell me that you don't actually care about the attempted rape.
Note that one of the first things that Sevro ever told Darrow about Tactus was that when they were kids Tactus beat a girl half to death for refusing to kiss him on the cheek. So this is not the first time he has committed violence against women out of a sense of entitlement, and Darrow is well aware of this.
And yet later, this is that Darrow has to say about the crime:
"It isn't about urges." I tap the table in frustration. "It's about power. [...] Power over me, I mean."
He immediately turns it into being about himself. It was about power of course, and it was about flouting Darrow's authority, but Darrow from that point on is completely uninterested in the path that was taken to flout the authority. He only cares about the effect on his power over the army.
In fact, Mustang doesn't think Darrow cares even. She expects him to let Tactus off scott free:
She asks me as though she already thinks I'm letting Tactus off the hook.
I nod, surprising her. "He'll pay," I say.
If the women in your life expect you to let a rapist off without even a slap on the wrist you are a bad person. You are not a safe person.
And then the actual victim? She says he doesn't have to do anything to make it right. Just. Let the raping bastard continue on with no consequences or restrictions. Tell me your women are written by a man without telling me.
And then after making a show of whipping him and then getting himself whipped to show some sort of baffling solidarity, this is what Darrow says to to raping bastard:
"Don't be afraid," I tell him. I pull him forward into a hug. "We are blood brothers, you little shit. Blood brothers."
And after that, the attempt is never mentioned again. He goes without further punishment, and goes on to be one of Darrow's most trusted.
It wasn't about the rape. The punishment, even, wasn't about that at all. They explicitly said it wasn't about rape, it was about disobeying Darrow. And now that he's not doing that, they've got no problem.
Conclusion
This is a horrifyingly popular book, especially for the demographic of teenage boys that it's aimed towards. Darrow is not only an annoying narrator to me personally, he is explicitly a bad person who is being presented as an idol for impressionable teenage boys.
Re: Sinners
*This isn't a complaint I just don't usually put long essays on my main blog sooooo I'm putting this here
One thing that really struck me about Sinners is how vampirism doesn't inherently make a person evil.
(Before I go on this is NOT a sad little meow meow Remmick post, he is not the exception that proves the rule okay back to it)
Vampirism in Sinners is a metaphor for cultural appropriation, yeah? I'd argue that being a vampire is actually a metaphor for being separated irreparably from your own culture. And then of course the act of dragging people in with you to make you feel better (to create a false culture, to ape at your lost culture while destroying other people's connections to theirs so none of you are truly anywhere anymore but you're all together so you feel less alone like Remmick does) is the cultural appropriation part.
And I make this distinction because of Stack and Mary. When we get that scene at the end, there's no doubt that they've still been removed from their culture (cultures, arguably, since Mary was mostly in the white section of society even though she didn't want to be) but it doesn't seem like they've been doing the same thing as Remmick was. They don't have a crowd of brainwashed vampires that they're trying to use to revive the feeling they felt that night at the juke joint.
Instead it seems that they've used this freedom to truly be themselves and be together without the barriers both cultures put up (the white side racism, thinking Stack was corrupting a white woman or possibly learning of Mary's heritage and doing terrible things to her; the black side reactionary to the dangers of the first attempting to keep both Mary and Stack safe) Because it was freedom, for them. It was sad, it was tragic, they could never return home again because they'd been cut off from that culture forever, but that was ALSO the culture they could never be together in, for both of their safety, which came up several times throughout the film).
So they've symbolically experienced the same as Remmick did, but instead of grasping desperately at any remnants of any culture that reminds them of their lost home, they understand what this means not only for them but for others. They invite Sammy at the end, they still crave that connection, but they make the conscious decision to not take that connection from him if he doesn't give it willingly. Partially out of respect for Smoke, who made them promise, but I'd also like to think out of respect for Sammy himself, because he stayed true to the blues his whole life despite so many people trying to take it from him or telling him to leave it behind. And if you respect that culture then you, even separated from your own, even desperate for that connection, will refrain from disrespecting it the way Remmick did. They could have felt entitled to Sammy's music, god knows they had more reason to than Remmick did in the first place, but instead they realized that their previous connection to that same culture didn't give them that right, that the music was Sammy's alone and he had the right to decide who to give it to.
Anyway basically the point is that being in that cultural limbo as so many people are (shoutout to christianity, my belothed) doesn't mean you'll inevitably be Remmick. You don't have to leach off of other people and cultures in a vain attempt to regain what you've lost. Instead you can move forward and make something new, using what you still have of the culture you feel you've been disconnected from, and by respectfully participating in what is offered willingly and in good faith from others. Which is! What they were doing at the Juke Joint in the first place!
Because we see at the juke joint that the Chow's ancestors from China appear just as readily as the others, which shows that it's not a hard line about race. It's about family, it's about respect. You can absolutely participate in another culture, even bring in elements of your own as the Chows do, in a respectful and enjoyable manner for everyone involved.
I do this thing sometimes when I really like a piece of media where I look at one-star reviews of them. Just the most raving, angry, disappointed views of this piece of media I like. I just think it's interesting to see why people don't like the things I do, you know?
And sometimes I like trash things and the reviews are like the story was incomprehensible, the characters were caricatures, and I can't believe she stopped the bleeding by sticking the STICKY SIDE OF A PAD TO IT (shoutout to Jupiter Ascending, my beloved) and I'm like "haha yeah they did do that yall are so valid"
And sometimes I look up The Residence and I just gotta laugh because the reviews are like
The president was gay
The detective wouldn't stop talking about birds!
Reverse racism is real! I can't believe we had a diverse cast and the eventual villain was white!
Like yall, there are so many valid reasons to dislike media, but you're really out here writing one star reviews that are, like, the best selling points of this whole story. You're telling me the president was gay, the detective was black and autistic, and the cast was large and diverse??? Sign me up.
You know how there are all those jokes about the red-headed characters in shows being replaced with black characters? This isn't a coincidence, it's a societal commentary on how people are typecast!
Redheads used to be the diversity hire of media in that the red-headed woman was put in there to be hot and exotic, and the red-headed man was placed only to be a funny little side character with an extra spot of color, never as the main.
As people added people of color to media they wanted them in the same position--they're diversity casts. The women are there to be exotic and sexy, and therefore replace red-headed women. The men they don't want in main roles, so the plucky side character is the obvious choice--the place the red-headed men used to be.
And since nowadays red-heads aren't considered diversity, it's not a problem when they're replaced, so it's really easy for people to not notice this trend and what exactly it means. (That is to say whenever I point this out to someone who's not a red-head they're like "???? I had no idea I didn't notice" and I'm like "well, yes, you probably wouldn't because you weren't excited to see a red-head in the first place, and then you weren't disappointed when you didn't have one in the reboot")
*note that some media that does this does a great job of having the poc character be good rep and doesn't treat them like a diversity cast we shouldn't take seriously, and as someone who is not poc myself I don't feel qualified to say how effective any specific show is about this, but I do think we should acknowledge the trend despite how effective any specific show is in not making it seem like that
There is a trend in things marketed as aro/ace that is vexing me.
When I, an aroace person, am searching for a book with an aroace protagonist, what I am envisioning is a character who is going around doing plot things and riding dragons or fighting monsters and rebuffing every attempt to flirt with them with rock-like obtuseness.
When I find a list of books that are being specifically marketed as aro/ace though there are generally two flavors:
MC is asexual but not aromantic. The story is wholly and explicitly a romance and the driving plot is either that it's chill not to have sex in a relationship or MC grappling with do I really feel love if I don't want sex which then resolves of course
MC is aromantic (may or may not be asexual as well) and the driving plot is am I a monster because I don't feel Love???
These are not bad plots of course, I enjoy a good story explicitly about rep as much as the next starved minority, but I have realized that I'm in the minority of not wanting it to really be important. I don't want a story about being aro/ace, I just want characters who are.
I want a story about aro/ace people who literally don't have to mention it. What's it to you? Like maybe they do drop the term, that would be fun, but why for the love of god can I not find any books marketed as aro/ace that actually don't have to do with romance.
Give the people (me) what we (I, just me) want
(Before someone asks yes I am actually writing the story I want to see in the world but I want other people to do that too)
(Shoutout to Fox's Tongue and Kirin's Bone by Allison M. Kovaks which is a dramatic fantasy political drama story in which the main character is asexual and I only know that because she mentioned it in an author's note once. It is not marketed as an Asexual book I don't think. It's not really relevant to the story, and there is no romance to be had in said story to make it so, but it's clear by the way he acts that he's not really interested and THAT is what I want from ace rep please and thank you)
I've finally figured out an argument that convinces coding tech-bros that AI art is bad.
Got into a discussion today (actually a discussion, we were both very reasonable and calm even through I felt like committing violence) with a tech-bro-coded lady who claimed that people use AI in coding all the time so she didn't see why it mattered if people used AI in art.
Obviously I repressed the surge of violence because that would accomplish nothing. Plus, this lady is very articulate, the type who makes claims and you sit there thinking no that's wrong it must be but she said it so well you're kind of just waffling going but, no, wait-- so I knew I had to get this right if I was gonna come out of this unscathed.
The usual arguments about it being about the soul of it and creation fell flat, in fact she was adamant that anyone who believed that was in fact looking down at coding as an art form as she insisted it is. Which, sure, you can totally express yourself through coding. There's a lot more nuance as to the differences but clearly I was not going to win this one.
The other people I was with (literally 8 people anti-ai against her, but you can't change the mind of someone who doesn't want to listen and she just kept accusing us of devaluing coding as an art) took over for I kid you not 15 minutes while I tried desperately to come up with a clear and articulate way to explain the difference to her. They tried so many reasonable arguments, coding being for a function ("what, art doesn't serve a function?") coding being many discrete building blocks that you put together differently, and the AI simply provides the blocks and you put it together yourself ("isn't that what prompt building is") that it's bad for the environment ("but not if it's used for capitalism, hm?" "Yeah literally that's how capitalism works it doesn't care about the environment" she didn't like that response)
But I finally got it.
And the answer is: It's not about what you do, it's about what you claim to be.
Imagine that someone asks an AI to write a code and, by some miracle, it works perfectly without them having to tweak it---which is great because they couldn't tell you what a single solitary thing in that code means.
Now imagine this person, with their code that they don't know how it works, goes and applies to be a coder somewhere, presenting this AI code as proof that they're qualified.
Should they be hired?
She was horrified, of course. Of course they shouldn't be. They're not qualified. They can't actually code, and even if by some miracle they did have an AI successfully write a flawless code for every issue they came across that wouldn't be their code, you could hire any shmuck on the street to do that, no reason to pay someone like they're creating something.
When actual engineers use AI what they do is get some kind of base, which they then go though and check for problems and then if they find any they fix them, and add on to the base code with their own knowledge instead of just trying different prompt after prompt until they randomly come across one that works.
People who generate code like this don't usually call themselves engineers. They're people who needed a bit of code and didn't have the knowledge to generate it, and so used a resource.
And there you go. There are people who have none of the skills of artists, they don't practice, they don't create for themselves. When they feed the prompt to the AI they then don't just use the resulting image as a reference point for their own personal masterpiece, and if they don't like it they don't have the skills to change it---they simply try another prompt, and do that until they get something they like.
These people are calling themselves artists.
Not only that, these people are bringing the AI generated thing to interviews, and they are getting hired, leaving people who slave over their craft out of the job.
And that is the difference, for the tech bros who think AI art isn't a big deal.
People need to stop trying to write allegories for racism and putting them in societies where there are very real and tangible concerns for why the fantasy groups in question should not be interacting.
The entire point of racism being dumb is that there is literally no reason it should have happened--someone's skin being darker or eyes a different shape does not effect who they are as a person, and therefore should not effect how they're treated. The fact that something that doesn't tell you anything about a person affects how they are treated is the basis of racism and why it's stupid.
But media often misses this point entirely. The two that spring to mind are Zombies (2018) and perhaps the most egregious example in Elemental (2023).
In Zombies the two factions are zombies and humans. Zombies are naturally super strong violent mindless monsters who are driven to eat humans. They've come up with a watch that can bring them to human levels of strength and intelligence, but that doesn't change the fact that zombies are dangerous to humans, that humans are not being unreasonable when they're weary around them. Especially because within the 1.5 hour movie we not only see that the watches are insanely easy to hack, but our main boy falls and bumps his on the floor pretty lightly and it just fritzes and he reverts to a mindless monster in the middle of a giant crowd of people who are now in danger.
You see how this is different.
In real life racism is stupid because there is literally no world in which someone having a different skin color makes them more dangerous. But in Zombies this is not the case. And we can totally have a conversation about dealing with this sort of situation too, the rehabilitation of a dangerous subset who through no fault of their own are inherently violent and want to stop that part of themselves. But you see how talking about an inherently violent subset of people who need to be neurally rewired to exist in society is actually way bad as a way to talk about racism.
Alright the more egregious, because Zombies (while easily read as a racism allegory) never actually claimed to be one explicitly to my knowledge. But oh boy, did Elemental.
Again, the main sticking point is that racism is the oppression and denial of entrance and rights etc to a group of people who are just the same as you except superficial differences that shouldn't matter.
One example in Elemental is a playground for the wood children with a sign that says "no fire children allowed" or whatever.
Tell me. What happens when a fire child touches a wood child.
A fire child entering the wood playground is a massacre. This isn't pointless rudeness because you hate fire people, this is literally a precaution to stop your child from dying. Similarly a wood child shouldn't be allowed on a fire playground for their own safety, and the same both ways with fire and water children for the fire kids' safety.
In real life if you say you should always marry within your race that is problematic (of course there are points about culture and just wanting someone who has your same lived experience, no shade for that but the absolute statement that you SHOULD NOT marry someone of another race is problematic) but if you say "hey fire person are you aware that being physically intimate with a water person would kill you?" that is not racism. That's staying alive.
The fire family is having a hard time in elemental city because the architecture is either 1. wood and therefore they destroy it by touching it or 2. water and dangerous to their health. Those people should go live somewhere they can live without either destroying everyone else's livelihood or risking their own lives just by going outside.
Again there's a lot to say about this situation, understanding what is and is not someone's choice, giving them respect even though you're so fundamentally different, etc. But it's a horrible racism allegory because there are very real reasons, life threatening reasons that these people should not interact, it's not just one group arbitrarily deciding they don't like how the other looks and shunning or persecuting them accordingly.
tldr: for gods sake if you're writing about racism do NOT let me look at the oppressed class and go "uh yeah I think they shouldn't be here either"
Okay to clarify I like the movie inception, it's fun and it's well done
BUT
As someone who grew up on Leverage, the concept sends me into hysterical laughter.
Like the Inception writers are all like "in order to change someone's mind you must physically go deep into into their psyche and alter it with your own hands"
And I'm like... have you never manipulated someone in your life?
Nate Ford got a man to change his password to Badger35 just by stealing his highschool reunion. Gave a man a nosebleed with the power of his mind.
Sophie plants ideas in peoples heads all the day long with naught but words. She trained Elliot to make her tea just by tapping his arm.
Like the concept of inception feels to me like those tech bros, you know? The ones that say "I made an AI that can write full movie scripts in ten minutes" and then anyone who knows anything is like "yeah but they're literal shit?"
Like someone watched a master manipulator do their thing and change the mind of a person and was like "I bet I could do this with technology" and they proceeded to make the worst possible deathtrap option for that.
In star trek tng I often want to fist fight people who don't explain things well to Data, for the equal but opposite reason that in Bones I often want to fist fight Bones herself.
To clarify this isn't a complaint about the characters themselves, I love Data and the people who are not explaining things to him just don't have the vocabulary for it, and Bones is purposefully like this to showcase how not rational she can be even though she presents herself as a wholly rational being. Deliberate character choices that make sense in both universes.
It all comes down to the general level of anthropological knowledge of the universe, which is understandably not everyone's expertise. It's realistic! But it makes me sad.
So like, Data:
Data often asks questions that, as a linguist and anthropologist, I know the answers to. But those on the ship, who are not linguists and not anthropologists, don't know the answers. And therefore he asks questions and they simply say they don't know and that's just the way things are.
For example that whole episode about humor, where Data was failing at learning humor because everyone kept saying it was a feeling or whatever. And, yes, there is a certain level of natural inclination to humor -- but I have taken entire classes about the linguistics of humor. There are rules. You can write them down. You can explain them. I can't blame anyone on the ship for not knowing them enough to tell them to Data, but I still get so frustrated whenever I watch that episode because there are rules and Data could learn them if only someone would explain them to him.
Brennan is exactly the opposite.
She is an accomplished anthropologist, and she uses her knowledge to make skewed claims that seem to be backed up by evidence that no one else has the knowledge to successfully counteract.
I was thinking of this because of the episode where she's dating those two guys at the same time, insisting that they fill separate needs and therefore it's fine. She insists that there are many cultures that practice polygamy--which is true.
But it's irrelevant.
Bones is very good at bringing up irrelevant information that seems relevant, and then answering the question she wants to answer instead of the one you asked.
She says it with such confidence that Booth, who she's speaking to, neglects to point out that their culture is not one such culture at base. She's ignoring that she's not in a culture where this is taken as a given, and that unless established people in her culture will generally assume monogamy. It's a social contract, and she is breaching it.
But of course Booth doesn't have the words to bring that up, he feels in his gut that she's wrong but all he can bring up is the ten commandments, which of course is entirely the wrong approach to convince her of anything.
And whenever this happens, which is almost every episode, she brings up something to disprove someone while ignoring other facts from other cultures that could easily support them instead, I have that same experience. If I were there, I could disprove her logical fallacies, or at least point out that they exist.
I'm certain that people with other expertise feel like this when they see stuff about what they know, the curse of knowledge, but these are probably the two most consistent examples of things that make me want to shake characters by the lapels.
What exactly is it about soccer/football that makes Japan hate teamwork?
Look, I'm a lover of sports animes. I adore a story about teamwork and supporting each other and friendships so deep you're side-eyeing them because yall are the most important people to each other and that kinda feels gay man but hey whatever
I hate soccer anime.
Because look, you can have an anime about a sport that isn't a team sport (such as Free! for swimming) and still the overarching message will be "we are a team we support each other" even if they're literally not affecting each others plays like in basketball or something.
For some reason, Japanese anime studios are under the impression that soccer is not a team sport.
Now I've only watched two soccer anime, Ao Ashi and Blue Lock, so maybe there is one out there that's actually a good sports anime. But those are, to my understanding, the most highly lauded soccer sports anime and they both have the same conclusion:
Soccer is not a team sport. The only person who matters on the soccer team is the striker. If you're not the one making the goals you're useless, and the only reason there are other people are on the field is so the striker can do whatever the hell they want.
Ao Ashi concludes that everyone else on the field is a shadow player for the striker to manipulate and use at their leisure so they can get their goals in. Blue lock concludes that teamwork is the downfall of the sport and anyone who feels loyalty to their teammates is foolish, and any teammate that is not actively making goals (aka taking up the position of striker) is a waste of field.
I just want to know what is is about soccer that inspires this, especially because it's one of the most regimented sports with different positions with such different focuses?? Like in basketball everyone does have more of a chance to focus on points, because even defending you're all going all over the field and have a chance to shoot. But in soccer there are literally defenders who do not go past the center line because that's not their job. Their job is to snatch the ball from the other team and get it to the offense downfield, which is an important job.
Also no one ever mentions goalies. A good goalie can absolutely change the outcome of a game, and yet neither of these animes gave more than a passing mention to the fact that they exist because, to the assumption that the only people that matter are those scoring goals they are useless.
The fire nation is actually the least likely nation to be homophobic and the fact that it is canonically the only homophobic nation is a bunch of bull, driven by the idea that bad is bad is bad and we must have only negative things in the fire nation and the other nations are hapless uwu victims. God forbid we have some awareness that cultures can be problematic in different ways.
Also easily none of the nations could be homophobic, or all of them are to varying degrees, but if only ONE nation is homophobic it is NOT going to be the fire nation and here's why.
Air Nomads
Look these guys are just as likely to be homophobic as not actually. Like clearly they're all monks, but that could go one of two ways. You're either a love is love monk, or a sex is sinful monk, and the fact that the monks were separated by gender into different temples and they presumably only had sex to have children so they wouldn't die out, I'm leaning towards the "sex is a tool to create children, to do it for other reasons is to indulge your carnal urges" type monks.
And when two men or two women have sex, it's not to create children.
Therefore, pretty solid that while the air nomads probably don't hate gay people, I don't think it was really an accepted thing in their society just because no romantic/sexual relationship was really accepted within the monk lifestyle. So not homophobic, but not really a thing.
2. Southern Water Tribe
You're gonna look me in the eyes and tell me that a nation with such emphasis on gender roles isn't gonna be hella weird about gay people? The men go off to war, the women stay and mend. Sokka's sexism, although I do think there's an argument that he took it further than his society taught him (because he was overcompensating, as the only man left in the village) was clearly taught to him.
That being said it's a society in which men leave on long journeys for days or weeks at a time and leave their wives at home, so I wouldn't be surprised if homosexuality was common but not discussed. You get a boat husband, yall keep each other company during long voyages while both your wives are gone. The ladies meet up for "sewing circles" while the men are off doing their thing. It's something that happens, but even if you do indulge it's with the understanding that when you get back to the village or your spouse comes back from the hunt you two are married and whatever happened when you were separated is not discussed.
Open homesexuality in such a culture? Can you imagine? Absolutely not.
3. Northern Water Tribe
Again, super gendered society. Women are literally treated like property and supports to be used by men, not allowed to speak in political situations, etc.
The reason I separate the southern and nothern is that their way of living is so different that my conclusion is different as well.
The northern water tribe is far more sexist (southern, we see that gran gran is respected as an elder at least and her words are taken seriously) AND they don't have the same previously mentioned long trips in which the men and women are separated.
Therefore I don't think homosexuality is even okay as a silent, not-talked-about but generally accepted part of society. These guys would absolutely make laws against it.
4. Earth Kingdom
Initially similar problems to the water tribe. They're clearly a very gendered society, only men join the army from what we've seen, the women are at the very least encouraged to be pretty and silent, especially in higher social statuses. In a society that emphasizes the respective places of women and men so much, homosexuality is less likely to be accepted because it necessarily destroys those roles (hence the "okay but who's the man in your relationship" type questions--because people obsessed with gendered society cannot fathom the idea that a relationship can consist of two people not fulfilling the specific roles of "man" and "woman")
Similarly to the Northern Water Tribe, they also don't have the situations in which men and women are often separated for long periods of time. Plus just given the generally rigid, headstrong nature of earth benders as a whole combined with the sexist nature of their general social strata, I just don't think they're going to be easily swayed to accept an alternative family structure than the one they have decided (a man protecting and providing for the family, a woman to care for the children, and their children).
Clearly the earth nation is extremely large and there is a lot of variation between the sections of any society, so I don't doubt there are many places (especially further-removed locations that aren't so under the direct sway of the aforementioned nobility) where homosexuality is accepted even openly, but we're talking about the general societal attitude, not exceptions to the rule.
(This being said Omashu is not homophobic no matter how homophobic the rest of the earth kingdom is because I refuse to believe Bumi wouldn't immediately repeal any homophobic laws the moment he became king)
5. Fire Nation
The Fire Nation is the most equal society in terms of gender norms. This is the only nation that has just as many women as men in the military, and in political situations (although we see many of the higher ups are still men) women are allowed to have a place as well. No one objects to Azula being the next firelord on grounds of her being a woman, no one ever suggests that Azula, Mai, or Ty Lee don't know what they're doing because they're women or expresses surprise that a group of women took Ba Sing Se or whatever.
Now, in terms of accepted relationships I do agree that the nobility likely insist that their own children marry someone that they can have children with--because bloodlines are important in such a society, and royal matches have never been about love or attraction, they've been about making alliances and raising your social status and continuing bloodlines.
We don't see any evidence of harems in Avatar, but there are plenty of historical examples of a king marrying a woman to continue the bloodline and then having male concubines and such, which is what I would suggest as a reasonable way to portray this in the fire nation.
But generally speaking, to the common people, there is literally no reason for the fire nation to have a problem with homosexual relationships. In fact there are more positives than negatives to them, when you have both men and women as soldiers on your ships.
You can ban all sexual relationships in the hope that you can avoid your women soldiers getting pregnant, or you could turn a blind eye to gay relationships because guess what when you have lady soldiers that's a really great way to make sure no one gets pregnant while on really long assignments.
IN CONCLUSION
The reason the fire nation was said to be the only homophobic nation in the comics was plain and simple a "grr fire nation evil" mentality that didn't take into account any of the actual cultures presented, and people need to take into account that someone can be an evil rat bastard and not be homophobic, and there are bigger questions of society in play that you can't just say "oh they're evil and those guys are good so the first will be homophobic and the second wont"
See: Kaido from one piece as a great example of how a rat bastard is not homophobic or transphobic
