#phoebe rambles

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

In case you guys were wondering why I’m not writing, I beat the radiance two weeks ago, now I’m 1/4 endings deep in silksong, and I’ve got 12 chapters done of a 80k words fic I can’t publish for reasons

[sapph0sfriend]

Forcing @chainuserz to watch the watt bootleg with me

[jimmyjaabs]

brooklyn nine-nine season 4 episode 7: the overmining did not have to go that hard but it did

it honestly might be one of my favourite episodes cause you’ve got 

“if ya see something say something, come on and party tonight”

as well as

“i always have the upper hand”

“not when there’s flames shooting outta ur butt”

“esPECIALLY when there’s flames shooting outta my butt”

it also has the superior cold open, weist infection

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

aw yis its my birthday

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

Never more conscious of having don’t get subtext disease as when you hurt a friend by not noticing the subtext of what they meant to say and reacting wrong

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

Some people need to understand queer coding opens character identities and relationships up to a solid queer interpretation, but that doesn’t equal “this character 100% fits my headcanon and if you disagree you’re a [REDACTED]”

From a literary analysis perspective, as long as your interpretation is reasonably evidence-based it’s valid. As this is fandom, I’d add “sincere” to that since unlike an academic setting we get bad faith actors but that’s it.

So, to have a valid “interpretation” you have to do the work in good faith, and you have to be able point at the text to support your interpretation. If you can’t, or don’t want to, that’s a headcanon, and it’s totally fine.

“But this character is a lesbian she likes a girl!” There’s more to queerness than straight and gay. You could reasonably interpret a girl who likes another girl as plenty of different things:

Lesbian

Bi

Ace/aro and something else

Straight and closeted trans

Straight and lover is closeted trans

And so on.

So when you have an interpretation, someone might tell you, “I think this other thing.” The polite way to handle this if you don’t like it is to say “that’s so cool we can see different things in the ambiguity of art”. Maybe blocking each other if you dislike their interpretation that much.

That’s of course unless you both want a debate to further refine your understanding of the text or just like to argue or whatever. Which is fine! As long as it’s not overly bitter or whatever, it’s fun to discuss.

“So how do I know which interpretation is more canon than another?”

See, that’s the thing, you can’t. Canon is kind of shaky in the first place. The canon is just what’s written that’s recognized as true/correct text, not the way to understand it (and not what the author says is true, some people take Word of God as canon because it allows the following of one concrete interpretation instead of acknowledging multiple, but strictly speaking it is not). You can only interpret the canon.

For example, 4-komas bonuses of serialized manga are usually non-canon because they are jokes and not meant to be taken seriously as a part of the story’s text. That’s what canon actually is for, originally it’s to talk about which books are genuinely part of the Bible and which are to be deemed offshoots that shouldn’t be taken as a Catholic Church-endorsed religious text.

I guess that’s what gets people confused? That there’s no actual truth to imagined worlds, only what happens in the eyes of the beholder when they interact with art?

Because that’s what it means, canon often has nothing to do with who’s “actually a lesbian” short of them saying it directly. An onscreen wedding is said to “make a couple canon” precisely because there’s only so many ways you can interpret a wedding, but all that means is that the text says they’re together at a point in time. One way I can think of having a canon sexuality would be a canonical character sheet, or an omniscient narrator saying so, but everything less is basically an interpretation.

Note that interpretation obviousness can go from “that’s a stretch but I like it”, to “you only need eyes to see it”, they’re both still interpreting. Even a character talking sexuality technically only makes canon that they’re willing to say so, but that’s when critical thinking comes in.

If you hear a character say “I’m a married lesbian” and think “they’re just confused” with no evidence, you look like an idiot. You absolutely can argue which interpretation is more valid or likely by pointing out inconsistencies, stretched evidence, or that one interpretation has a higher volume of evidence/etc. This is how you avoid relativism and “nothing the text says matters” trolls.

Occam’s Razor is another way you might be tempted to try and determine whose thesis is stronger. This technique works through figuring out which interpretation requires the least amount of assumptions (saying something arbitrary is true as a basis) but it doesn’t make anything canon, or more interesting, it’s not a concrete sign of superiority. Just means it has stronger fondations.

However… your interpretation being stronger, more popular, better worded etc. or you thinking someone else’s is immoral, stupid, etc. doesn’t give you license to be a bully, to call people names, to dox them, dig up dirt to make them look worse, and so on and so forth. Thinking you’re right and they’re wrong does not make you above basic respect, politeness, or consequences. You’re not better than everyone else.

As a child, I used to think I was always right because I was logical, and I clearly made logical sense so there was no way for there to be a logical reasoning that arrived at a different conclusion. (Newsflash: Child me was very wrong! Sometimes multiple things can be equally valid! And even if they were not equal, that didn’t give me license to deride people publicly!)

Queer coding is by its nature interpretative. Coding is the author leaving hints about their characters by using a “code”. Some hints, almost everyone in your section of fandom might have the exact same interpretation about. Some hints might be dead obvious. Some hints might leave you overjoyed. Some hints you might ignore because they make you uncomfortable.

Some people will disagree with you about how they interpret the coding, or might even just state that they believe people have a right to interpret the canon however they want, even in ways you don’t like. That is normal. That is not a threat to your interpretation.

Don’t be a petty cunt about it.

Essentially,

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

I've actually been writing a Hi3 story that's been trotting in my brain a long time but it's extremely dark and I have no idea when it'll be presentable so don't hold your breath.

The TLDR is: No MANTIS PE AU where they actually survived the Honkai disaster. Now they're in the post-apocalypse recovery phase. May or may not be partly inspired by me playing Terra Nil a lot.

The main theme is... mmm, I'd say, the loss of personhood to commodification? (That's a bad thing)

Oh! And while it's set in PE on Earth, there's a melting pot of characters from other planets too.

Done:

Prologue (Mobius soliloquy to a baby)

In progress:

Introducing the reader to what's really fucked up about the AU AKA HoC (human) has some unresolved issues and Susannah's luck stat is debuffed to 0

Planned:

Sa has a (clone) child out of wedlock and gets divorced

Grown-up Griseo's very bad no good awful day as a journalist

Mobius fluff with a human toddler Klein

Mei finds out she's adopted

Not sure yet:

Want to yeet Hua and Kiana in there somehow but I need to figure out short storylines for them that fit the greater story

I wanna have some actual terraforming taking place in the background so it's not all dark cynical stuff

How the hell do you disassemble an institution seen as a necessary evil? ....is this story secretly about prison abolition?

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

Hey. Hey. Listen. It’s fine if there are blogs you don’t like. Just block them, okay? Do not send rude asks to people you don’t like, especially if you think they’re trolls. People do not magically deserve rudeness or worse because they’re choosing to be annoying. You cannot control others.

Sending rude asks is either being a dick or feeding the troll and neither outcome is you winning. Alright? Alright.