Richelle Mead is just ridiculously good at accidentally making her characters queer.
Sydney has someone magically see her aura and describe her with THE DEFINITION OF DEMISEXUAL word for word. I'm sure Richelle Mead never even heard the word demisexuality, she's just that good at writing accidental queerness.
She probably just tried to make her different from Rose's sexual assertiveness and immediate attraction, but here we are. Sydney's whole characterization was spot on the a-spec experience, I already wrote a whole "essay" about it, so I'll stop here.
Adrian's absurd bad reputation does not work at all, he's a young, attractive, rich, royal male, no amount of sex in the world would get him slutshamed. People are just being biphobic. Plus, he has impeccable chaotic bi vibes, he's clearly bi/pan.
And the amount of homoeroticism between Rose and Lissa? Look, I value friendship deeply, it's just as important and deep as romantic relationships. I'm not one to say "there's no heterosexual/platonic explanation for this" just because two characters love each other a lot. Hence the multiple posts gushing about how much Sydney and Eddie love each other.
When I say Rose and Lissa are in lesbians with each other it's because they were actively lusting for each other. Their very first scene has Rose saying that she's sure that being bitten by Lissa (the very well established erotic metaphor) is better than sex. She didn't have to do that!
The books are actually pretty heteronormative, and almost every character gets a designated opposite gender partner, but that just ends up making them bi. Although Mia is a pretty good candidate for "victim of comp het".
There are exactly 2 minor characters who Richelle actually intended to be canon lesbians, and yet almost every major character is queer. That's not even getting into the conversion therapy allegories.
The Melrose Twins! I love them so much! I just find Sydney and Eddie's relationship lovely. They really do love each other like siblings and look out for each other, it's beautiful.
They're the responsible repressed ones, and they're good at hiding their feelings. But Sydney actually notices how Eddie is feeling and he eventually allows himself to be vulnerable around her. He actually spent an hour at a cafe talking to her about his feelings, I still can't believe it, I love that. And the whole time she was wishing she could share her problems too. When he figures out her relationship - because he's also the one who actually notices the change in her and the feelings she hides, like she noticed his - she's so relieved to be able to talk to him about it.
They come to trust each other and rely on each other a lot. They have a lot of fondness and admiration for each other. They even relax a bit, joke around and tease each other, which is a big deal for these two.
And of course, he was willing to die for her, while she turned herself in to face her worst fear for him. When I see Eddie actually cry after they rescue Sydney I bawl my eyes out.
I'm glad they didn't split up the found family in the end, and Eddie chose to live with Sydney and Adrian.
I have a full retrospective of their relationship throughout the 6 books on my sideblog. Part 1. Part 2.
17. Any non canon ships?
Dragoway, their relationship is by far the most compelling in the original series. Rose and Lissa have relationship troubles arising from both their own personal flaws and from the way their society is structured, but they love each other deeply and we see them actually putting in the effort to overcome that.
When Rose comes back from Russia they have a heart to heart about their problems and we see them working on their relationship. They try to communicate better and to have a more horizontal relationship, to be a team. They grow a lot.
Sadly, I think their relationship regressed a lot in the last book, that's one of the problems I have with the direction Rose's character was taken. But it could be fixed!
And there's so much subtext! All the breathless admiration of each other's beauty, the break up scene, the jealousy of each other's partners. You know how vampire bites are a well established erotic allegory? And one of the first things Rose ever says is that she's sure being bitten by Lissa is better than sex? That's a thing that happens.
And everybody on discord is tired of hearing me say this, but the reason for a lot of the Lissa hate is that she was the only real threat to romitri, those are the facts.
21. Share some headcanons of yours.
I had a post drafted on my sideblog, so I answered this one there.
The end goal of representation politics, as flawed as it can be, isn't to abolish acting and to have characters only be played by people exactly like them. There's a specific history of oppression that makes certain things problematic. That's why whitewashing is a thing and blackwashing is not.
Cultural erasure is sad and disappointing, but the reason people don't treat it as something as bad as whitewashing is because it's categorically not, it does not have nearly the same history of violence attached to it.
The US doesn't have a history of minstrel shows about eastern Europeans. There isn't a problem with lack of pale skin representation. If what you're interested in is pale skin and not actually a complex portrayal of Slavic cultures, there's plenty of content for you out there.
There can be perfectly valid and respectful critiques, expressed politely. Russians have actually being demonized on Western media, so I understand wishing for a Russian actor, I did too. But it's more a matter of authenticity in the portrayal, having a different type of white guy play Dimitri is not whitewashing. But you can be wary about how good a job he can do, certainly.
As for Rose, I wish her Turkish ethnicity had been actually represented, and you can be black and have Turkish heritage at the same time. That would have been cool, but it's not the actress' background as far as I know. I don't know if casting would be different under different circumstances, without covid restrictions, but it is what it is. I wished she had been Turkish in the movie too, but I still watched it, and I think Sisi will make a beautiful Rose.
To be honest, a lot of Turkish people look white to me, but if their experience is racialized in the US I won't erase that. But I think they look white to a lot of people who are raging right now too, because lots of them are much more focused on the exact shade of Rose's skin than in her actual heritage, funny that. Or they're praising white actresses who are also not Turkish at all. Very intriguing. The things people will pretend to care about in order to dress up their racism in social justice language are astonishing.
And Lissa was never albino, btw. Would be cool to have more rep for that, but she wasn't it. Most other characters are American, and they're descended from Europeans because that's how white Americans work, it's stolen land, they aren't native to it.
Hopefully the writers of the show will do alot of research and know what they're talking about, and portray the slavic inspiration of the books in the respectful and complex way these beautiful cultures deserve.
But you know what other culture the books draw heavily from too? You know what these books written by an American woman that deal with racism as one of their central themes also take inspiration from? The culture and oppressive structures of the country she lived in her whole life.
The oppression suffered by dhampirs is very related to racism and specially antiblackness/misogynoir experienced by people in real life, so using their plight for inspiration while featuring next to no black people in the books isn't great. I'm happy they're changing that at least, it's an improvement. I think the themes of the books could be enhanced by these choices.
The same way, if we get to Bloodlines, if you're gonna have a conversion therapy inspired plot you should have more queer rep. If the main couple draws from the struggles faced by interracial and queer couples, there should be more representation.
The cast looks beautiful and I need to see them actually acting to know if they're good. You're allowed to care about external descriptions of the characters. But in my opinion capturing the spirit of the character is much more important, and real life sociopolitics should be taken into account.
You can't please everyone, and you're never gonna get exactly what's in your head. But most of the fandom is grown adults now, and you should be able to handle disappointment without having a breakdown or harassing anyone. Keep things civil.
Rose and Lissa being totally platonic best friends who aren't in love:
Pretty much the first thing Rose says in chapter one is that having Lissa bite her feels better than sex, completely unprovoked
Remade because I accidentally deleted it 🙃 If anybody reblogged that Adrian male wife ask let me know, it was the first ask I ever got in this sideblog.
I'm very sad about no Eddie, and I ship Mia/Meredith already. I was rooting for them to expand Meredith's character (by actually giving her one) and for WLW Mia (either bi or a lesbian struggling with comphet). And maybe we'll have an Eddie but his role isn't big enough to justify being in the main announcement yet.
I really don't think that's what's actually going on, but the thought came to me that I would be more than okay with MerEDith Castile, as long as she was actually Eddie, the very same character, and her first line to Rose was still "It's always a good time to think about you naked, Hathaway".
She can keep the Eddie nickname actually, I think they could justify that. Butch lesbian Eddie y'all.
Eddie doesn't have much to do in the first book, so MEddie would have that developing romance with Mia, and then she takes on his plot lines from the later books. And hopefully their romance would largely substitute Mia's weird slutshamy plot line from the first book.
Mia could stay at Saint Vladimir's instead of moving back to court, and she actually starts dating MEddie. Once she goes through character development and gets over her elitism, it'll be amazing to see her have a guardian girlfriend when she decides to learn combat 🥰
Then eventually MerEddieth would become Sydney's twin. I'd like that as long as it was truly still Eddie, only genderbent. I missed having more dhampir girls who were actual characters in the books.
Is this headcanon largely based around smashing the names Meredith and Eddie together? Maybe. But honestly, every time I remember Eddie's full name is Edison I'm completely shocked.
I just want Eddie to get the love he deserves though, I really love him.
Sisi Stringer is an actress and assistant director too, that's so cool
As far as I know she doesn't have Turkish heritage, which is sad, but she isn't the casting director, and if I see any of y'all sending her hate it'll be on sight, I won't hesitate. I'm sure she'll make a beautiful Rose 🌹
Cultural erasure genuinely sucks, but if you're going around saying you liked a white actress who's also not Turkish better, like many people are, you're not fooling anyone and your racism is transparent
I would like to talk about the adultification of marginalized teenagers (and even children), and why you shouldn't claim that having being oppressed, abused, traumatized and/or having had adult responsibilities pushed onto them at a young age makes someone more mature, making it okay for adults in their lives to treat them like they're full adults too.
Preface: There's no such a thing as unproblematic media, something having problematic elements doesn't mean it should be yeeted into a trashcan and has nothing of value to offer. Liking a thing in fiction doesn't mean endorsing it in reality. Fiction can affect reality, and media aimed at young audiences will logically be held to different standards, but no single piece of media is gonna come into your home and brainwash you all by itself. It's more a matter of the work reflecting and then amplifying things that are already part of the culture. Real people are always more important than fictional people and you should treat them accordingly when discussing these things.
However, when arguments used to defend an aspect of a fictional work can be copy-pasted wholesale to defend real situations (and are in fact used for that already), that does bother me. What I'm addressing here is a specific argument I'd like to see retired, because I believe it causes real harm. This is not an attempt to condemn people's tastes, or use real life tragedies as ammunition in fandom drama.
Tw: sexual abuse, racism
Fantastic racism and fictional systems of oppression never have a one-to-one correspondence to real life, but authors necessarily draw from the society they're in and reflect that, consciously or not. If you ever heard that "dystopia is white people saying what if that stuff happened to us" that's why. That means that both the way it's treated in the work and the way we discuss it can have real life implications.
So, what is adultification?
Adultification Can Take Two Essential Forms:
1.
A process of socialization, in which children function at a more mature developmental stage because of situational context and necessity, especially in low-resource community environments;
and
2.
A social or cultural stereotype that is based on how adults perceive children “in the absence of knowledge of children’s behavior and verbalizations. This latter form of adultification, which is based in part on race, is the subject of this report.
Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood by REBECCA EPSTEIN, JAMILIA J. BLAKE and THALIA GONZÁLEZ- Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. Available online for free.
If you haven't read it or need a refresher, Vampire Academy is a YA series where the protagonist, Rose Hathaway, is a half-vampire, being trained to be a Guardian. As a dhampir, her society imposes on her the duty of protecting mortal vampires, the Moroi, against the undead evil vampires, the Strigoi. Rose's best friend, Lissa, is a Moroi princess and she very much wants to be her Guardian and protect her, but throughout the series it is made clear that the treatment of dhampirs is highly unfair. Rose is 17 for a large chunk of the series, and she's forced into a lot of tragic situations, she's an excellent fighter and kills a lot of Strigoi, but not without losing people and suffering trauma.
At a young age, Dhampirs take on immense responsibility, are taught to put their charges' lives ahead of their own, giving up their youth and autonomy. Dhampir girls and women are hypersexualized, exotified and disrespected, being mostly responsible for keeping their species going and looked down on for doing that at the same time.
Of course that specific system of fantasy oppression does not exist. But as you can see in the study quoted above, the phenomenon of adultification is not something that's exclusive to the VA universe. While it might seem very far removed from the reality of teens who have some level of privilege, particularly if they're first worlders, being forced to shoulder adult responsibilities, being denied the formative experiences of a carefree youth, being exposed to extreme violence and even forced to perpetrate it, having to leave home and take care of themselves, and many other traumas and oppressions are the lived reality of a lot of young people.
When those young people are perceived as more adult than they actually are, they are often denied the protection and nourishment they need and deserve due to the adult-like stereotypes assigned to them.
These stereotypical characteristics include sexual maturity, possession of agency to make important life decisions and the ability to be criminally responsible for their conduct.
(E)racing Childhood: Examining the Racialized Construction of Childhood and Innocence in the Treatment of Sexually Exploited Minors by Priscilla A. Ocen,also available online.
Minors who went through extreme circumstances are no less deserving of nurturing and protection than others, and neither are minors belonging to groups who have expectations of maturity pushed onto them, but they are often perceived differently. Trauma can come with a pseudo-maturity, but it doesn't rush you through developmental stages.
Adultification is a form of dehumanization that has very harmful consequences to real people.
One of the most dramatic ways that dhampirs were adultified in the books is the age law, an attempt to lower the age in which they become Guardians to 16, essentially hoping to use teens as living shields and cutting their youth short. Rose's experiences holding her own in fights against Strigoi at age 17 are used to defend the validity of this idea, even though she's horrified by it herself. Rose believes they should have a right to those last years of teenhood, both to prepare and to live.
The discussion around that law never seemed like a far-fetched idea completely detached from the real world to me personally, because around the same time there was an attempt to lower the age of criminal responsibility in my country to 16, which of course involveld a lot of biases around race and class. In fact much of what I expressed in this post comes from being exposed to a decade of debates against reactionaries while I was in school and later studying law, in which experts tried to convince the public that minors are a protected category for a reason, since they are at a different developmental stage, and that the extreme circunstances they might be placed in don't make them adults.
Another big way in which this type of bias harms minors is the perception of sexual maturity.
In the context of the commercial sexual exploitation of children, gendered and racialized biases against Black girls cast them as more mature and thus as possessing more agency over their sexuality than their white counterparts. They are viewed as “street smart,” less dependent on adults, and less vulnerable to adult manipulation or abuse. (Ocen)
While the fandom seems to mostly understand that the age law was wrong, there are some arguments that Rose's circunstances gave her the capacity to consent to a sexual and romantic relationship with her adult instructor that I've seen used by several people now.
I find that very troubling due to the real life implications of these arguments. I'm sure these people are very well meaning, and obviously I don't think anybody was defending all of this, but I don't think there's any way to say "she's mature for her age because she went through a lot" or "her society makes girls like her shoulder a lot of responsibility, and therefore she has a higher ability to consent to sex than other girls her age" that doesn't validate these harmful biases in some way.
Compared to white girls of the same age, survey participants perceive that • Black girls need less nurturing • Black girls need less protection • Black girls need to be supported less • Black girls need to be comforted less • Black girls are more independent • Black girls know more about adult topics • Black girls know more about sex (From the Georgetown Law study)
Some of the people making this argument seem to think that the fantasy racism, adult responsibility and exposure to violence that this character suffers are very far removed from reality, created wholesale for the sake of world building. As exposed above, that isn't the case, there are very real counterparts. And in fact, some other people were directly making the argument using real life examples.
Marginalized or abused people are aways forced to grow up faster and shoulder too much responsibility for their age, and that in no way makes them adults. It makes them more vulnerable to manipulation not less. They not only don't require any less protection, they are the ones who are most likely to be victimized.
Perpetuating the idea that those kids who are in the most vulnerable positions in society, and are forced to somewhat give up their childhood, are more mature and therefore it's okay for grown adults to take advantage of them is a problem.
If anybody actually read all this, thank you very much, and I hope I didn't sound aggressive. It's just a subject I find very important. And I truly don't think shipping something means you endorse it in real life, I just don't like to see that argument spread. Ship what you ship.
Of course fantasy racism isn't the only type that is pertinent to analysis of Rose's character, the word exotic is used to describe her and directly linked to her Turkish heritage quite a lot, but that's a whole other can of worms.
For English language sources those articles I cited are quite good, and there are some good videos I could rec.
