Airfleck - Airfleck

orpheus looked back

Speaking of the Sailor Moon manga, I've been thinking about the thing with Haruka and Usagi in the manga, and I think it makes more sense to me when I remember that Naoko has said Haruka is her "ideal woman" and she's also stated that Mamoru is her "ideal man" and definitely means it in a romantic sense.

Usagi is the character the reader is supposed to project on (and who Naoko has indicate she projects herself onto), and I think the whole thing suddenly makes a sort of sense when you look at it through the lens of something we often see, which is experiencing a queer fantasy but in a "safe" way where all "fault" is removed from you for that fantasy (like in Dracula, etc). Naoko wanted to explore kissing and being attracted to what she considered the "ideal woman", either for her readers or herself (or both), but OBVIOUSLY Usagi can't cheat on her boyfriend, that would be bad! So hey, Usagi is clearly attracted to Haruka, but she doesn't actually know she's a girl at first soooo! And also the cool lesbian kisses Usagi out of nowhere, so hey, Usagi didn't do anything wrong, it wasn't consensual or anything! And sure, she thinks about the kiss afterwards and even dreams about it and dreams about Haruka in both "feminine form" AND "masculine" form but it's okay, that's also not cheating, it just kind of happened. She gets Haruka telling her that gender doesn't matter and leaning towards her seductively and she gets to swoon a little and maybe actually considers receiving a kiss, but she gets interrupted. And now she can go back to Mamoru no harm, no foul, she (and the readers) got to live the fantasy but she didn't cheat on her guy or do anything wrong, it's cool.

This obviously doesn't make it good writing, as it makes Haruka come off like a horrible person and completely disregards Michiru and plays into some stereotypes, but I do kind of understand why it was this way when I think of it through that lens.

I don't think Naoko was thinking of what it said about Haruka and Michiru at all. I think Naoko put exploring that fantasy (while absolving Usag and (thus the reader) of all responsibility) above all. And is that progressive or good? No, but I can sympathize with wanting to live out that fantasy. Maybe Naoko didn't want to face her own feelings and fantasies, or she understood her readers wouldn't want to, so they get to live out their fantasy this way.

Notably, she's also a fan of Takarazuka and based Haruka off that, which is very commonly how female fans experiencing the thrill of being attracted to a woman but hey she's playing a "male role" so does it really count? They get to experience that attraction is a "safe" way and then go home, put that attraction in its box, and resume their lives without having to face and unpack those kind of feelings they don't want to deal with. It's just a fantasy, it doesn't "count", but you can always go back to swooning over the hot girl. because she's sticking around and continuing to be hot and protective of and devoted to you.

It's a very 90s approach, but I kind of get it.

My submission for @/rakkutron’s DTIYS on Instagram but they don’t have a tumblr and I’ll post it there tomorrow but for here it’s tumblr tbh who cares what time I post here

in the sunlit garden, holding hands / because i’ve never forgotten our promise, i’ve come all this way at last

14/06/24

happy pride month to them

NOTE: in a few weeks im gonna have my bachelor's degree!! in the meantime, i've been doing some comms work and i somehow ended up speedrunning painting this piece lol. decided that the flats looked better than a shaded version, so here we are. im esp proud of ayda's hair in this one

this idea did not leave my head for a month so i knew i had to draw it or else

So I rewatched the entire dinner scene instead of sleeping, and here’s my hot take: I don’t care about Trent. He’s an asshole abuser, so I will eat up others’ probably far more insightful meta on THAT topic.

No, I want to talk about Astrid, Eodwulf, and Caleb.

That scene didn’t go at all like I expected it to. I think I, and everyone else, were expecting the mind games, the subtle threats, the manipulation…

But I wasn’t expecting half of it to be directed towards Astrid and Eodwulf.

In those previous encounters, we kind of got what we thought the two of them would be – confident, duty bound, convicted, a certain sense that they were where they wanted to be, that they knew their environment and had some control. Astrid came from a place of slightly patronising pity for Caleb. Eodwulf didn’t bother talking to the Nein overly.

So we all sat here and made jokes about Caleb’s evil ex-friends, donning their scariest wizard robes and staring stonily down the table for the evening. That’s what we expected. People who didn’t hesitate. People who, though abused and brainwashed, were committed to the cause, were perpetuating the cycle.

That is not what we got.

They start that way. Annoyed at the Nein’s antics. Stern. Supposedly full of conviction. But there was no righteousness, and they got more and more nervous as the night went on.

Astrid and Eodwulf were afraid. Astrid was not one step away from coldly offing Trent and taking his place. She was leaning away from him, begging Caleb to stop provoking Trent, stop calling attention to her. Eodwulf was reluctant to talk, was worried about how Caleb would react, froze up as soon as things started getting confrontational.

Every moment of their interactions at that table screamed ABUSE. 

I’m sure our previous assumptions are true. I’m sure they kill, torture, and do worse for the Empire. I’m sure they defend it at every point, have parroted lines they refuse to let go of. It’s possible that they mean it.

But those weren’t powerful mages who’d grown up to shoulder the horrors of their youth as just and right without another thought. Those were beaten dogs.

On top of that, those were beaten dogs who know they’re not allowed to think for themselves. Every time Caleb asked Astrid a difficult question – every single time – she would look over at Ikithon nervously, steel herself, and then mimic him almost exactly.

I didn’t realise until rewatching the scene, but her speech pattern varies GREATLY between speaking in a manner I believe to be honest, and speaking about dicey topics like the Empire, her duty, their actions, and so on. When addressing more vulnerable topics, Astrid spoke softly and looked like this:

Whenever she had to speak about something that she clearly felt she was on thin ice with? She lowered her voice, evened it out, and changed her cadence to match Ikithon’s perfectly, the only difference being that her voice is slightly higher pitched. It’s so close I sometimes had trouble telling if Caleb was talking to Ikithon or to her.

Astrid straight up told Caleb that whoever is her superior is right, and she and Eodwulf will do as that superior says. Nothing more. No moral judgements of her own. Eodwulf, for his part, never directly defended his actions or their jobs. Whenever he was pressed, he looked to Astrid. Who, in turn, would look to Trent.

That’s a pretty obvious sign of what’s going on, here.

The only times Eodwulf is startled into genuine reactions are when Trent drops the first real bombshell on Caleb, at which point he makes these faces:

And afterwards, when Caduceus parted with a scathing last word to Trent, wherein both he and Astrid looked like this:

Astrid tried to share her hair techniques with Jester. She smiled when the Nein joked about kidnapping her. Eodwulf liked the moniker they gave him. Eodwulf decided he liked Caduceus right after he’d told Trent no one would mourn him.

As soon as that dinner was over, Eodwulf pulled out alcohol, took a swig, passed it to Caleb, who took a swig, and then to Astrid, who took a swig. That quick and unhesitating exchange speaks of long experience. Long experience leaving Trent’s presence and immediately trying to get drunk.

It said a lot about the three of them, I think. That little moment, the ease of it, how normal it seemed, displays a genuine (at least at one point, and maybe still) camaraderie between them, and also a genuine unease in Trent’s presence, even after a decade and a half.

And that leads to the other thing I wasn’t expecting, but maybe should have. Caleb.

He’d hesitated from condemning Trent. This was the man he had spent most of the campaign running from, the man who had groomed him into killing his family, and yet he was reluctant to speak about violence, even though his friends half begged him to give the okay on it.

I think we were expecting Caleb to hunch his shoulders, to look away, to be eaten up by anxiety. And maybe he would have been shrinkingly cautious through the whole affair. Y’know, if Trent hadn’t said Caleb’s parents would have been okay with him burning them alive. If Astrid and Eodwulf hadn’t desperately tried to blend in with the furniture at every opportunity.

Caleb starts the dinner making these kind of faces:

But slowly, that changes. He stops doing his usual habit of avoiding eye contact and rubbing at his arms. He starts glowering when Trent tries to insist that Caleb’s parents’ deaths were a good thing, were what they wanted, would bring honour to the family he had eradicated, somehow. He likes it less when Trent claims credit for his escape. He really looks pissed when Astrid tries unconvincingly to argue that what they did was okay, obviously signalling her discomfort with the situation.

By the end of the night, Caleb looked Trent in the eye and said he dreamed of murdering him, brutally, with his bare hands. By the end of the night, Caleb had THIS look on his face as he stared at the man who’s haunted his every moment for as long as he’s been a lucid adult:

This Caleb? This is the Caleb who isn’t paralysed by his own guilt and fear. This is a Caleb who is very, very angry.

So regarding the dynamic between Astrid, Eodwulf, and Caleb? The script was, in the end, rather flipped. We went in expecting three wizards trying to manipulate an overwhelmed Caleb. Instead, we got one wizard crushing the souls of two others under his heel, with the only one currently outside his direct influence growing more and more furiously bold as the situation became evident.

The fact that Trent was his abuser was never going to bring Caleb to violence on its own. But Caleb called Astrid and Eodwulf “friends,” present tense, the day before he watched them sit, afraid of saying the wrong thing, through a dinner with their abuser. I don’t think he’s going to be so hesitant about violence towards Trent in the future.

They may have learned very little about Trent and his true intentions. It’s even possible that everything we saw of Eodwulf and Astrid is some elaborate fiction, though I don’t think so. But whatever else, it did one thing I’m not sure Trent wanted; it solidified a path forward for Caleb that he wouldn’t commit to before, and I don’t think it involves Trent surviving.

It’s officially Barbie month 💖

We were gods, we were kids

so idk if we’re getting a bard’s lament this season, but regardless of if we are or not i NEED to talk about my most favorite dynamic ever so i can get this convo back out into the universe before a bard’s lament happens because it makes me unwell.

vex and scanlan are, in many ways, the same. they’re deeply insecure, sad people that put on masks to hide it. they’re good liars. so that’s what they do. they stand in front of each other and they lie. and it’s not hard for them to know the other is lying. i mean vex LITERALLY SEES THROUGH HIS DISGUISE EVENTUALLY LIKE ARE YOU KIDDING?

and like, vex is snippy and she can be a bit of a shit and she says scanlan is just some guy without his magic. but he’s also the person she looks up to. she literally travels across the whole continent by herself to make sure his daughter can get to him and she sends kaylie back to him even though she’s distraught and terrified and alone. she’s the one person who actually gets through to him during a bard’s lament and she gets through to him by telling him to stop viewing his daughter as a sacred object. to fix his relationship with her. AND HE LISTENS. like again she is the ONLY person in that room who gets through to him and it’s because she implores him to fix his relationship with his daughter after he cruelly remarks that they went to the fey realm to “fix her daddy issues.”

and scanlan! he teases her and he deflects his seriousness around her with humor as much as he does to anyone. but he teaches vex how to use the broom and he gives her the hat to wear. and he ensures her success when he turns her into a dragon and directly tells a god that she’s mean and greedy and the most perfect one of all of them.

scanlan is a father with a fractured relationship with his daughter and vex is a daughter desperate for her father’s approval.

scanlan is not vex’s father. but when scanlan comes back she does everything she can to try and make sure he won’t leave again despite the way he hurt her.

vex is not scanlan’s daughter. but he walks her down the aisle and makes sure she can see her brother at her wedding and he’s happy to be like her father for a day.

scanlan is NOT vex’s father and vex is NOT scanlan’s daughter but really, aren’t they made of the same stuff?