I finally got around to making an "about me" pinned post
Hi! You can call me Violet. (It's not my real name, but it's a pseudonym I've used for years. I also used to go by Prism online, so you're welcome to call me that too.)
Age-wise, I'm in my early 20s. This blog is safe for teenagers to interact, though I may scream "you're so young! i used to be that young once! why was that so long ago?!"
[I have a whump sideblog: violets-whumperflies. Follows and likes for that come from this account.]
Fandoms you'll see here:
The Owl House
The Murderbot Diaries
Nimona
The Locked Tomb (reactions at #violet reads tlt)
Avatar: the Last Airbender
Epic the Musical
Good Omens (I do not support Neil Gaiman)
The Adventure Zone
possibly some others that aren't tagged consistently
Other tags to help you navigate my blog:
#my art and #my writing
#hope - things that make me, and hopefully you, feel a little better about the world
#rambling violet - things that are about my life rather than fandom or cool information
#oops i relate
#tropes - things I love seeing in stories
#creativity - advice for writing, art, and creating things in general
#pride - posts about queerness
Here's some of my other interests that I post about!
Language & linguistics (I speak some French!)
History
Nature
Disability
Poetry
And some things that I am: ace lesbian and demiromantic/aro-spec, Jewish, autistic, ADHD
If you don't want to see anything about politics (which is valid!) tags to block are #current events and #political philosophy
Please feel welcome to interact with me! Say something in my askbox, whether that's ranting about fandoms or rambling about how your day was or random questions about me. I'd love to make friends!
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this isn't really the same thing as intentionally/unintentionally a-spec characters but it is interesting thinking about how intentionality does dramatically change how characters read regarding a-spec identities and themes.
So: repurposed vaguely Kinseyesque scale describing your aromantic and/or asexual protagonist's awareness of and relationship to their own aromanticism/asexuality:
Unaware That This Is A Thing People Can Be. Type specimen: Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl. Has never once considered that "not wanting romance or sex" is a thing people could feel, let alone identify as. He is normal, which means straight. It's just a coincidence that his relationship with his girlfriend was a disaster and now he's just way too busy in this new nightmare dystopia world for any of that! Anyway!
Aware They Have These Feelings, Assumes Everyone Else Also Does. Type specimen: Doug Eiffel from Wolf 359. Firmly believes that his aro-allo experiences are universal and everybody else is just better at acting like a functional human being than he is. Being a huge movie nerd also leads him to believe that "romance" as we understand it is massively exaggerated for drama in movies and people in real life don't actually do and feel that stuff any more than they mind-meld or can use the Force. He's just a fuckup at everything; why wouldn't relationships be included in that? For most of the show if you told him about aromanticism he would NOT be comforted about it, he'd probably take it as a diagnosis that his fuckup-ness regarding relationships was innate and incurable. (This doesn't have to be negative; this is also where Andy Wheyface from Arden falls and he is having a GRAND old time.)
Aware They Have These Feelings, Realizes That It Sets Them Apart From Others, Doesn't Conceptualize It As Part Of An Identity. Type specimen: Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary. His reaction to other people having sex is mostly "why would you do that." His single attempt at a serious romantic relationship didn't work out and he has a nagging sense that there is something in him that can't maintain serious relationships; attributes it to cowardice and fear of commitment. Ironically he does know what asexuality is. He's a middle school teacher in 2020s California, he has absolutely gotten LGBTQ+ Sensitivity Education at least in "pamphlet listing queer identities" form, he for sure has students with pride flag pins on their backpacks and pride stickers on their notebooks, and he is also not immune from the Culture War Bullshit around gender in schools. Knowing that asexuality exists did not even slightly lead him to apply this to himself.
Aware They Have These Feelings, Considers Them Significant, Attributes Them To Some Existential Feature Of Their Existence Rather Than A Personal Identity. Type specimen: Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries. Murderbot is very confident it does not want anything to do with romance or sex, and it attributes this to Being A SecUnit, and romance and sex are Human Things SecUnits Don't Do. Has not yet realized that this is an itself thing and not a SecUnit thing. Probably willfully at this point.
Considers These Feelings A Significant Aspect Of Their Selfhood, But Doesn't Name It. Type specimen: Sister Carpenter from The Silt Verses. Clearly confident in who she is and what she wants in her personal relationships, recognizes that as something that makes her different from others and out of step with what others expect from her, and is basically like, that's their problem. She knows who she is. Sometimes other people try to make it her problem but she has so many other problems that societal amatonormativity keeps getting pushed lower and lower on her list of Problems.
Recognizes Themself As Aromantic/Asexual As A Personal Identity. Type specimen: Nova NoStar from InCo. Clearly considers this part of her identity, but is allergic to talking about her feelings even at her therapy android's insistence and besides that's not anybody else's business is it?
Publicly Identifies As Asexual And Describes It With Period-Correct Sexual Orientation Language. Type specimen: Sally Grissom from ars PARADOXICA. The only character I've ever heard come out as asexual and lay out the definition in terms of sexual orientation and attraction to another character on-air that made me go "yeah she would do this, this is in character for Sally." Strongly feel like she would be an active commenter on the 2010s ace blogosphere. Would get in an argument about the correct definition of asexuality on AVEN.
X. Their Culture Conceptualizes Intimate Relationships In A Fundamentally Different Framework Than We Use. Type specimen: Breq from the Imperial Radch Trilogy. Whatever model of gender and sexuality the Radch is on it is NOT ours. Breq is still not interested though.
#interesting these are all scifi it makes me think there's something in the water there that allows for broader aspec theme building #probably because social norms are often imagined differently in scifi (tags via @variousqueerthings)
This is a really interesting aspect that I was definitely thinking about when I put this list together, because it began as an expansion of this post and I was freely mixing characters that are canonically and intentionally written as aro and ace, and characters who were not at all intended to come off that way but really do to me and/or a lot of people. But it's true, and I think that speaks to something about how different genre narratives prioritize things that lead to these readings!
A lot more thoughts about this under the cut:
So first off, the whole list is SFF because that's the majority of what I read/watch/listen to, lol. I could have made other choices - talked about Jean Valjean or Sherlock Holmes or Kerewin Holmes or Georgia Warr or Miles Edgeworth - but I really love 1) sci-fi and 2) audio drama podcasts so I have many more in-depth thoughts about those. (I mean not to say I don't have in-depth thoughts about Les Mis or Ace Attorney but--anyway. Also I haven't read Loveless or The Bone People so I can't actually say much meaningful about those.)(Okay I haven't read Dungeon Crawler Carl either but I'm on the library hold list. But I believe my friends lol)
But when putting together the list it was interesting to see the patterns emerge. One of the big ones is that the lower tiers of the list are consistently not-intentionally-written-as-a-spec, male, and - and this is the big one that made me think about what it means for a work to "come off as" a-spec and especially unique to a sci-fi context - the first three characters have their primary committed, emotionally intimate, important relationship be with with a non-human entity. Princess Donut (an uplifted cat), Hera (an AI whose body is the space station), and Rocky (a spiderlike rock alien), respectively, are not only non-human but non-humanoid at all in a manner that makes a sexual relationship categorically impossible, and due to amatonormativity, that presupposes that a romantic relationship is therefore also off the table. And there is something real there about such people not wanting a romantic relationship with the protagonist, due to not being human and not having that framework be their primary mode of connection, but also due to their nonhumanness, being presented as non-viable options as romantic partners for the human protagonist. (Yes I know about shipping. I'm talking about narrative framing.)(This also isn't quite as true about Eiffel and Hera - due to the audio medium, Eiffel as a human man and Hera as a disembodied voice coming from the station itself have equal "stage presence" in a way that any other medium could not have managed, which is super cool. However their actors Zach Valenti and Michaela Swee have been friends for years and were deliberately not interested in playing the relationship as romantic for "it would feel weird to be making kissy noises at my friends" way.)
So I do think sci-fi gives a lot of opportunity to (re)construct social norms, I think that's a good observation! And sci-fi also gives plenty of Plot Stuff to write if you set out just, not wanting to write a romance subplot so you don't, which I think is also going on in all of these (I mean, I know that was a conscious choice in Wolf 359!). I also genuinely think that having a protagonist who consistently prioritizes his friendship with an entity very different from himself without expecting it to turn romantic, over the possibility of other relationships that could turn romantic, is doing part of the work when I look at these characters and go "hmm I'm getting a-spec vibes."
(Obviously that's not the whole of it. Among other things we point to in a-spec readings of these characters, all three of them also have failed romantic relationships in their pasts that are very easy to interpret as "failed due to putting heteronormative pressure on themselves they didn't actually want" which is a big part of what lands them in the lower numbers of this scale, and the contrast between the romantic relationship they didn't actually seem to like or want very much vs. the genuine fulfillment they feel with their nonhuman and also not male BFF is definitely fueling the aro / ace reading too! And like there is definitely some willful reading against the probably-intended implications of how straight men talk about their exes. That is also part of what's happening here. Eiffel and Grace manage not to be obnoxiously bro-y about it or blame their exes for it.)
The three characters representing higher tiers are the opposite on all three metrics: intentionally-written-as-a-spec, female, and their primary committed, emotionally intimate, important relationship are with another human (or rather, Star Trek-style humanoid alien, in Hatov's case). We don't need to read into the character's struggles with heteronormativity and freedom in platonic relationships that they feel no pressure to make romantic because that's categorically off the table - the authors are writing the characters as a-spec on purpose and are interested in how that affects their relationships with other people in a conscious way.
Murderbot right in the middle is a hinge point in a couple ways, both being agender and having a committed, emotionally intimate, important relationship with both a human and a non-human intelligence. It's also definitely leaning hard on "robot-as-metaphor-for-outsiderness" that sci-fi is really good at.
Laying out all these patterns makes it feel like this is an objective assessment of how different authors write these characters and how they fall into three particular categories, but it's not necessarily. Not really. It's in some ways an artifact of the characters I had on my mind and wanted to talk about, because the other character I was considering putting as the type specimen for Tier 2 was Katniss Everdeen.
Which of course breaks the pattern. Katniss was also not written to be intentionally a-spec, but she's female, her main relationships are with her regular human sister and best friend, and she's the center of the second most famous love triangle in YA literature. (She is still from sci-fi, though.) And she comes off as intensely aro due to her general attitude of assuming any expression of romantic interest is either a bizarre out-of-pocket non-sequitur or part of an elaborate mind game to perform Romance for the voyeuristic thrill of the crowd who she needs to keep appeasing to stay alive. So like, the "uninentional a-spec" character isn't just a "straight men writing straight men with an 'unmarked' sexuality who fail with their girlfriends because that's #relateable" thing.
But then this wraps back around to what you said: the heightened and unreal settings of sci-fi allow for scenarios that push characters - and readers - to consider the normal and the abnormal, the expected relationships and the unexpected ways to consider and choose them. And I do think sci-fi is a very productive setting for taking a closer look at what we mean when we think about romantic and sexual and relationship normativity!
james ortiz provided some of his own personal rocky backstory on the sag aftra podcast, transcribed by me because we all have to be miserable about it together.
link to the podcast, this section below is from timestamp 24.35
“andy weir provided a packet to the creature shop that was like a packet of eridian biology and stuff but there wasn’t much about eridian culture or eridian sociology and i made a bunch of choices going in because i just needed to have like a ‘who am i?’ right?
[…] and i made a decision that rocky’s species, that eridians are really social animals that in fact are like a beehive or a pod of dolphins - it’s a unique and really integrated ecosystem of everybody doing their [specific] part. and the fact that rocky had to fly that ship for about 45 years - longer than grace has been alive, i wanna point that out - he’s been alone on that ship, having to run that by himself and- ryan and i would talk about that, one day we sat down and he was like “so what’s the movie from rocky’s perspective?” and i was like “oh it’s like ‘alien’, […] like he’s in a ‘contagion’ movie by himself and he has no idea what’s going on.”
he’s basically in castaway by himself which of course ryan is too but like, one reason why we never cut to the past of rocky is like, i think it was really horrifying! i don’t think rocky has slept in however many years and so a thing i was really struggling with is this idea of like “rocky must watch sleep” because how do you make that a need as opposed to like, a cute idea? and i just had to make the decision that […] he has a lot of unprocessed trauma around the things that he doesn’t understand and how much he is blaming himself because he’s the guy who fixes, he’s the guy who fixes and there was something really freeing about deciding that rocky was a deeply emotional, deeply anxious, deeply horrified person - being - that is trying to move through that in some way and how that affects the early scenes with him until there’s a point in the story where you can see we’ve physically softened rocky’s behaviour, because he’s finally feeling more safe and ok but all of that lore, all of that information [was essential].
i also decided, this is just a small nerdy thing, that there was actually some of his family, was on that ship too.”
"everyone should get more aromantic" can appeal to tumblr's sensibilities but I genuinely think everyone should also get more asexual. I don't mean everyone stop having sex, what I mean is
Sex is not essential. You can live without it. Full stop.
Not having sex isn't shameful or a sign of failure. It also doesn't make anyone boring.
You are not entitled to having sex with anybody and nobody is entitled to having sex with you.
Sex is not what makes someone an adult.
Nobody's worth is defined by how much sex they have or don't have.
Sex is not equally important to everyone.
You can have fulfilling and happy relationships without sex.
You should only have sex on your own terms, not because you feel like you owe it to someone, or because you feel like you'd be incomplete without it.
Know your boundaries around sex and be firm about them. Know how to respect other people's boundaries.
The previous point also applies when it comes to discussing sex. If someone doesn't wanna talk about it or hear about it you have to back down.
Anything can be sexual but not everything has to be sexual.
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When i was a kid, me and my sister would scare each other with ghost stories. eventually my parents decided i was too fragile and incapable and they sent me to go spend time with some sailors and mariners.
we stopped playing when i started telling stories that were better than true.
I think it would have been relatively easy for Stratt to stay out of prison after the launch of the Hail Mary. She was given, after all, blanket immunity and preemptive pardons for anything she would do related to the project — any lawyer worth their salt could argue that case, and she came out of the project well connected, she could have had a team of good lawyers. It would have been messy and would have taken years as it got bogged down, but she could have stayed out.
I just don't think she wanted to.
The project was her purpose. With it done, what else was there to do? And after how it ended, after she had to commit one last atrocity, didn't she deserve to be punished?
I think she had friends of friends and connections of connections calling her offering to represent her, wherever they dragged her in the world, promising that they can get her out of this, it's really quite simple.
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AI has made the internet so much less fun. I don't want to question whether a photo of a bunny is real. I don't want to worry about someone making a deepfake just because I posted a pic with my friends. I want to read a recipe and know that the photo is a real cake they made. Yes I know I need to touch grass but also I think I should be allowed to interact online without second-guessing whether someone fabricated every image for personal gain
btw this is about the tragedy of the commons. it's not about spending too much time online or whatever - it's about the fact that a handful of people are polluting the collective space to the detriment of everyone else, and that there is no way to stop them from doing that. it sucks and it's killing the internet, and I'm mad about that
The first 1-2 pages of All Systems Red, inspired by @nothingiswrongwithyourarmrests's post about how tmbd should have been adapted into a graphic novel.
Version where every tab is readable below the cut, because I spent way too much time on those things for no one to be able to see them
I'm curious about how she seems relatively calm and capable in emergency scenarios that most people on Preservation wouldn't encounter. Especially the euthanizing-Leonide scene-- most people would be panicking and trying to keep her alive (despite the clear hopelessness of that) so I feel like Farai must have some kind of experience with this. Maybe she was some kind of ER doctor or first-responder?
Protectiveness of her daughter could explain a lot-- there have been times when my mom was scared but projected reassurance so well that I was convinced everything was fine. Farai is probably doing that a lot of the time. She also seems like a very perceptive person, especially when it comes to other people's emotions and intentions. And therefore she can trick them, like when she doesn't let MB carry out the rescue alone.
I admit I don't know how the first/second mom naming convention works. Does it mean Farai had a child first? (But Amena is the oldest and she's Mensah's biological daughter.) Did Farai join the polycule before Mensah did? Was Farai more responsible for childcare? Was it just a discussion between the three parents of who wants to be called first or second mom? Someone in another post pointed out that the first/second parent thing sounds clunky because it's a translation, and some languages (Chinese maybe? I don't remember I'm sorry) have one word with that meaning.
Another interesting thing about Farai: her initial feelings about Murderbot. That scene where it doesn't kill the raiders after she gave it her approval to, and she says she wouldn't have thought badly of Murderbot if it did, she would have blamed herself? To me, that feels like she still had some prejudice about SecUnits as meant for violence. Sure, she could feel responsible for telling it to do whatever was necessary, but that implies that it would be doing what she tells it instead of making the choice itself to enact violence (or not). I'm curious about how other people read that scene!
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I finally read ND Stevenson's new book Scarlet Morning (I had to wait for the copy at my library) and why isn't there a huge tumblr fandom for it??!
Fun pirate story that veers into cosmic horror! Amazing eerie worldbuilding! Hot older pirate lady who's not what she seems! Illustrations! Lore that we need to be discussing the mysteries of! Tension between siblings and found family!
Also the color version of this illustration is beautiful! Look at this! (found on ND's tumblr)
And the prose
Can I post a page from the beginning of the cosmic horror section here? This one reads more like a Night Vale segment but they become genuinely scary.
Fun middle-grade pirate adventure -> oh this worldbuilding isn't just quirky it's really cool -> Holy cod there's Horror in here! -> btw there's also still humor -> fascinating lore -> Who was Scarlet Morning??!!
obsessed with viola and chase's dynamic in scarlet morning. it's a one-sided rivalry. it's siblings with a big age gap. it's queer hero worship. it's found family except for when it's not. chase is not a parental figure to viola except for when she is. chase saved viola's life and viola called it a kidnapping. viola saved chase's life and chase thanked her by giving her one single bisket. chase doesn't understand why viola thinks she might kill her. chase once threatened to turn viola's decapitated skull into a flower pot. chase might leave viola but she'd never leave the wine. wilmur heard viola talk about chase for 5 seconds and immediately asked her if she's in love with her. viola is not in love with her except for when she is. chase is the center of viola's universe. chase also might secretly be her best friend's mom. but it's only because she seduced his dad to get closer to the queen before faking(?) her death fifteen years ago. it's a long story. viola wants to know the entire story in detail. chase does not want her to know so bad oh my god
