characters who are so inauthentic. characters who only show what they want other people to see of them. characters who simply must have control over every part of themselves. do you even get it
characters who are inauthentic even to themselves. characters who cannot allow the mask to slip. characters who struggle to have an identity past what they project out to the world.
I was looking at episode concept art on Star Wars dot com and came across a turnaround that included Rex without his Kama and pauldrons on and it did something to my brain, like that is a whole ass naked captain right there if he just has his armor on without his accoutrement, without his skirt and shoulder pads, so anyways have this, here you go
fluffcember day eleven: slippery
"-------------" Fox muttered with feeling as he concentrated on planting one foot carefully after the other on the slippery ground.
"What was that, my beloved?" Quinlan warbled back from his position ahead. Naturally, the Jedi and his wizard boots weren't experiencing nearly as much trouble with the terrain as Fox and his armoured boots were.
Fox kind of… a little bit… wanted Quinlan to trip over and fall on his face. Or at least come back and offer to hold Fox's hand.
The visit was supposed to be romantic, after all. That's how Quinlan had sold his idea to visit the Skydome Botanical Gardens during their 'Winter Wonderland Spectacular', and Thorn had quickly found time in Fox's schedule, noting in the official logs that he would be 'assessing its safety'. So far, Fox's assessment was to close the place. The Spectacular had been designed to showcase myriad plants from frozen worlds that rarely survived in the core, and Coruscant's nature-loving philanthropists had spared no expense in funding an isolated weather dome in one section of the gardens, which apparently necessitated pockets of rain, and snow, and ice.
Sure, the exhibit guide had recommended appropriate clothing for the visit, but Quinlan was a Jedi and Fox was a trooper trained to fight in extreme terrains! Why would they need to act on those warnings?
Because Fox wasn't a snowtrooper, Quinlan.
Barn Owls (Tyto alba), family Tytonidae, order Strigiformes, Carrizo Plain National Monument, CA, USA
photograph by Mitch Waters
there are a NUMBER of folktale Woman-Creatures like selkies who exist to make the inherently coercive nature of heterosexual marriage explicit and to externalize male anxiety about how if your wife had actual autonomy she very well might disappear and you might never fucking hear from her again
which is a FASCINATING category of Woman-Creature imo
someone said it's also a cautionary tale about mistreating your wife and I think that's spot on especially for other related types of stories e.g. the crane wife. like I think these stories are very much Husband Anxiety Stories. the Woman-Creatures are black boxes whose interior experience it is impossible to know and who have strange and often seemingly arbitrary rules that you must follow or else they will disappear. idk. like. that's why I think that any empowering-to-women-ness qualities of these stories is incidental. I think they're externalized anxiety about coercive societal heterosexuality and the inability to truly Know one's wife in such circumstances.
you also see a variant of this formula a lot (generally at the more literary end of the fairy tale space) where it's not a creature you capture, but a magical lady who picks you for seemingly arbitrary reasons, bettering your fortune enormously with her magic and wealth and second-hand status.
and then, for reasons usually at least slightly less arbitrary, fucks off again.
the husbandly anxiety here is more about not having access to coercion as an option.
oooo yes absolutely!
Jean-Antoine Houdon
Portrait Bust
France (1781)
Plaster study for a fountain, 32 cm.
Soisson, Museé Municipal.
(Head of a black woman, her lips parted, looking slightly to the right.) The bust was damaged in World War I, leaving only the head intact.
The Image of the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University
The Bad Batch, deleted scene ep 107
