Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win
Mar 15
Anonymous asked: DID YOU WATCH SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON BECAUSE THAT MOVIE AND BALTO WERE MY CHILDHOOD
Okay…so.
My relationship with a lot of movies I watched as a little kid is messy. Spirit being one of them. On the one hand, I think I recall liking it quite a lot. On the other hand, I watched it with my cousins, which is pretty much a knee-jerk hate response because my cousins took their mother and grandmother’s perspective on me. There’s a lot of movies that fall into this category, or, alternatively, the category of “I was too fucked up to deal with this movie as a kid” like for example Spirited Away. It’s a pretty benign movie that I inexplicably had screaming nightmares about. All of these movies fall into the much larger category of ‘very vaguely recalled because they were casualties of memory repression.’
So…I guess the end result is: yeah, I watched it, but like…it’s complicated and I’ll probably rewatch it now that I’m an adult on the other side of some therapy and get a lot more out of it. Sorry this got kind of weirdly personal rather than being a response to the movie.
[video]
Anonymous asked: hey, if you're up for discussion: i noticed a lot of the arguments re: bdsm were the kind of arguments that in other situations might be used against queer relationships. what would the difference be between a bdsm couple having a leash in a grocery store aisle as opposed to two gay men kissing? is it that theres a stigma against choking (man, that sounds weird put like that)? arent they doing their thing wituout asking other ppl to be involved? id love to know ur thoughts if u dont mind.
Oh…kay.
*pours self
a drink*
There’s a
lot to cover here, so everyone buckle up while your queer dom vodka auntie discusses some stuff.
This is regarding this post for anyone who wants to follow along. Here’s the
major points we’re going to hit:
BDSM etiquette
Consent
Sexual vs sensual behavior, AKA sex
vs romance
First off,
we’re going to talk about BDSM—as it should be done, not the exploitative
imitation in 50 Shades. The core of BDSM
is trust: the sub trusts the dom to stop if they safeword out, and the dom
trusts the sub to know their limits and use
that safeword. The three major tenets of
BDSM are Safe, Sane, and Consensual, meaning that everyone in the scene feels
safe because they trust the person they’re with, everyone in the scene knows
what they’re getting into and what they’re doing, and, most critically, they
have agreed to those things clearly
and explicitly. Safe and Sane are pretty
predicated on the people involved knowing what they’re doing, but Consensual is
non-negotiable.
Which brings
us rapidly to point two, consent. This is the major problem with couples
practicing any sort of overt BDSM in public.
The public, merely by their presence, is part of the scene—you don’t do
stuff in public unless the response of the public, the feeling of being watched is somehow part of it, so the
public is involved in the scene—but they have not consented to participation.
Consent in BDSM is (or should be) an intricate thing, based on negotiations
of what people are or are not willing to do, discussion and acknowledgement of
their personal history, and establishing a safeword, a word used to indicate “everything
needs to stop now” that can be used
by anyone involved without protest from other parties. So, for example, if it was me, I might be
like “I have a history of abuse, so I’m not comfortable humiliating a sub or acting
like I’m punishing them,” and the person I was talking with might be like “I’m
not comfortable with being choked, but I’ve always wanted to be tied up.” And then we would go from there with those ground
rules in place, and establish a safeword.
Before we ever discussed a
scene, all of that would be hashed out, and then when we did discuss a scene, it would be something we’d already agreed that
everyone involved was interested in doing and had the option to opt out of.
So, this is
where public BDSM sort of falls apart, yeah?
Because the bystanders have not discussed their boundaries or their
histories, they have not negotiated what they’re interested in, and they do not
have a safeword that will let them opt out of the scene. Suppose one of the bystanders goes up to the
couple and asks, “Hey, could you not choke your girlfriend in public? You’re really freaking my son out.” The couple hasn’t had that discussion with
that bystander, they are not obligated by the BDSM contract to honor that bystander’s
request. Now, it’s the decent thing to
do, to respect someone’s request for what’s really an easy thing, but people…uh,
suck. People suck. Honoring the request to not choke your girlfriend in public actually takes less effort than
doing it anyway, but people suck, so they’re almost inevitably going to go “fuck
you” and do it anyway. Which is NOT how BDSM is supposed to work,
because see above re: Safe, Sane, and Consensual. So, like, there’s that. BDSM is about consent and trust. The bystanders don’t have that foundation of
trust, and they haven’t consented to being part of the scene, so everything
else aside it fundamentally violates the contract implicit in BDSM. If a couple does want to do that sort of public BDSM stuff, that’s what fetish
parties are for, they can pay the necessary money to do it with people who have
agreed and consented to being their audience.
Otherwise, it’s more like catcalling—you
might be getting off on it, but the other people involved just feel creeped out
and vaguely violated.
But here’s
the core of your question: the difference between sexual and sensual behavior.
Okay, so,
sexual behavior is exactly what it says on the tin, it’s about sex. Sensual behavior
is about physical touch and showing affection with no expectation that those
touches lead to sex, it’s about romance. This is where the analogy between BDSM and
queer couples falls apart, because it’s this simple.
Queer couples want to express
romantic affection through hand-holding, hugging, kissing, etc.
BDSM couples want to engage in
something that’s intrinsically for sexual pleasure.
And I don’t
want to hear debate about this, kiddos. I
know that BDSM can be nonsexual, I know that some people find it a deep relief
to let someone else take control or to take control themselves, but that’s not
the kind of BDSM relationship that gets flashily displayed in public. Let me posit a scenario, in which I have a
friend with whom I have a platonic dom/sub arrangement. When they’re under stress, they let me take charge,
and let’s suppose that during one of these agreed-upon scenes we’re going
grocery shopping. I might have an arm
through theirs, or I might hold their hand, while I do most of the talking and
instruct them on what to put in the cart.
Any passerby wouldn’t notice anything unusual there—my friend might be
tired, I might be a chatterbox, we might be doing a grocery run so I can make
dinner, hell, maybe I’m just a bossy person.
That’s not something that engages the public in any way, shape, or form. On the other hand, let’s take the example of
a couple who goes grocery shopping in the same way, but one of them has the
other on a collar and chain. That’s about the exhibition, it’s about the two
of them getting off on being seen to
have that power dynamic and all the trappings.
And that’s about sex. It’s about
being titillated by bringing something that’s normally private into the open.
A pair of
gay men kissing in public? That’s not
about sex. That’s about being
romantically attached. And it’s something
that straight couples get away with all
the time, is the thing here. Whereas
it doesn’t matter if that hypothetical couple with the collar and chain is two
women, a man and a woman, or three tentacle aliens and a grizzly bear, that’s
still about sex and therefore still inappropriate to be pushed onto the public
without consent. It’s not about our
culture having a stigma on choking, which…real fast, let me establish that
there’s a very serious difference between having a stigma on, say, tattoos, as
opposed to something like choking. The reason
we have a cultural stigma about choking is because it’s frequently used to hurt
or kill people. America, at the very
least, could stand to have some stricter stigmas about other things used to
hurt or kill people. Like guns. The reason overt BDSM like what’s described
above is inappropriate in public is because it is sexual and it does
disregard the right of the bystanders to consent to their own sexual experiences.
As long as
we’re on the subject, I want to hit one more thing. I think your ask is talking specifically
about the remark that used to be made about “Well, how am I going to explain
two men kissing to my kids?” And kids
are important here. Because, okay, let’s
suppose a four-year-old is presented with these two situations. The two men kissing is easy. That kid has definitely seen someone kissing their partner before, just tell
them that the two men love each other and kissing someone is a way to show that
you love them. Easy-peasy. However, explaining BDSM to anyone involves a
pretty in-depth discussion of human sexuality, and…like, listen. There is a reason that showing children porn
is considered abuse. By exposing the
public to intense BDSM play, you are also exposing kids to a sexual act,
without their consent or full understanding of what’s going on. And we have
pretty much agreed that pulling that stunt is Wrong.
TL;DR: BDSM
of the variety being discussed here is inherently sexual, whereas queer couples
engaging in affectionate contact is not.
Sex acts require consent, and the general public has not consented to
being part of your BDSM scene. Don’t be
an asshole, and if you really want to carry your power dynamics out of the
bedroom, do it in a way that doesn’t force everyone else to be part of
something they have not agreed to and cannot opt out of. I can do a separate post on that if you’re
interested.
Aaaaaaaaall
righty then. I think that covers everything. I hope you’ve all enjoyed this journey into
good BDSM etiquette and the fine art of consent.
so i was watching cinderella while doing my nails and waiting for them to dry which was clearly a Mistake because now i can’t help but think -
the evil stepmother was always evil, okay. say her abuse of her own daughters was different than that of cinderella’s - but it was still abuse. giving them impossible expectations, telling them they were never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough. and then she gets married, and anastasia and drizella are ecstatic because this man seems kind and warm and maybe just maybe he can temper their mother, maybe with him around she won’t be so cruel. so they’re on their very best behavior in the beginning, they do just as their mother taught - they trot out their best upper court manners in an attempt to get their new stepfather to like them. but it just comes off as cold and snooty and they’re trying, they are, they’re just bad at it. and they see how he is with cinderella, the smiling girl their own age, and they are jealous. they don’t mean to be, they try not to be, they know it isn’t becoming of young ladies. but she gets hugs and kisses and affection and they get rulers slapped on their hands when they reach for desert and sharp jabs to their sides when they slouch and - soon they hate cinderella, not for anything she’s done, but for what she has and they dont
but then her father dies. and it’s all a tumble of things and cinderella is crying and they’ve lost their only chance at escaping their mother’s clutches and it’s terrible. and everything settles and there’s no reason to be jealous anymore but resentment is hard to let go of and they don’t know what to do. they’re only kids too after all. and they’re so terribly bad at comforting people, they can do flowery words and know all the right bows but cinderella is so sad and they just don’t know what to do with that, because they’re supposed to be sisters but they’re not even friends
and slowly but surely their mother starts abusing cinderella, starts making her a maid in her own home, and she’s their mother, what are anastasia and drizella supposed to do? she rules them with an iron fist, and cinderella doesn’t even like them anyway, it’s none of their business.
except one night anastasia crawls into her sister’s bed in the middle of the night and wakes her up. “i was thirsty,” she explains, eyes wide and shiny, and they’re bad at this with other people but drizella has no problems with pulling anastasia into her arms. the younger girl clutches her sister and continues, “i was thirsty and i went down to the kitchen to get some water and - and cinderella is still up! she’s doing the dishes, and she should be asleep, mom is going to make her make breakfast in the morning and -” she cuts herself off with a hiccup and whispers, “it’s not fair.”
“life isn’t fair,” drizella says, echoing one of their mother’s favorite phrases. but her sister is staring at her with wet eyes, and it’s not like their mother is likely to get up before sunrise anyway, she hates waking up, so she pulls herself and anastasia out of bed and off they go.
this is y i generally hate kinksters despite being into all sorts of f*cked up stuff m’self bc they love imposing their gross personal sh*t on strangers
how about you let two people do what they want since it isnt actually effecting you in any way
treating a woman like a literal dog out in public does impact society. GREATLY. contrary to popular belief, we don’t live in a vacuum where our actions have no fucking consequences.
It’s just fucking rude and shitty to bring your kink play into a non-kink friendly public space because then you indirectly make everyone you come across a non-consensual part of whatever you are doing just by them being witness to it. It’s fucked up amateur hour bullshit.
Also lol at the ratty-ass dreads on the white dude. Fucking gross.
I’m physically naseuas
Imagine having to explain this to your child? This is so extra and unnecessary
yessssss i get to use this gif.
I’ve told this story before but whateves. When I worked at the pleasure chest a woman came running in one night, very worried and upset because a man who was cross-dressing was chained to the bike rack outside. She wanted me to call the police, but obviously I wanted to check on the guy first. Sure enough he was all in pink, chained to the bike rack. He told me he was perfectly fine. His Master was inside and he was more than happy to wait. Humiliation was a part of their play.
Now I’m kinky as shit, a sub and all. But this fucked me cause as a woman, cross dressing combined with humiliation leaves me feeling some type of way. And then you have the other customers who are being triggered and are genuinely in fear for this man’s safety.
He and his Master probably had a great night, but how many people who didn’t sign up to be a part of their scene went home feeling all fucked up about it? I know I did and frankly to me this most definitely violates the terms of Safe, Sane, Consensual because you are taking away other people’s ability and right to consent. In other words, you should actually keep your kinks to yourself.
Seriously, keep it in the dungeon/bedroom
Yeah. Wow. This.
the other day i was in the store with my son, who is four, and we turned into an aisle to see a guy choking a woman (presumably his girlfriend). without even thinking i turned my son around and said loudly, “HOLD ON OLIVER LOOK AT THE TORTILLAS AND COUNT HOW MANY THERE ARE” to see if the couple would do anything.
they looked at me and glared, and the girl eventually told her partner to let go of her neck and they left after i continued staring them down.
what would have happened if my son had seen that? seriously, how the fuck am i going to explain why youre choking your girlfriend next to the mac and cheese? he’s four. he doesn’t need to see that shit.
Basic rule: everyone in the scene needs to consent. Is everyone in the pic or above situations consenting??
No they are fucking not
Stop this shit
I had to have this conversation with a BDSM couple who came into my coffee shop once, her on a leash at two o’clock in the afternoon in pretty skimpy, fetish-y clothing. Basically, what I said was, “I am a huge part of your scene right now. The look on my face, my words, my thoughts, my feelings, they’re what’s fueling the very scene you’re playing out, so how are you going to tell me that everyone involved is consenting? You didn’t ask for my consent. I didn’t fill out a negotiation form. You don’t know my background, my history, my kinks, or my safeword, but you come into my place of work and expect to play out a scene with me without even asking?”
She was mortified. He tried to argue with me, but couldn’t continue once I said, “I do not consent to being part of your scene,” without exposing himself for the creepy “faux-BDSM covering for his abusive personality” loser that he was. And he was. I hate to be stereotypical, here, but he was wearing a trilby and a trench coat. In Arizona. In the summer.
A couple years later, I was at a fetish ball, outside smoking back when I used to smoke cigarettes. And while it’s not a crucial element to the story, I’m just going to say that the girl I was seeing at the time and I looked fucking awesome in our coordinated rockabilly dominatrix outfits. Anyway, I was a little drunk and smoking and here comes the exact same loser with a different young girl following half a step behind him and I maybe hollered a little too loudly, “Hey, sweetheart, you played out any scenes with non-consenting women in coffee shops lately, or did I just get lucky that time?” Because I’m an asshole who can’t keep her mouth shut.
I also once turned an aisle in the grocery store late one night to find a girl blowing her boyfriend next to the canned vegetables and I just said, “No. Nope. No. Put it away. No!” They both seemed mortified that time, at least.
But seriously, though, don’t do this shit. It’s rapey and gross. Not towards her, she might be into it, but towards me. Don’t do this shit because it’s rapey towards everyone else you’re making into unwilling participants in your sex games.
ALL OF THIS.
Just to forestall the “BUT WHAT ABOUT DEMONSTRATING MY RELATIONSHIP IN PUBLIC???” argument:
Do you normally call your partner “Mistress,” “pet,” “subhuman slimewom” or “Lord Dom of All Creation”? In public, more conventional pet names like “sweetie” or “dear,” said with the right tone of authority or reverence, can work just as well.
Take off anything that could set off a metal detector (and yes that includes cock cages ffs) before traveling on an airplane. Don’t randomly grab someone’s neck or go down on them or lead them around on a leash in public.
This is fucking basic shit. It’s no less kinky to be stealth, and it’s smarter, safer, and fucking more respectful.
And if you really, really want to be watched while you’re collared or lead around or whatever? Spend the fucking money and go to a fetish event. Otherwise it’s not “demonstrating your relationship,” it’s “weirding out vanillas gets me off.”
duct tape is officially ilmastointiteippi (lit. ”air-conditioning tape”) in finnish, but everybody calls it jesari aka jeesusteippi (”jesus tape” because it fixes basically anything)
the thing you need to realize about localization is that japanese and english are such vastly different languages that a straight translation is always going to be worse than the original script. nuance is going to be lost and, if you give a shit about your job, you should fill the gaps left with equivalent nuance in english. take ff6, my personal favorite localization of all time: in the original japanese cefca was memorable primarily for his manic, childish speaking style - but since english speaking styles arent nearly as expressive, woolsey adapted that by making the localized english kefka much more prone to making outright jokes. cefca/kefka is beloved in both regions as a result - hell, hes even more popular here
yes this
a literal translation is an inaccurate translation.
localization’s job is to create a meaningful experience for a different audience which has a different language and different culture. they translate ideas and concepts, not words and sentences. often this means choosing new ideas that will be more meaningful and contribute to the experience more for a different audience.
There was an example during late Tokugawa period in Japan where the translator translated, "Я люблю Вас” (I love you), to “I could die for you,” while translating
Ася, (
Asya) a novel by Ivan Turgenev. This was because a woman saying, “I love you,” to a man was considered a very hard thing to do in Japanese society.
In a more well-known example,
Natsume Soseki, a great writer who wrote, I am a Cat, had his students translate “I love you,” to “the moon is beautiful [because of] having you beside tonight,” because Japanese men would not say such strong emotions right away. He said that it would be weird and Japanese men would have more elegance.
Both of these are great examples of localization that wasn’t a straight up translation and both of these are valid. I feel like a lot of people forget the nuances in language and culture and how damn hard a translator’s job is and how knowledgeable the person has to be about both cultures. [x]
Important stuff about translation!
Note that you can apply this to your own translations even if they aren’t big pieces of literature or something. Don’t feel bad about not translating word for word. An everyday sentence may sound odd translated literally - it’s okay to edit a little bit so it feels right!
Oh my god, I’m about to go on a ramble, I’m sorry, I can’t help it, the inner translation nerd is coming out. I’m so sorry. The thing is–there is actually no such thing as an accurate translation.
It’s literally an impossible endeavor. Word for word doesn’t cut it. Sense for sense doesn’t cut it, because then you’re potentially missing cool stuff like context and nuance and rhyme and humor. Even localization doesn’t really cut it, because that means you’re prioritizing the audience over the author, and you’re missing out on the original context, and the possibility of bringing something new and exciting to your host language. Foreignization, which aims to replicate the rhythms of the original language, or to use terminology that will be unfamiliar to the target culture–(for example: the first few American-published Harry Potter books domesticated the English, and traded “trousers” for “pants”, and “Mom” for “Mum”. Later on they stopped, and let the American children view such foreignizing words as “snog” and “porridge.”)–also doesn’t cut it, because you risk alienating the target readers, or obscuring meaning.
Another cool example is Dante, and the words written above the gates of hell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
In the original Italian, that’s Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. Speranza, like most nouns in latinate languages, has a gender: la. Hope, in Italian, is gendered female. Abandon hope, who is female. Abandon hope, who is a woman. When the original Dante enters hell, searching for Beatrice, he is doomed, subtly, from the start. That’s beautiful, subtle, the kind of delicate poetic move literature nerds gorge themselves on, and you can’t keep it in English. Literally, how do you preserve it? We don’t have a gendered hope. It doesn’t work, can’t work. So how do you compensate? Can you sneak in a reference to Beatrice in a different line? Or do you chalk her up as a loss and move onto the next problem?
You’re always going to miss something–the cool part is that, knowing you’re going to fail, you get to decide how to fail. Ortega y Gasset called this The Misery and Splendor of Translation. Basically, translation is impossible–so why not make it a beautiful failure?
My point is that literary translation is creative writing, full of as many creative decisions as any original poem or short story. It has more limitations, rules, and structures to consider, for sure–but sometimes the best artistic decision is going to be the one that breaks the rules.
My favorite breakdown of this is Le Ton Beau De Marot, a beautiful brick of a translator’s joke, in which the author tries over and over again to create a “perfect” translation of “A une Damoyselle Malade”, an itsy bitsy poem Clement Marot dashed off to his patron’s daughter, who was sick, in 1537.
This is the poem:
Ma mignonne, Je vous donne Le bon jour; Le séjour C’est prison. Guérison Recouvrez, Puis ouvrez Votre porte Et qu’on sorte Vitement, Car Clément Le vous mande. Va, friande De ta bouche, Qui se couche En danger Pour manger Confitures; Si tu dures Trop malade, Couleur fade Tu prendras, Et perdras L’embonpoint. Dieu te doint Santé bonne, Ma mignonne.
Seems simple enough, right? But it’s got a huge host of challenges: the rhyme, the tone, the archaic language (if you’re translating something old, do you want it to sound old in the target language, too? or are you translating not just across language, but across time?)
Le Ton Beau De Marot is a monster of a book that compiles all of Hofstader’s “failed” translations of Ma Mignonne, as well as the “failed” translations of his friends, and his students, and hundreds of strangers who were given the translation challenge (which you can play here, should you like!)
The end result is a hilarious archive of Sweet Damosels, Malingering Ladies, Chickadees, Fairest Friends, and Cutie Pies. It’s the clearest, funniest, best example of what I think is true of all literary translations: that they’re a thing you make up, not a thing you discover. There is no magic bridge between languages, or magic window, or magic vessel to pour the poem from one language to another–translation is always subjective, it’s always individual, it’s always inaccurate, it’s always a failure.
It’s always, in other words, art.
Which, as a translator, I find incredibly reassuring! You’re definitely, one hundred percent absolutely, gonna fuck up. Which means you can’t fuck up. You can take risks! You can experiment! You can do cool stuff like bilingual translations, or footnote translations! You write your own code of honor, your own rules that your translations will hold inviolable, and fuck it if that code doesn’t match everyone else’s*. The translations they hold inviolable are also flawed, are failures at the core, from the King James Bible right on down to No Fear Shakespeare. So have fun! It’s all in your hands, miseries and splendors both.
Speaking as someone who’s fucked around with a couple languages and translating them into English, nothing has ever driven this home as hard as translating the Aeneid, or Terence. One word in Latin can require ten to explain it, or have five possible translations. So if you want to preserve the drama (Aeneid) or the humor (Terence) there’s a lot of creative thinking that has to go into it.
