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last night was the first night since the surgery that I adjusted my sleeping position in my actual sleep as opposed to waking up and shifting the pillow; as a result my leg was not elevated the whole night, and actually I slept facedown part of the night which is ?? seems to indicate the surgery is healing well enough it doesn't bother me to have the site be in contact with things, we'll take that as a positive, I guess? beginning to be resigned to the fluid reservoir bulge, which seems pretty constant even with elevating and icing. If it doesn't wreck my patella, I don't care. I wish I could walk for long enough distances to make determinations about how the patella's gonna float, hopeful I'll get permission to go back to normal activity after my post-op appointment tomorrow. I have a scar just above my ankle from an old car accident that's been hurting lately, can't figure out if this is related to the knee surgery or the lack of walking or what.
I want to do some cooking and baking and am trying to decide how much standing in the kitchen I am really up for.
I read a comment about the queer/sexual/romantic identities of Magicians characters that got me thinking. The comment I read said most recent canon is not news on the Quentin is bisexual front, he's been bisexual. And I was contemplating that and the meta problem of fictional characters' self-identities. Like by his behavior alone: yes Quentin's bisexual, he's done sex with persons of various genders. But like, if he were a real person you couldn't make a declaration like that, Quentin's identity would rest on his own perception of it rather than purely on his behaviors. And I can't decide the extent to which that matters with a character, but we do have some indication of how the character reads his own identity--in the flashback to the mosaic episode postscript, when Eliot is noping out, one of his arguments is Quentin is not [fill in the blank. this is an interesting blank actually? is it "gay," is Eliot's perception of himself "gay" despite occasionally having sex with women like occasionally having Thai food? is it "bi" because arguing Quentin is not is a bit harder? is it "queer," ie, any non-straight identity?] and Quentin asks does it matter rather than insisting that he does identify as queer in some flavor, which would suggest Quentin agrees with Eliot in seeing himself as straight, a straight person whose exceptions include a whole lifetime of wing jello*. That doesn't mean that Quentin's conception of his own identity might not be evolving. People do change how they perceive themselves over time. But people also shorthand; I say I'm a lesbian because it's exhausting to enumerate the specific circtumstances under which I might find a male person attractive, and because I don't think I'd ever be with a guy, so I think lesbian is more accurate than bisexual, and probably queer is the most accurate.
I could see arguments for all kinds of characterizations over the timeline of Quentin's character. Maybe he thinks of himself as still mostly straight, but maybe like, heteroflexible. Maybe he's like yup I'm bi now this is me. Maybe he always knew he was bi (in which case why didn't he argue with Eliot about not being fill-in-the-blank? Unless he thought Eliot meant "gay" and thought there was a significant gap between the experiences of gay and bi people? like you could MAKE that argument, but). Maybe he's like "welp, gay for Eliot anyway."
And I'm torn between wondering does it matter what the fictional character thinks his identity is, his behavior is bisexual therefore he's queer representation; vs, you know what, wallowing around trying to figure out what your identity is is a really common queer experience, especially if bisexuality or pansexuality is in play and both straights and gays are expecting you to "pick a side," so it would be neat if the show went to the place of Quentin trying to figure out which words are his words, what identity he wants to claim.
*"wing jello" is how i pronounce the fairly terrible old trope, we're not gay we just love each other (WNGWJLEO)
I want to do some cooking and baking and am trying to decide how much standing in the kitchen I am really up for.
I read a comment about the queer/sexual/romantic identities of Magicians characters that got me thinking. The comment I read said most recent canon is not news on the Quentin is bisexual front, he's been bisexual. And I was contemplating that and the meta problem of fictional characters' self-identities. Like by his behavior alone: yes Quentin's bisexual, he's done sex with persons of various genders. But like, if he were a real person you couldn't make a declaration like that, Quentin's identity would rest on his own perception of it rather than purely on his behaviors. And I can't decide the extent to which that matters with a character, but we do have some indication of how the character reads his own identity--in the flashback to the mosaic episode postscript, when Eliot is noping out, one of his arguments is Quentin is not [fill in the blank. this is an interesting blank actually? is it "gay," is Eliot's perception of himself "gay" despite occasionally having sex with women like occasionally having Thai food? is it "bi" because arguing Quentin is not is a bit harder? is it "queer," ie, any non-straight identity?] and Quentin asks does it matter rather than insisting that he does identify as queer in some flavor, which would suggest Quentin agrees with Eliot in seeing himself as straight, a straight person whose exceptions include a whole lifetime of wing jello*. That doesn't mean that Quentin's conception of his own identity might not be evolving. People do change how they perceive themselves over time. But people also shorthand; I say I'm a lesbian because it's exhausting to enumerate the specific circtumstances under which I might find a male person attractive, and because I don't think I'd ever be with a guy, so I think lesbian is more accurate than bisexual, and probably queer is the most accurate.
I could see arguments for all kinds of characterizations over the timeline of Quentin's character. Maybe he thinks of himself as still mostly straight, but maybe like, heteroflexible. Maybe he's like yup I'm bi now this is me. Maybe he always knew he was bi (in which case why didn't he argue with Eliot about not being fill-in-the-blank? Unless he thought Eliot meant "gay" and thought there was a significant gap between the experiences of gay and bi people? like you could MAKE that argument, but). Maybe he's like "welp, gay for Eliot anyway."
And I'm torn between wondering does it matter what the fictional character thinks his identity is, his behavior is bisexual therefore he's queer representation; vs, you know what, wallowing around trying to figure out what your identity is is a really common queer experience, especially if bisexuality or pansexuality is in play and both straights and gays are expecting you to "pick a side," so it would be neat if the show went to the place of Quentin trying to figure out which words are his words, what identity he wants to claim.
*"wing jello" is how i pronounce the fairly terrible old trope, we're not gay we just love each other (WNGWJLEO)
Hooray * 2!
I approve of cooking and baking and also getting a beat-up stool to help you not overdo.
I don't feel it for the Magicians (yet?) but I love reading the meta.
wing jello is wonderful.
Re: Hooray * 2!
yay leg milestones! I cooked mostly by throwing things in the instantpot and then going away to lay down, so I was not standing doing stuff long.
Magicians fandom is a fun place to be hanging out right now! the zeitgeist, man. basically i feel like i watched the show so I could enjoy the fandom.
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And honestly whats gets me about this whole *handflail* thing is, like.
Actually 100% totally heterosexual people are pretty fucking rare. I'm not fucked to go find the cites on this, but it's come up not just in informal fandom surveys but in actual research a lot. That. Humans mostly just. Are much messier and more complicated than that.
And as queer identities have become more known and the vocabulary has become available (and, yes, mores have shifted enough that it's at least safer to identify loudly as any kind of queer), the reason so many of The Kids These Days Identify as some kind of queer is... humans are... mostly just messier... and more complicated... than any kind of simple fucking binary. And, like, sure, there are times where it is simpler and more useful to elide the mess and complexity into something simple. Like 'lesbian' or 'straight'.
But the point is that the majority of straight people... aren't entirely heterosexual. There's usually some exceptions of some kind in there. If you talk to them long enough and they aren't getting defensive, you'll find them. And then there's all the ones who have some... really screwy ideas about what qualifies them as straight. Which sometimes those screwy ideas really do honestly amount to "I don't want to deal with the social ramifications of being out/known queer" dressed up in rationalisations their brain managed to pretzel into place.
Which, you know, is sad and deeply fucked up and usually does them a lot of harm and causes them a lot of misery in their relationships. There is SO MUCH damage that gets done in insisting on shoving people into tidy boxes? Instead of letting people just exist messily and that being okay. And this is something that straight culture has done A LOT OF damage with and has been doing since wellllll before the modern iteration/conception of sexuality and relationships got its feet under it, but... yeah, god knows gay culture's done some replication of, SEE: bi and pan and ace people getting the SHIT that they get from the rainbow side as well.
So yeah I have to say, I can't comment on Quentin specifically, I can say it would be pretty fucking nice to see someone wallowing around going "well, fuck, what even am I," on TV re: sexuality and the answer being allowed to be messy and them being unsure and even, maybe, changing their mind, as long as it's clear that... it IS still queer content, whatever the hell answer they land at. Like, even if the answer ends up BEING approximately "okay, yes, basically straight with a lifetime exception," acknowledging that that exception is queer is incredibly important.
(...some day I'm going get around to writing some wensh jello. We're Not Straight etc., with a very queer dude and a very queer lady. I know you're shocked. Wait, does Yv/By count? I think Yv/By might count. Of course, I haven't actually written much of that, so the original statement probably still stands. >_>)
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ilu and heart all of that, I don't know if I have anything coherent to respond!
i keep thinking of Willow from Buffy, and I recollect that there was fandom disagreement on whether Willow was bisexual (dated both Oz and Tara) or lesbian (the character marked a sharp delineation in her identity, but was that realistic or was that because Joss Whedon cannot nuance?) I keep hoping we can expect more from our media these days.
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that is an interesting read! like demisexual/gray-A panromantic? do you think that's descriptive of his behavior or what he is aware of and identifies as or both? I wonder how depression and depression meds intersect with that, like a lot of them suppress sex drive and he's been on various since adolescence. Like I know sexual attraction and sex drive are not the same, but like, he goes without/self-medicates with booze when he's in Fillory for a length of time, I wonder if that creates enough of an effect for him to be cognizant of.