#I just don’t think queerbait goes this deep guys | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aoitrinity · 4 years

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Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it.

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in.

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length.

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages.

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money.

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments.

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve.

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

#supernatural season 15 #spn finale #speculation #destiel #destielgate #the ending was not the ending #fuck the cw #trust the story #we were robbed

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luninosity · 3 years

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Okay, so, some Falcon and the Winter Soldier thoughts (will have some spoilers) for episodes two and three. General non-spoilery comment first: I feel like these were both *okay* episodes - neither as good as the first, but I didn’t dislike them, either. I’m still really curious to see how we’re going to wrap this all up in three more episodes; it doesn’t feel like we’re halfway done yet!

Okay, more spoiler-y notes below the Read More, not in any real order, just as I think and type. I’ll probably forget some things, but for now, here’re some thoughts...

--I like ep 3 slightly more than ep 2, mostly because of Zemo!

--I actually really love Zemo here (I liked him in Civil War, too): complex, sardonic, enjoying poking at people, a villain we do feel sympathy for even as he’s still sharp enough to remind us that he is a villain. Daniel Bruhl has always done a fantastic job flipping between calculated cruelty, wry humor - the whole “I am a Baron” moment was great - and pain that for him is still raw, about the loss of his family. (Some things’re awfully cliche - look, the supervillain’s playing chess and reading Machiavelli in his cell? really? - but, y’know...sure. Why not. We expect some cliches in the superhero genre, and this is an inoffensive one.)

--also Zemo dancing. That’s it. That’s everything.

--moving on from that: I’m also really liking how they’re writing John Walker. He does have charm, and there’s a certain amount of sympathy - especially as we see him worrying about filling the Captain America shoes, in ep 2 - but we’re also getting this really subtle sense of wrongness about him. He’s clearly vindictive and angry when things (and people) don’t act according to his mental script for them, and he’s willing to use his name and power to do things like get Bucky released...which in context and given our sympathies for Bucky is a good thing, but...it’s also an indicator of his willingness to do what he wants, because he can. (To be fair, Steve Rogers also often did that! - but Steve earned our trust, both in narrative and character. From his first introduction to WWII leadership experience to all the Avengers stuff, Steve consistently acts to protect people, and he’ll also listen if someone else has a good idea or if someone needs to talk, like with Wanda.) So I’m really liking this slow-fuse character development.

--mixed feelings about Sharon. I love that the show’s acknowledging how much she sacrificed for our main heroes, with no reward. On the other hand, she also clearly knew the consequences that could happen; she said as much at the time. The level of bitterness seems like a lot. But I’m also interested in everything we still don’t know about her - if she’s not the Power Broker herself, she’s obviously Up To Something. So that should be fun.

--hey, look at that X-Men location, with Majipoor! Also a nod to Wolverine’s favorite bar there, I think?

--I love heist and disguise plots!

--I also really like Bucky’s having to revert to the Winter Soldier - Sebastian Stan does it so brilliantly, with so many layers of emotion: not wanting to, loathing it, recognizing the necessity, shutting off all emotion and just coldly doing it, hurting but covering it up...just fantastic, and you know I love some hurt/comfort, and this seems like such a great set-up for emotional hurt

--but! this also seems like...a weird plot hole, kind of? Bucky’s pretty famous at this point, right? I imagine the criminal underworld knows he’s been pardoned and deprogrammed, right? or do they assume Zemo, with his knowledge of Hydra, still has some special control over him?

--along the same “this seems like someone didn’t think this through” path, Sam, you’re a professional, turn off your phone on a mission. Oh my god. Face-palmingly stupid - and I think somewhat lazy writing, as the writers plainly needed a giveaway, and went for the first idea they had. Even if it made a main character look incompetent.

--the Flag Smashers and Karli are...fine. They feel very Generic Marvel Villain - not the big space alien type, but the other type, the “I have a personal loss and motivating pain so I’m a little sympathetic but also Clearly Evil, watch me kill civilians so the audience won’t ever find me TOO sympathetic” type. Meh. Fine. Zemo’s more interesting, but...fine.

--Anthony Mackie is such a fantastic actor - every bit of his reaction to the Isaiah Bradley reveal is so good. The anger, pain, frustration, ferocity...heartbreaking. Actually that whole scene is so good - his emotions at discovering this secret history are palpable, and it’s so painful, because we also understand why Bucky would keep the secret - as someone who knows about pain and trauma and being experimented on, and knowing Isaiah wants to be left alone - we feel really deeply for both characters here, and it’s great.

--I actually liked the abrupt swing from the Isaiah Bradley encounter to the casual everyday racism of the cops on the street - is it subtle, no. But it’s not meant to be: it’s meant to be standing up and shouting about how not that much has really changed, and about how pervasive racism is. I know some reviews were all, “this was just too much!” or “too forced!” but...look, it needs to be shouted sometimes for people to hear.

--Bucky’s notebook being Steve’s, oh, ouch, my feelings. If I had the time and energy to write fic...

--(also, if I had the time and energy to write dark!fic: where’re my fics in which Zemo’s implication about the Winter Soldier “doing anything you want” gets played with? what or who does Bucky have to do to keep the undercover charade going? so many Bad Wrong Kinky power dynamics and explorations of consent and what this would do to Bucky’s head, here, and honestly I’d totally read them all, just saying.)

--Sam and Bucky together...I don’t know. This is one of the elements that I’m not actually a huge fan of, but I think it’s partly a personal genre / sense of humor thing that’s not clicking for me, personally, again. Like...

--I don’t find people shouting aggrievedly at each other to be funny? I’m not sure why it is.

--I mean, I get that they’re doing, like, eighties buddy cop movies, but...it got old really fast then, and it’s not something we needed to bring back. It’s not clever, and it’s...well, shouty and annoying.

--(I say this as someone who genuinely likes the first two Lethal Weapon movies...but the significant difference is, I think, we’re also shown in both those movies that Riggs and Murtaugh care about each other. They don’t want to be partners initially, and they don’t get along initially, and they do argue over tactics**...but they immediately feel responsible for each other and act to protect each other even as they argue, because it’s the right thing to do and we’re shown moments of them awkwardly trying to connect, because they both have that deep sense of...protectiveness...that makes them Good People - like, if they learn something that the other person needs to know, they tell each other. They protect each other’s families / love interests. So by the end of the second movie, with that fabulous character death fake-out, Murtaugh’s initial shock and grief is real and powerful and painful, and so is his genuine relief when the worst isn’t true - and it’s all earned.) (**however, they tend to argue tactics *before* jumping in - “is it 1, 2, 3, go on 3? or 3, then go?” And then once that’s established, they go ahead. That makes a difference as far as...well...competence and teamwork!)

--(Sam and Bucky, as far as I can tell, don’t do the above, and just...maybe shouldn’t be working together?)

--I also don’t find grown men acting like my youngest nephew, when he’s having a temper tantrum, to be funny. Staring contests? Random insults? Sulking in silence? Oh, grow up.

--(Also, yes, writers, we see you with the “couples therapy” and “get closer and make your legs touch” and “landing on top of each other as they hit the ground” moments. I, at least, personally, am very tired of...I don’t know that I’d call it queerbaiting exactly, but this idea that we’re supposed to find these moments funny...because why? Because, ooh, they’re two men getting close to each other, physically or emotionally? Why is this a thing we need to draw attention to? Do you think you’re doing some sort of fan service? Please either make Sam/Bucky happen or stop doing this.)

--both Sam and Bucky are highly competent and professional agents, or they should be. They should know how to work in the field - even with people they may not like - and adapt to shifting strategy, make best use of available assets, include people in the plan, etc. I can’t help but compare this to something like, say, Leverage, which also has a team who mocks each other and makes jokes but clearly absolutely respects each other’s capabilities, has a plan going in and tells everyone what the plan is, and adapts (and trusts each other to adapt) on the fly as necessary, and does it all without random insults about someone’s (PTSD-related) staring and “robot brain”.

--one of the very specific moments that bothers me a lot is the ending of the therapy scene (yay for showing heroes in therapy! but also I’m pretty sure she’s...not a great therapist?). Bucky finally opens up and says something real, about his own self-doubt and wondering whether Steve was wrong about him....and Sam just...brushes it off and goes, “we’re done here,” basically. Not only does that feel wildly out of character for former counselor Sam, it feels cruel. I really deeply dislike that moment the more I think about it. Makes me want to scream.

--Sam insults Bucky way more than the other way around. It’s starting to feel very one-sided (it’d be better if more clearly reciprocal, though it’s still not a dynamic that’s my favorite), and again, feels out of character - maybe this is Anthony Mackie’s sense of humor, but Sam isn’t Mackie, and Bucky isn’t Seb, and it reads as...a weird unbalanced power-trip thing to me. And also out of character for Sam, who can be sarcastic (”If you guys eat that sort of thing,” about breakfast, when Steve and Nat have randomly shown up at his door) but that’s not the same as just throwing unprovoked insults at a person who’s trying to recover from trauma, and a lot of those insults seem to center on things that were done to Bucky, that he had no choice in (the staring, the arm, etc), and that feels....it just feels mean, to me. Make fun of things he’s had a choice in / can do something about, if you have to - hair, clothes, liking “old people’s games” like gin rummy or pinochle, not knowing who Beyonce is, I don’t know, there are so many options that aren’t cruel! Do that instead. Let Bucky have a good comeback for once, too!

--the action scenes are action scenes. Also fine.

--Sam might be right about destroying the shield, and the show may even be (unintentionally?) setting that up as the best outcome, but that’s a problem for the future, Sam; get it back first. Also it’s a problem you caused by giving the shield up - did you really trust the government to leave it unused in a museum? You’re not that naive.

--overall, it’s...a perfectly fine show, so far, I think? Solid, and interesting, but not great. I think some of what doesn’t work for me is because it doesn’t work for me personally, as far as the shouty insult-heavy action “comedy” bits that I’m not enjoying, but I think they’re doing what they aimed for with it, so in that sense, I guess it’s working? There’s a lot of really cool stuff around the edges - John Walker, Isaiah Bradley, that Dora Milaje stinger, the bigger world of a history interwoven with racism and superpowers, the chillingly effective use of Bucky’s past - but I wish I liked the central Sam-Bucky relationship more. Individually they’re wonderful - they’ve both had such powerful scenes dealing with family, trauma, and consequences - but I feel like, in the effort to do the buddy comedy dynamic, the writing has just made me really sure that they actually genuinely don’t like each other? To such an extent that if they show any affection / caring / interest in each other in the last three episodes, it won’t be believable. (I mean Sam and Bucky, not Mackie and Seb. Mackie and Seb’re adorable.)

--I just want to think about Zemo dancing some more.

#the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws spoilers #spoilers #fatws spoilers #thoughts

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bamf-jaskier · 3 years

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the way this fandom goes so hard for the white guys and i, a queer woman, do not care for them at all 😩😩😩 i just wish people would take a look at their biases and start giving all the awesome ladies/POC the love they deserve. it's especially infuriating because i see so many queer people in fandom yet they keep only caring about these same white dudes when so many other ships are equally as queer and awesome.

But—-but the white dudes are queer so it’s representation 🥺

Okay but I think it comes down to a few things

1) white mlm is comfortable for people - you don’t have to step outside your box and consider the impact of writing characters of color and women

For example when writing female characters you have to be aware of stereotypes and how to avoid them in your writing, you have to be open to listening to people and to understanding that you have bias and be willing to confront it

2) white mlm is ultimate escapism - since white men are incredibly privileged in Western society, fandom can escape IRL problems and project them onto someone whose issues aren’t as systemic but more individual

For example, when you write a female character you might have to think about sexualisation or sexual assault or other possible traumas the character might have gone through and it might be too personal for you. But a white male character can hold your trauma and projection without being too personal. There’s still that layer of separation.

3) white mlm is easy to sexualize and write with little critique - not many people are coming to bat talking about how white men should not be portrayed in these ways even when there are harmful mlm tropes

For example. In many fandoms, every gay men MUST be classified as a top or bottom and physical appearance and femininity always makes a man a soft boi uwu. This is mostly allowed because white men are seen as privileged so sexualizing them and stereotyping them is seen as a reclamation of societal power. When it comes to characters of color and female characters, people are much faster to call out harmful tropes which creates this idea that white mlm characters are better playgrounds for fandom.

Overall it comes down to the idea that including women and characters of color in fandom takes works on the part of white fans. It takes the acknowledge that we have societal bias against poc and that sometimes our “preferences” for characters and ships are racist and/or sexist. It takes time to actually talk to fans of color and creators to see how to be more inclusive. It takes an understanding of harmful stereotypes and how the media perpetuates them.

At the end of the day, it’s work. And many creators and fans would rather have white mlm that is relatively free of criticism and very easy escapism than try and address why fandom is so white and so male-character heavy, in both who fans are and in the transformative work fans create.

Because the media sees fandom. And when media staring women and characters always ends up circling back to white men, media notices that and makes note that white men are more marketable. And it’s true. If you were looking to have a popular piece of media and you include two white men with a throwaway line or two about a deep connection, that is far more likely to garner a following and a fandom than say, a show with a queer woman of color.

It’s why Teen Wolf had queer-bait Derek/Stiles promo clips. It’s why The Witcher Twitter account makes things like the Jaskier-trailer and photoshoot. It’s why Supernatural became more popular after they queerbaited their entire audience.

Even in shows like the Witcher where a lot of the cast is either characters of color, women, or both, the fandom focuses strongly on white men and has the most extensive headcanons, fanfiction and even fanart for those characters.

Being inclusive in fandom takes work. And for many people, it’s simply easier to maintain the status quo.

#I mean listen I’ve talked about this a lot but yeah #fandom crit #fandom racism #the Witcher #asks #anon

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ineffable-endearments · 3 years

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Okay. Now I'm going to submit some theories about how I think Crowley and Aziraphale specifically are going to go in the future of Good Omens.

Again, this post is not really...specific theorizing about plot events. It's big-picture stuff.

With that said, this post will get a bit heavy at times, in the sense that it will contain opinions that not everyone will like. It drifted into rambling about queerbaiting and all that stuff. I'm not going to spam anyone's dashboard with drama over it, but it's very possible someone else might try. It's also not really a negative post, depending on what you want to hear, I suppose. But if you're only in the mood to read fluff today, you'll probably want to pass it up.

Oh! Also it's very long, and sexuality is discussed in a vague way that doesn't involve any story elements or body parts.

For starters, I don't think Good Omens 2 - or even 3, if that comes about - is going to have anything explicitly sexual or romantic between the two of them, where "explicit" is things like the characters giving outright definitions of their relationship or outright discussing exactly what goes on between them, either on or off-screen. I also don't think there's going to be kissing or "hooking up" (come on...that person on Twitter shouldn't have even asked). Those actions are too blatant for what Neil has already said about the series. While they technically leave some room for interpretation, they probably don't leave enough.

I DO think it's quite possible other characters will continue to define the relationship FOR them and Crowley and Aziraphale will continue to not deny it.

As far as the queerbaiting debate, "is Good Omens queerbaiting"...it's gonna depend how you define it. I always learned that queerbaiting was basically where the creators intentionally make it look like a character is gay or otherwise queer but then swap that character development out for a cis identity and hetero relationship at the end. The point is that the "bait" leads to queer audiences being actively hurt. That's the behavior that seems awful to me, and I don't see Neil and company doing that.

However, I think it's far and away the most likely option that it will be left up to interpretation whether Crowley and Aziraphale are, you know, a buddy duo or a romantic couple or some sort of ineffable queerness all their own off-screen. So if your definition of queerbaiting is "the characters seem gay to us, but homophobes can tell themselves they're not," then yes, I think that debate will follow us to our graves if we let it.

I am a cisgender, possibly straight (?? demi/bi? I might never find out) woman. There is absolutely no way I could ever tell anybody, ESPECIALLY not gay guys and nonbinary people - the people Crowley and Aziraphale tend to resemble the most - how to feel about their treatment in the story. All I can offer is that I'm one flawed individual and there are things I have the emotional capacity to handle and things I don't. Crowley and Aziraphale as both a canon construct and a fandom pairing mean an absurd amount to me, and I can't hang around in spaces where people are constantly talking about how my own interpretations of them are not enough, or how the story is written with ill intentions. I don't want to stop anybody from venting about it, but I am going to be removing myself from those situations.

I like to imagine 1990 NeilandTerry, or TerryandNeil, as a sort of two-headed God who came up with Crowley and Aziraphale, set them loose on Creation, and now are watching them get up to way more ridiculous stuff in the brains of their fans than they'd ever imagined in the first place. I like to imagine them watching, amused and bemused, as their creations fall in love in thousands of universes, and saying, "Well, we didn't specifically Plan for this, but we did promise free will."

This is psychoanalytical toward a public figure and is therefore a bit dangerous, so please take it with an entire mountain of salt, but I sometimes think perhaps Neil sees some of his and Terry's friendship in Crowley and Aziraphale, and suspect that he wants to reserve the possibility that they could be platonic because he and Terry were platonic, while at the same time leaving room for the fans to have their own interpretations, too. Because if there's one thing that comes up really frequently with Neil, it's his belief in imagination and how much stories matter to people. He can have his little corner of the universe where A and C reflect himself and Terry, and we can have...literally anything we want, as long as we're willing to extrapolate just a little bit from canon. It's not even that much extrapolation! It's just "Yes, they love each other, so what exactly does love mean to you?" and if love means kissing, well then, if we can think it, we can have it.

Given that Neil has written LGBT+ characters before, I think he has non-bigoted reasons for wanting Aziraphale and Crowley to remain undefined, and given even the small chance that those reasons may involve the grieving process for a dead friend, I believe it is unkind to argue with him about it or hold his reputation hostage over it.

With that said, do I want canon kissing/hooking up/all that stuff we put in fics? Listen, I can't deny that I do! Personally, I'd be over the moon. I'd probably be so happy I'd have to go to the hospital to get sorted out. Even the thought of it makes me giddy and light-headed, because that physicality is a part of my own experience of love.

However, there are a lot of people who would feel left behind if that happened. Ace and aro people in the fandom whose love for their friends and partners is just as strong as mine, but who are sex-repulsed or just don't want to see kissing on-screen. The loss of Crowley and Aziraphale as a pairing who are extremely easy to interpret as queerplatonic would be hurtful to them, and I do not want to see them hurt like that. I don't think Neil does, either.

So, once again, the "best for everyone" option becomes a really strong canon relationship based in both narrative function and profound affection, which has genuinely thoughtful queer undertones and leaves open the logical possibility for romantic or sexual encounters but does not insist that they must happen. People, especially fans who are super invested, tend to have an easier time imagining scenarios that take place off-screen (e.g. kissing, sex) than they have erasing scenarios that they've already seen in canon (e.g., if someone wished they could continue viewing it as an ace relationship but they were shown "hooking up"). Also, while relationships are super emotional and extremely subjective, I'd argue that in a long-term adult partnership, the non-sexual connection is more important than the sexual one. As a fan, I'd prefer to extrapolate "they love each other so maybe they'd have sex" rather than "they're sexually attracted to each other so maybe they'll intertwine their whole existences together."

It probably isn't necessary to add, but I will anyway: I'm aware that Good Omens is sort of sacrificing social leverage - the ability to whack homophobes over the head with canon if they try to deny the show's queerness - and is thus not really contributing to making specifically gay relationships more widely seen and accepted. However, I don't think all stories have to invest heavily in every social issue they touch on for them to still be meaningful. I also do think Good Omens is an excellent example of a relationship that is extremely profound without being heteronormative.

I don't think the next season is going to be a rom-com. It will likely not even be a "love story," where the definition of "love story" is "a story that follows the development of a relationship and employs certain plot beats to make its point." Remember that conflicts and breakups are key to love stories, so if it IS a love story, then we're going to have to watch the relationship get challenged in ways some of us might have thought were already resolved in season 1! And while that could be thrilling and ultimately very good, it would also be likely to undercut some of the careful headcanoning and analysis we've already done. Any sequel is going to do that to some degree, but a second love story would probably do it a lot, with interpretations that people are even more protective of.

I'm sort of thinking the next season is likely to be a fantasy-heavy mystery, only because those are the two concepts Neil's introduction led with - an angel with amnesia who presents Crowley and Aziraphale with a mystery. Crowley and Aziraphale's connection to each other can still absolutely be a major theme! It can still be the thread stitching the plot together! It just probably, in my opinion, won't escalate and escalate and escalate like it did in season 1. And it will probably be woven in there among a lot of other plot threads that are, in many moments, louder. Still, I'd love to be left with the impression of these two existences, the light and the dark, subtly becoming more intimate, subtly growing more comfortable in this shared place they've chosen in the universe, gradually starting to behave like they know they aren't alone in the world anymore, all while other things happen to and around them.

Nonsexual physical intimacy - a really great hug, or leaning together on the sofa, or a forehead touch, or something like those, something that could happen in a lot of different kinds of relationships but is undoubtedly based in deep trust and affection and a desire to be close...that's the dream, for me. Oh, how lovely it would be.

Of course, I could be just absolutely, embarrassingly wrong about all this. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

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supop · 3 years

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yoongi about to die from excessive bloating and heart disease, taehyung's mental health crippling cause he was associated with a woman, jungkook will never regain his good image among knetz cause the criminal minded person always goes viral on naver cause of his scandalous behaviour and u are worried abt jm, strange :/

I hope you know that using :/ doesn’t make anything you just said a drag :/ but I’m guessing you’ve lost plenty brain cells since the day you were conceived so I’ll play along :/

I didn’t know you were Yoongi’s doctor :/ his diet is already restricted enough as is (he doesn’t eat gluten/flour/wheat because it upsets his stomach). Then there’s his fast recovery from his shoulder surgery you’d think he was in tip-top shape :/

But since we’re on the topic of health, let’s talk about jimin��s eating disorder and him potentially being an alcoholic :/

Imagine an idol encouraging fans to starve themselves��Jimin can relate :/ Honestly, you’d think his fans would be more concerned. His voice is already fucked up, we wouldn’t want his health and looks to further decline :/ I can’t believe you brought up health knowing Jimin has consistently exhibited questionable eating patterns since debut :/ Not to mention he’s always be so insecure about his weight :/ Since you know so much about excessive bloating and heart disease it must run in your family. I bet you’re an unhealthy ugly bitch behind the screen, attempting to improve your health as you typed. Here’s a tip: put down the coke bottle and go drink some more water :/

If there’s anyones mental health you should be concerned diets, it’s Jimin’s :/ Imagine fake crying after concert and talking about losing your voice like you actually sang? The lengths human beings would go to, to feed their own delusions. Then again this is the same guy that lied just the other day for attention about not knowing friends made it to the Marvel movie :/

You’re concerned about Taehyung’s mental health and yet this is what knetz had to say about the “scandal” itself:

And this is what knetz had to say about V’s weverse posts :/

It’s a good thing Koreans have sense unlike some of you delusions fans :/ Anyone would get mad when you can’t even go to an art exhibit without the entire world thinking your knee deep in a relationship. Plus whatever his relationship is with that woman is none of own business.

And since we’re on the topic of women let’s talk about this :/

And this :/

Imagine a sex offender saying you emphasize the image of his lyrics by 300% :/ Once again, Jimin can relate :///

Jungkook will never regain his good image, and yet is that the reason Jimin begged him to come on his birthday live so he’d help increase the views? :/

This is what knetz had to say about Jungkook’s recent “scandal” involving him wearing clothes form his brother’s brand :/

Even after all those scandals knetz still called Jungkook “the most successful idol in history” :/

As you can see Jungkook’s reputation is still perfectly in tact :/ has he had the most public scandals in BTS? Sure. But that clearly hasn’t stopped people from loving him :/ Meanwhile your attention seeking fave Jimin still acts like a menace everywhere he goes :/ He wishes he could pull as much attention as Taehyung or Jungkook. But he can’t, so he crawls and begs his way to the spotlight every chance he gets :/

Bonus: here’s a list of all painful things knetz say jimin likes to do at concerts. Hopefully he doesn’t burn our eyes out during the PTD concerts :/

Side note: “gay dance” would be translated as queerbaiting, so don’t take offense my fellow gays (Korean -> English skips lots of nuances).

You guys should really stop coming into my inbox with your feeble attempts to drag other members. Because all you do is succeed in making Jimin look worse :/ Worry more about your fave please :/ He already has so much shit stacked up against him, and needs all the support the can get :/

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x-ladydisdain-x · 4 years

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3. Rant. Just do it

Ooohh hahAHaHa you asked for it (I am so sorry)

Incoming Sherlock/Steven Moffat/lack of queer representation in the media rant:

So. The infamous Comic Con panel in 2016. The ‘grumpy bisexual and very camp gay’ one.

Steven Moffat says adding a queer character into a show has to be done with “such intelligent delicacy”, meaning you can’t just have a gay character who’s gay, you have to carefully plan out when and where this character gets to be gay and for how long it lasts. This type of thinking is the reason why we usually only get a rare lgbtq+ side character for way too little screen time and it hardly lasts an entire season, or like in the case of Sherlock, we never get representation because an lgbtq+ character simply didn’t fit. So my question is, why can’t we just get a character that is gay and that’s it? It doesn’t have to be such a huge deal, the character is just gay and goes on the same adventures as the straight characters and everything is fine? If straight characters don’t have to be chosen with intelligent delicacy, why do gay ones?

He goes on to say, “The reality of shows like Sherlock and Doctor Who is the subject of who you prefer to date is unlikely to come up in the middle of the crisis.” This earns him a laugh from the audience, as he jokes about a character randomly mentioning that they like to date their own sex whilst being attacked by insects from the ninth dimension. (Notice he is talking about Doctor Who now. There are no insects from the ninth dimension in Sherlock. Perhaps I’m looking too deep into it but, the question was about Sherlock and Sherlock is the show that needs representation. Doctor Who, there’s interspecies relationships. Sexuality is hardly an issue. Maybe he knows that the lack of representation and queerbaiting has become a major problem in Sherlock that is genuinely upsetting and therefore he won’t joke about it, and yet he is still too afraid to address this topic in another way than joking?). Now. The episode in Doctor Who that we find out Jack is very much not straight was written by him and, as it turns out, we find that out right in the middle of the crisis. They’re all gonna die and Jack uses mentions that he likes guys too and his powers of flirting with men to buy them time. If Jack can come out right in the middle of a crisis, why can’t Sherlock? It would be plenty easy, seeing as it doesn’t see like Sherlock cares much about sexuality and it’s not much of a big deal to him. He never even denied it when anyone assumed he was gay. He could very easily just mention for the purpose of a case that he had a boyfriend in high school or something and everyone is happy.

Then (this is possibly the worst part of the whole panel) Steven says “But I do think it’s really important that kids watching television see themselves on screen. I think that’s important. It’s very very important.” And he smiles proudly as the audience cheers and claps like he’s done something amazing. I’m practically dead when he says “Representation is hugely important and it’s something all of television has to get better at. That’s the truth.” And again with the proud smiling as he absorbs the applause.

What he’s saying here is all of television needs to get better at this, that lack of representation is a real problem, just that it’s not his own show’s job to fix it. To paraphrase, “There should be more queer representation in all shows, just not my show.” and that really pisses me off. That mindset, specifically from straight creators, of “this needs to be fixed, but it should be fixed by other people, not me” is the reason there is so little representation.

I would say that this is why we need more lgbtq+ creators out there, but Mark Gatiss, the very gay co-writer of the show, was sitting next to him the whole time. What did he do? He smiled and nodded and clapped and gave small words of agreement. Yes, we need more queer creators, but what we really need is more people who are willing to not be lazy and actually make the change themself, rather than sitting around waiting for others to do it.

This has been a PSA.

#wow that was like a whole frickin essay there whoops #anyways #thanks for the ask!!#and like please feel free to reblog I really wouldn't mind other people seeing this too ;))

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karliesbuzzcut · 4 years

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Damn the flex that TTB uses when she says Karlie isnt having a baby is impressive. If I hadn't watched this person for over a year I might believe she means it. But sadly he die hard folllwers, I have learned just believe what ever BS flies out of her mouth and forgets it was ever said. I want to respect them but seriously she lays down a hard ass line, then the line breaks and she changes her tune and they all go mmmmkkk makes sense. Thats why I truly believe this will get worst then Larrie. Especially because its sort of sad that Taylor and Karlie don't even acknowledge each other or have any hopes of reuniting for projects like Larrie or even Robert and Kristen.

You know, you just reminded me about this video that I’ve been meaning to mention.

youtube

It’s an hour and a half video about a very specific phenomenon in the Sherlock Holmes (BBC) fandom - I understand if people find that a bit daunting. But as someone who hasn’t really watched the show, I found the video super interesting. To be fair though, I love Sarah Z and I could watch her do a deep analysis of her grocery list.

Long story short: there was bunch of people in the fandom who speculated that Sherlock and Watson were endgame. They weren’t. The show ended and for several reasons the series finale was a disappointment.

I think that’s all the context you need.

Now, why am I talking about this. Well - the Johnlock shippers split into many different groups and it’s one of them (the one Sarah Z discusses in her video) that gives me such TTB&co vibes. This group has created a little conspiracy which states that the show hasn’t actually ended (even though the last episode was aired 4 years ago) and there’s a real series finale in the works which will confirm their theories.

Let me present to you this nice bullet-point list I’ve made, which proves how these seemingly different fandoms have each created a small community which behaves exactly like the other.

The creators of the Sherlock BBC show, just like Taylor, promoted the practice of searching for clues, knowing it creates engagement. This has opened the door for people to analyse their creative work and come up with questionable reaches.

Just like TTB, there’s an adult heterosexual woman, who goes by the name of Blossom, behind the Johnlock Conspiracy (TJLC). Meanwhile, most of the followers are queer teenagers in search of representation. And this grown-ass woman (and her equally grown-ass friends) are pretending to know how the world works, you know, how it really works, and convincing these kids that things aren’t what they appear to be.

When things don’t go according to their theories, their instinct doesn’t seem to be to blame the people who sold them those ideas. Instead they say Karlie&Taylor/Sherlock’s creators are changing their plans and the bad guys (Josh, Scooter, the BBC) are behind it.

The creators of Sherlock explicitly said Johnlock wasn’t a thing (they might’ve queerbaited - that I don’t know, so I’m not going to get into that). However - and just like when Karlie got married, for example - TJLC said “ah! That’s what they want you to think”.

TJLC has its own set of detractors but they aren’t the ones who receive the most hate from this little group. Instead, they’ve picked-up fights with other Johnlocks who view the ship from a different angle. Like Sherlock being a top and not a bottom..? Which makes me think so much of how TTB&co have feuded with Gaylors, Swiftgrons, [insert-ship-names-with-Brie-or-Lily] and even other Kaylors who believe the girls were together but broke up; demonstrating this isn’t about exploring queer themes but about being right.

But to be fair, I do not believe these two groups are exactly the same. I have a bit more sympathy for TJLC simply because they’re mostly analysing a relationship between two fictional characters... if you don’t take into account all the bullshit about the real-life people behind it, I guess. It’s a bit easier to believe that a tvshow - with the many people it had working on it - could hide extremely intricate details within their work. Especially if you compare it to believing that a supermodel is warning your small community about an upcoming piece of news (that you’re not going to like) by posting a picture with a lavander colour keyboard.

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will-byers-appreciation · 5 years

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Season Three First Thoughts

Overall: Regardless of everything I say, overall I really liked the season. I feel like they did a good job of advancing individual character arcs and introducing/putting new character pairings together. Now for my brain dump of thoughts:

•Opening with Mike and Eleven making out made me uncomfy cause regardless of how long they’ve been dating they’re still just kids (young teens?)

•Discounting this, I hated the direction they took with Hopper on this. I think he was a total prick. Before when he was overprotective it was because he cared about El and that’s was clear but this time around they made him seem more like a typical washed up 80′s dad (à la Ted Wheeler)

•I’m not entirely mad about Hopper’s attempt to throw Mike off El because it brought the El and Max (elmax) friendship sequence

•I absolutely LOVED everything about El and Max in this season. What Max taught El about being her own person was so so important. One of the main reasons some people have a problem with Mileven is because they’re so co-dependent it’s unhealthy for kids and for El’s personal development (I agree!!). This storyline continued through the season of El realizing her worth on her own and how she should be her own person was probably one of my favorites

•Ima say it, Mike was a dick in a lot of moments this season, especially in the beginning with Hopper, sue me. However he is a teen boy and he still has a lot of growing up to do so it’s excusable

•I really hate how little Will was used this season (I may be biased, this blog is called “will-byers-appreciation” for a reason!). I feel like he was only there to feel left behind by his friends but come on the boy has been through enough

•I really don’t like how in season two Mike was the number 1 Will supporter and he always was there for him even when Dustin and Lucas had no idea was was going on and this season he basically blatantly didn’t care about Will. I know months have gone by but still, Mike shouldn’t have let himself have gotten so distracted by his girlfriend that he forgot his friends, regardless or not of if he loves her.

•Mike saying something along the lines of “you do don’t like girls Will” (more gaycoding?? who knows if we’ll ever get what we want)

•I feel like the Duffer brothers tried so hard to kill Byler this season and I’m :/

•Everything including Karen and Billy was disgusting, which goes without saying, but was filmed and edited in a really compelling way in that we really didn’t know what was gonna go down so the duffers did a good job working out how to portray that storyline

•Speaking of Karen, I loved her pep talk to Nancy. Karen stepping up like that was one of the highlights of the show for sure

•Nancy: every single scene in the Hawkins Post made me want to punch all those middle aged white men god they were such Assholes. The show did a good job of showing Nancy’s frustration and building the misunderstanding conflict between Jonathan and Nancy

•Jancy shippers don’t come for me cause maybe I didn’t notice anything but I feel like there were no real chemistry filled Jancy scenes? They just kept saving the other from getting beat up tbh

•I feel like a lot of the season was taken up but really long fight scenes which made some parts drag a lil

•Time for my absolute favorite part of the season: Steve, Dustin, Robin and Erica- the Scoops Troop

•I absolutely loved this whole dynamic and I found myself waiting for these scenes. Dustin really shone this season and I loved every minute of it. Erica was an amazing addition!! Dustin and Erica is the winning nerd friendship pairing to be honest

•Steve and Dustin!!! Incredible, beautiful, I love them. I feel like they reverted Steve back to a dumbass at the beginning of the season compared to him being kind of emotionally deep after the Nancy breakup in season two. It makes sense given he had his heart shattered and he built a wall back up in hopes to protect himself and find someone new. Dustin pushing this whole Steve and Robin thing is deliciously ironic now which is great.

•Steve and Robin: Best new dynamic. The entire bathroom scene as they’re coming down from being drugged was absolutely beautiful. I started tearing up. Steve being emotionally vulnerable and explaining his heartbreak and bearing his feelings for Robin just wrecked me. Then when he slid under the stall and looked at Robin and she explained how she never liked him and how she likes girls was so perfect. Dumbass Steve said “But Tammy Thompson’s a girl” and then realizing and being fine with it. You can see how scared Robin is and then how relieved she is when Steve is accepting. This is what’s coming out is like. The moment of panic is portrayed really well.

•Steve! Having! A! Badass! Smart! Lesbian! Best friend! Who! Is! Cooler! Than! Him! Instead! Of! Getting! Another! Half-Assed Love Interest Story Line!

•I am worried though that’s the duffer brother’s are giving us an openly gay character hoping to “satisfy” us so they can keep queerbaiting Will rather than making him gay

•The whole Murray x Alexie storyline wasn’t amazing and I loved every second of it. I was genuinely heartbroken when they killed Alexie he was shaping up to be one of much favorites

•Billy’s “redemption” at the end where El breaks through to him while retelling the childhood scenes he showed her and then he goes against the Mindflayer was expected but the way they did it was so heartwrenching I’ll give the obvious turn of events a pass. Hi, seeing Max cry over Billy Killed Me, that poor girl

•Finally, Hoppers death. Fuck you stranger things team. No matter how annoying Hopper was this season, how could you guys do that’s to El?? To us?? That letter just about killed me, I started loudly sobbing halfway through and I didn’t finish till twenty minutes later. I’m also not 100% sure he’s actually dead just saying...

•There’s more but this is already So Much so I’ma leave it at this as I literally just started typing and I haven’t even proof read it. I’m so sorry I didn’t mean for this to be so long but

•PLEASE! If anyone wants to discuss anything I said here or just the season in general please message me

TL:DR- I loved the Scoops Troop storyline, especially how they handled Steve/Robin. I loved the Elmax friendship and El’s character development independent from Mike. Alexie was basically my favorite. They should’ve used Will more and I’m mad they basically killed Byler

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slowpocalypsecooking · 4 years

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the top 8 tracks on folklore from least to most embarrassing to enjoy

Hi I’m Anthony Fantano and welcome to the needle drop. I don’t know if he says that, because I don’t watch him—if I wanted to listen to a repulsive white man talk about music, I could just go on a date. (just kidding, covid!)

Forgoing any further introduction, here are the top eight tracks from Taylor Swift’s new album, low-caps “folklore,” ranked from least embarrassing to most embarrassing to enjoy, according to me. The whole album is 16 tracks long, but I’m only doing the most noteworthy half because 16 is too many. You’re welcome for that decision.

Methodology: To get on this list, songs had to be both embarrassing and enjoyable. There will be natural fluctuation between tracks, but as we go down the list, assume that the songs are getting increasingly better to listen to and worse to think about, like this:

The rankings:

8. cardigan

This is a song about feeling at times like an unloved trash bag, as we all do, and then being warmly reminded that you matter because you are in fact someone’s fallback. The hook goes:

and when i felt like i was an old cardigan under someone’s bed you put me on and said i was your favorite.

Beyond reveling in this pathetic status, this song serves as an admission that the speaker a. uses the word “cardigan” and b. thinks of those bland, preppy sweaters as a comforting thing to wear. In a cooler universe, this song would be called “flannel.” It is just okay to listen to.

7. mad woman

This song has big Ophelia vibes, big Handmaid’s Tale vibes, big “daughter of the witches you couldn’t burn” vibes. One of the verses contains the line “and women like hunting witches too,” because, hey, woman-on-woman misogyny is bad, didn’t you know. Strong reminder that if being called crazy is the worst form of oppression you’ve experienced, you still have it pretty good. Sometimes sounds decent, sometimes too croony.

6. invisible string

This one uses a pretty lazy, commonplace device: She opens couplets within verses by just naming colors, and uses these to create a simple repetitive structure for introducing random, useless details:

green was the color of the grass where i used to read at centennial park i used to think i would meet somebody there teal was the color of your shirt when you were sixteen at the yogurt shop you used to work at to make a little money

Sure this device is tired, but that’s only the surface of what’s embarrassing here. More embarrassing is the image I’ve conjured of a teal-shirted teenage boy smiling through his braces behind the toppings station at one of those blindingly lit American-kawaii froyo stores. I don’t know who needs to hear this but don’t fuck the froyo boy. Song is pretty catchy.

5. illicit affairs

Title says it all here: This song is about how thrilling and fun and ultimately horrible it is to be involved in a romantic situation you’re not supposed to be in, and how that forbidden sheen can get you totally enthralled with a crappy garbage man. Not a whole lot going on below the surface. This song is both very enjoyable and very embarrassing because it is very relatable.

4. seven

We are back to the aggressive levels of white woman previously seen in “mad woman,” only the case has gotten much more severe. Here’s this song’s final chorus:

Sweet tea in the summer Cross my heart, won’t tell no other And though I can't recall your face I still got love for you Pack your dolls and a sweater We'll move to India forever Passed down like folk songs Our love lasts so long

Okay let’s just skate past the part where a presumed adult is telling a fellow adult (I sure hope!) to bring their dolls when they run away together. That in itself is too big a can of worms to crack open. What I want to talk about is the line “We’ll move to India forever,” which pretty obviously uses an Orientalist fantasy of India as some nebulous, ethereal image of the East. Real people don’t live there; it’s the exotic dreamland where sweet-tea drinking southern belles bring their adult toys when they elope. This song is very catchy.

3. betty

Let me start by saying that now that we’re in the top three, all of the remaining songs are vying for the #1 slot. I could very easily see this and the next as the Most Embarrassing to Enjoy. But “betty” is clocking in at number three today.

This is a song about a teenage romance gone bad, in which a speaker named James (who is “only seventeen, I don’t know anything”) has cheated on a girlfriend (Betty) and is now considering showing up at her party, begging for forgiveness, and hoping for a kiss in the garden. We get the backstory in the bridge:

I was walking home on broken cobblestones Just thinking of you when she pulled up like A figment of my worst intentions She said "James, get in, let's drive" Those days turned into nights Slept next to her, but I dreamt of you all summer long

First of all, “figment” of “intentions” is not really a phrase? But secondly, and more importantly: Excited bloggers all over the internet have posted a smattering of theories detailing why this song is Taylor Swift’s coded revelation that she actually maybe fucks girls, too, y’know, and hey, maybe the object of this song is the supermodel Karlie Kloss, whose middle name is Elizabeth. Apparently Taylor Swift is named after James Taylor, so she could be James, or at the very least James could be a woman. I’m going to allow for the possibility that the speaker “James” is a woman, because why not; it does not change the narrative. But said narrative doesn’t make sense: who is this woman pulling up next to James and picking them up on the cobblestone? Did James really spend all summer with her, and if so, why? James is only seventeen by the time they get back to ask Betty’s forgiveness, so like, where the hell are James’s parents? Do they not care that their child has gone off for the whole summer with a person I can only picture as a cheetah-print-and-goggles-wearing divorcee driving a convertible?

Furthermore, the Karlie Kloss/Taylor Swift fan theories are gross for the simple reason that these two tall skinny white women look pretty much exactly the same. What is it with the internet’s obsession with wanting practically identical people to hook up? There might be an incest thing going on there that you guys could stand to reflect on. And on the more cynical conspiracy-theorizing side, couldn’t this just be some convenient queerbaiting? Didn’t Taylor Swift get criticized for appropriating gay rhetoric and imagery for “You Need to Calm Down,” like, 20 minutes ago? If she were going to come out, wouldn’t it have been an ideal moment to do so when she was under fire for that? I’m not saying all celebrities are shallow opportunists, but, you know, maybe.

This song is infectious. You will need to lobotomize me to get it out of my head.

2. exile

I know I originally said this was gonna be number one but I lied. It is pretty rough, though. This track features Bon Iver, and it’s not the high-pitched sad boy of “Skinny Love” renown. This Bon Iver is deep-voiced and country, like Bon Iver playing Tim McGraw in an uncomfortable SNL parody. Also, the whole song is centered around the tired and overused metaphor that a person is a place, and the person the speaker is pining after is home, and the speaker is in exile because they can’t go home to the person they love. It’s a heartache-ballad, cry-sing in your car, absolute jam.

1. the last great american dynasty

I really tried not to let this be number one. I really didn’t want it to be, which is precisely why it is. This was the track that first alerted me to the entire album’s release, because Ed Markey supporters on Twitter seized on it and decided it was about the downfall of the Kennedy family. It is not. The opening verse goes:

Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train, it was sunny Her saltbox house on the coast took her mind off St. Louis Bill was the heir to the Standard Oil name and money And the town said, "How did a middle-class divorcée do it?" The wedding was charming, if a little gauche There's only so far new money goes They picked out a home and called it "Holiday House"

This is very obviously about a real couple, Rebekah and William (Bill) Hale Harkness, who had a real mansion in Rhode Island that they called “Holiday House.” The Harkness name is on basically every building in Connecticut and a lot of the Northeast because Stephen Harkness, Bill Hale Harkness’s great uncle, was a founder of Standard Oil along with John D. Rockefeller. In 2013, Taylor Swift bought the property known as “Holiday House,” as she says in the song:

Fifty years is a long time Holiday House sat quietly on that beach Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits And then it was bought by me

The cool, fun, left-ish internet reading of this song is that it’s a revolutionary tale about toppling class hierarchy—getting a hold of wealth and bringing the institution that created it to its knees by… “fill[ing] the pool with champagne”? How much would that amount of champagne even cost? This is not a song about revolution. Taylor Swift didn’t storm into the Standard Oil house and burn it down or take it over; she bought it. It is not a song about destabilizing the ruling class. It’s a song about joining it.

It absolutely fucking slaps, unfortunately.

#taylor swift #folklore #i am putting this in the tumblr tags in lowkey hopes that a rabid taylor swift fan will see and come after me #come on that would be funny

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citrussunrises · 4 years

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pretty much all of my thoughts on tros (new star wars movie spoilers!!!)

ok so clearly i just saw tros and like i don’t care if it was a flawed movie i don’t care if the storytelling sucked or it wasn’t true to the series or if the characters were inconsistent or the directing or it was cliche or how much of it was just a marketing ploy or anything you can throw at me. i just really loved the movie. and of course i’m really sad that rey and ben didn’t get to like be together, but i got the best and most realistic ending i could ask for. because even though to me there’s a clear line between kylo and ben, to the republic and the resistance there wouldn’t be. i can’t imagine he could just come home. so he’s just, he sacrificed himself for the cause he loved, for his family, and the girl he loves. and i just, they saw each other. they really saw each other. they didn’t see each other as what side they’re on or what mask they wear or anything they just. saw each other. and i’m just so full of emotions.

i read a post about how adam driver changes how he acts the character from kylo to ben and honestly it makes so much sense. ben is such a beautiful character -- he’s curious and nerdy and loving and tender and desperate and just wants to love and be loved -- and he’s so distorted by kylo. which is why i loved tlj so so much. it slowed star wars down. normally the movies feel just too action too fast too much. but tlj felt like it slowed down and focused on the peopel -- which i Loved. and you kind of see hints of it with tros. (i know that’s the difference between directors.) but ben, ben loves his family, and he’s desparate to go back. he’s so scared that he’s gone beyond repair. he’s so young and he has so much power at his disposal. he’s in too deep and he just kind of hits a point (rey plays such a hand in this) that he just wants to get out.

and there’s such a genuine connection with rey and ben. they’re both stuck -- trapped by their greater role, their connection with the force, and their lineage/family. they’re trapped and scared and overwhelmed. but they see each other eye to eye. they understand each other. kylo’s an edgy white boy who thinks he’s invincible. ben, ben’s just scared.

and ben at the end of the movie?? amazing. i just want to watch that over and over and over again. how he just goes immediately to rey. the connection they have. the comfort they give each other. how he crawls (crawls!) to her. how he revives her. how they kiss. how they hold each other so tenderly. the love in their eyes. the sweetness and understanding. aggh! not to be a hopeless romantic on main but i just, i can’t breathe. it was so good.

on another note!!! they did rose so dirty!!!!!!!!!! she’s such a good character and i love her so much!!!!!!!!!!!! she’s such a unique character and so different from so many other female characters out there. she’s curious and she’s bold and she’s brave and she’s tender and she’s, she’s lovely. and i see myself in her. because she’s not the like traditional hollywood type beautiful, but she’s so beautiful to me, you know? and they just, threw her away. made her an extra. and i don’t know what behind the scenes stuff happened to downgrade her from a beautiful, important character to just another person, but it bums me out. she deserves better.

also!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they threw so many things out there they just, never addressed again. i really liked poe getting some backstory and how he was a spice trader and everyone’s reaction to it, but they threw in the girl just to assert that poe’s straight. like come on. and she was such a cool character, but he sole purpose was to make poe look straight and look like a player. and he’s not. disney really wanted us to see him as a flirt and a player, but he’s just not. he’s tender and he’s loving and he’s sweet. he loves his friends and he loves his droid and he loves his cause and he loves those he looks up to. and he’s passionate and intense and. and he’s just not the heartless player they wanted him to be.

and finn!!!!!!! good man!!!!!!! i can’t believe they set him up for a romance with rose (felt forced, but i wasn’t too mad about it) and then just!!!!!! threw it away!!!!! never addressed it again!!!!!!!!! and how finn was going to tell rey something before they got sucked into space quicksand?????? what was that supposed to be!!!!!!!!

and honestly y’all, if disney wasn’t like queerbaiter supreme, i totally would’ve expected poe and finn to end up together. and i’m kind of conflicted on this for a few reasons. first off, i hate that every time that people see a real, intimate, lovely friendship between males they automatically decide they’re gay. male friendship is so important and it’s so overlooked and downplayed -- in life and in the media. i’d Love to see friendships between guys taken more seriously. but at the same time, we Know oscar isaac was playing up the romance. like absolutely playing up the love and yearning. come on dudes.

and i’m glad that they didn’t try to force rey to be with either poe or finn. i was so sure they’d force her to be with poe and honestly i’d be so mad if they did. it would be too predictable and too cliche. and her friendship with finn is just to precious and too beautiful to throw away and manufacture into romance. her and ben though? they understand each other. they see each other. they know.

and i don’t love that she says she’s rey skywalker at the end. i get that she did it to pay homage to luke and leia -- and honestly also to ben -- but i just didn’t love it. i think it would have been so much more powerful for her to just be rey. but at the same time, i get that belonging and belonging to a family is so important for her. and calling herself a skywalker meant for her belonging as a jedi, as a part of the resistance, belonging among her friends and her mentors. i get why she did it, and i get what it meant to her. but i just would’ve rather seen her as just rey. but not the thing i’m the most mad about.

also, i just felt like at times the movie felt forced intense. like i got so caught up with how forced intense palpatine was (admittedly, i’ve never seen the prequels. sorry. just never happened. so i don’t care as much about palpatine as i could.) and the whole stadium of sith cult that i missed some really beautiful and tender moments with rey and ben.

i feel like any one star wars movie is something that you have to look at as a cultural piece of something bigger than itself and as a happening in universe. like, perhaps it doesn’t make sense for all these people to show up for no reason or all these people to be related or chewie to finally get his medal or tons of people showing up to fight at that last battle stuff like that like within the story, but when you look at the movie as a piece of something bigger, it’s kind of beautiful and kind of sweet. but you of course also have to look at is as people doing things in a world. i don’t know this paragraph makes the least sense but i stand by it. if something seems cliche you gotta understand that star wars movies aren’t just stories, they’re cultural icons. and so there’s a bit of dignity and love that goes with it.

so all this to say, tros was flawed. oh well. i enjoyed it. i enjoyed it as a piece of the greater star wars brilliance. i enjoyed it as a piece of art that made me feel and made me think. the entire time i was rocking and fidgeting and twisting and gasping. it was flawed, but i see those flaws as disney and the corporation and the powers that be getting in the way of what the movie, the story, the piece wants to be. it’s flawed, but it’s beautiful. and it’s something that’ll stick with me forever.

i might add to this later when i have more thoughts. but there’s no space for me to discuss them irl so i just. i have so many thoughts and feelings. art is supposed to make you feel something, and this made me feel a whole lot of somethings. and i love it.

#tros #tros spoilers #star wars #star wars spoilers #the rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker spoilers #m

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raelee514 · 5 years

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So here is the thing.

Going into the Magician’s finale, I thought they were going to kill off Alice. This is an important note. Going into the finale, I had not liked the sudden retread of Qualice, not for Queliot reasons at all, for Alice reasons and Q reasons. I was baffled by it and totally confused as to why they would go back there. And my thought was they giving Alice something to rip it away -- by killing her. Cause hey, they were right that was more expected than Quentin.

So Me watching the show live: OMG IT’S QUENTIN NOT ALICE. It was relieving to me, fucking relieving. I admit it, I also admit I watched EVERYTHING play out with the thought: It’s Q, he’s coming back. No matter how final this all feels, like wow this feels more like a series finale (did they not realize when they wrote this they were gonna get the early season five pick up.) It didn’t ping wrong for me, at all, Q dying because it was with the expectation that it wasn’t final.

So, satisfied with it, cause it felt resonant and while tragic and sad not totally unearned giving the facts my brain was working with. It won’t be final, thank god it wasn’t Alice, cause I thought that might be final and what an unfair end for her. Get on Twitter, realize Jason isn’t coming back -- thought for some reason it was his call, misread something or it was how all the interviews are phrasing it (he was in on the decision.) But didn’t really read the interviews deeply or anything. Saw people were pissed but did feel, since I was so sure it was gonna be Alice, at least it was the safe guy for once..

BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT.

Okay, here is the thing both before I went to bed last night and got online today. I deal with depression and anxiety, oh the anxiety, but I’ve never really been suicidal (I don’t know if has to do with me knowing my mother a sister young and I lost my father young and I know what grief does to do the living or it’s just me, I think it might be a combination of this.) But i don’t struggle with that thing-- so I didn’t see the POV until later of HOW FUCKING DANGEROUS showing Quentin being happy at what was basically a FUNERAL for him was to people with suicidal ideation. And the show, THE SHOW KNOWS this is something he deals with, they KNEW enough to show a hotline at the end of the episode. And really, they never should have meant it to be ambigious if his sacrifice was at all suicidal. Just no, OMG. Not at all. And yes, I needed this pointed out, and I feel guilty about it. BUT THEY are running a show, they have more responsibility put on them and they really truly should have put more thought in this. I read it at the time as no, no way it was... I thought they meant that reading head on. But that’s not been what’s said since and that is just monumentally STUPID AS FUCK.

Now let’s talk the trope they were subverting versus who Quentin Coldwater is...

He was the safe guy. He was the Ansty Typical White Dude. And yes, Quentin was those arch types, he was that guy in the story. The problem is, that is what he was when the show started, but as the show started to become it’s own thing separate from the books they were based on... Quentin was subverted into something so much deeper, he was no longer just his surface arch type. He was the guy with crippling mental health issues, he was the guy who wasn’t straight, he was distinctly Queer, mostly read as Bisexual. He was someone who was trying to not be what the world wanted That Angsty White Dude. the show was great at subversion, they took what could have been another boring white guy character and made him DEEPER.

So the idea, that they A) Only actually saw him at superficial level of that White Guy, from the showrunners/creators is well frankly said. And B) the thought they thought Q’s story was OVER, when clearly it wasn’t when he had these deep feelings for Eliot his male friend, that he’s never in this current life gotten to explore or express. That Q wasn’t still constantly fighting to live, that Q didn’t get to have his story end on LIVING. Narratively the character was far from finished, in season three, which is when they decided this... and in Season Four. If they did anything with him, it was expose a deeper layer, his love and want to try with Eliot, that was something new, and exciting. They were meant to be closing his story though?

Which how did they do this? When it worked for me it was because a) 100% thought it would not be permanent and b) thought the actor, an external factor pushed them into the thought. But no it was C) We think his story is over, so we’ll do one of the most tired and overused tropes out there in the world and kill him off. But it will be subversive because he’s the Safe White Guy.

ONLY HE WASN’T.

They got their own character WRONG.

And it is SO disappointing because this show can be super smart, it can be super fresh and so good at not being tired and treading unoriginal ground. And this is just such a disappointing step in the wrong direction. Made worse, because I truly thought they were smarter. And narratively they didn’t sell throughout the season from first episode to last episode that was meant to be Quentin’s swan song season. If anything they did the episode and were setting him for more growth and that goes into the Queerbaiting because itw as focusedon Eliot.

I mean. LOL. They failed so hard on so many levels here. They QB things so hard -- they knew they were killing him off, they never EVER should have had his declaration of wanting a relationship with Eliot be Eliot’s most traumatic memory. EVER. They made it explicitly canon. It’s a show that had us believing they were fresher and different than other shows out there -- they knew better, they subvert bad tropes.

They chose the wrong trope to try to subvert here. They failed it hard. And have hurt so many people. And the sad thing is, I know they won’t get it, they never do.

#the magicians #cw: suicide #quentin coldwater #queliot

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akria23 · 5 years

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I think this needs to be said because I think there's a lack of understanding as to why I and a few others are coming at fandom about accountability in the situation of lgbqt representation and Queliot and the Magicians show. Def those of us who don't come in a gentle manner.

People are speaking to fandom because fandom holds an accountability l, they hold a power and they realease that power so easily to the detriment of the lgbqt and their representation. The fact is a lot of you pretend to care about the lgbqt community - a lot of you claim to be supporters and will speak over us in the wrong manners but none of y'all are showing up to the conversations lgbqt members of the fandom keep trying to include you in and it's because you honestly care more about a ship than the representation of real bodies and real lives.

Let's just put it on the table - to support is not an inaction. Just because you watch m/m couples. Doesn't mean you support the members of the community. Just because you raise your voice to meta about the Magicians and Queliot does not mean you support the community. All these things possible mean is that you either accept or worse you fetishize - and I'm not picking which box you subscribe to I'm just saying those are your options. To support is to listen, and find what part you can play in dismembering the status quo. You guys are not only disregarding our issues but then also upholding the status quo by creating excuse that allows you to be inactive in that destruction. We all agree that we do not like or appreciate the turn this season took because of x,y,z. You gues then only ran with the x portion (Queliot being up on the back burner) of that because it had to deal with your desires (wanting a ship) and ignored y & z (lgbqt relations not being depicted fairly & the lgbqt sexual identities not being used against the community).

And let me explicitly state this because I know some people are gonna try it - Queliot (or any other m/m/Queer ship) being end game does not mutually mean that lgbqt relations have been fairly depicted or that the sexual identities of that community wasn't used in damaging ways against said community (aka poor/bad representation). To be specific when y'all say things like "They can just form a 3some with Alice" or "This is a set up for a triangle" understand that even if one of those things were to happen it does possibly facilitate your wishes of Queliot ending up together but thays yet agin unfair to the implications to bisexuals (def when they've already implied things that set up that damage) - they've already set up this image that Q sexuality isn't on par and then to make it where his ending up with Eliot is only in the byproduct of Alice being tied to the relationship only furthers those damaging implications. As far as the triangle aspect - arguably they've been in a triangle and they've done more damage than good with the imagery. As I've said before anytime they give use the Queer sequence they no homo it with having Q fall back on the crutch of the female form - and this isnt speaking on bisexuality because they ignore all the buildup and Queer aspects that happened with Eliot as tho they didn't happen and revert back to subtext. So no, for us it's not about Queliot happening but about how they and any other queer relations take place because it speaks onto us. And if you're just shouting that you'll take Queliot no matter how you can get them that's not wanting good representation, like I said - that's wanting a ship.

So yeah some of us may come for your throats - as we should! It's 2019. As a person in the community I'm sick and tired of people in fandoms not being held accountable. Nobody has time to coddle y'all when time and time again we're still being treated like trash, when we still struggle to see ourselves portrayed on tv/film with as least possible damage. Straight up - if you're not helping, if you're siting around telling those who speak up to be silent, that it's not that deep, that the production team mean no harm - if you're making excuses and claiming that we have to be nice to get a ship y'all are cowards, y'all are ignorant, and you're a problem. If you're just out for a ship then be about that - don't sit around here pretending like you care about real people and the struggles that we face. And I'm not just gonna those heterosexual this - if you're apart of the community and you're doing these things, if being silent, no joining the dialogue or starting your own then you're the same them...if not worse. Just fucking do better - or don't pretend that you're doing at all.

Also I'm sure some of y'all want me to stop posting in ya tag - I will not. I advise you block me cause I got something important to say and I'll be damned if I'll sit around while another show goes 11 season without us having these conversations. No ones saying no to Queliot. We're saying we deserve Queliot and we deserve it in its best form and the antics the show has been pulling is not acceptable. This fandom has problems and there's no denying it. There was over 400 reblogs/likes for a post that appreciated the Magicians having Queer characters and denies claims of Queerbait and yet only a handful (the same people mind you) show up on post that points out the issues of Magicians and how they deal with these sexualities and the characters that portray them. That's very telling. You same people will make excuses about how 4x05 is a tester episode to gauge how Queliot would be accepted as though to say that everything afterwards is understandable and had to be done...fuck that! For one they don't do that with any heterosexual relationship they want to push - we get no testers for them l. In fact they've done Qualice and we keep saying we don't want and we still got Qualice over Queliot. The fact that you think it's justifies and explains their actions speaks on your views of the lgbqt community as well.

That's why we're talking to you. Because y'all are engaging in disgusting antics and we're not gonna give you a pass just like we're not willing to give the Magicians one.

#the magicians #queliot #representation

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seakittens · 6 years

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Free! vs. Toxic Masculinity

So I was thinking the other day about how people always project negative stereotypes on Free, accusing it of queerbaiting and shallowness and other things of that nature. I disagree with most of this, and wanted to take an opportunity to highlight something that I think Free does really well compared to other sportsani or shows primarily focused on guys. Something that I think sets it apart from other shows considered fangirl-bait. And that’s the way it deals with and confronts concepts of toxic masculinity.

I am not going to provide a whole explanation of toxic masculinity. If you want a full refresher, watch this. But for the sake of this discussion, it’s the idea that traits such as showing emotion, non-aggressive friendships and likes associated with femininity (flowers, love of fluffy things, children) are “feminine-coded” and therefore bad for a man to embrace. Toxic masculinity champions men who shun emotions, turn friendships into competitions and reject “girly” likes.

So how does Free handle this concept? Well, first I’d like to point out that I think part of the answer to this is why I reject the notion that Free (the show, not the marketing) is shipbaiting. I believe the intent of Free is just to portray relationships. It just so happens that these male relationships are different than what most audiences are used to when it comes to male friendships, and the result is behavior that people extrapolate to mean more. I’m not saying this extrapolation is wrong, just that I don’t believe it’s the show’s intent. Free wants to tell a story about friendship, about male friendship, about healthy, positive male friendship. And that’s something that simply just isn’t done often.

Most male friendships in anime are characterized by competition and that competition is viewed, in many cases but not all, as a negative thing. A thing that must be overcome in order for a deeper friendship to result. The push is that the characters stop seeing each other as something to overcome. You will find this in most shonen anime, which honestly has some of the deepest male friendships.

Free turns this concept on its head. Obviously, you have the deep childhood friendship between Makoto and Haruka, which is characterized by support and trust but without the senpai trope that is usually attached to male friendships of this nature. You have the friendships between Nagisa and Haruka, which should be the annoying shota and the tsundere, but Haruka thinks highly of Nagisa and really grows based on his insight. Again, there’s is not so much the senpai trope because as much as Nagisa idolizes Haruka, he also teaches him.

And then you have Free’s champion of rejecting toxic masculinity: Rin. Rin is a character defined by emotions. And while some are the typical masculine aggressiveness and competitiveness, he’s also known for his sensitivity, tears, and tendency to burst into flowery speeches about love and friendship. Rin is framed as your typical jock in his skill, build and even shark-tooth antagonist aesthetic. But his personality is anything but.

Rin’s tears are not mocked but embraced. They are viewed as a positive thing by other men. Haruka encourages them, to the point of smiling when he sees Rin shed them. Sousuke encourages them, even to the point of giving Rin space so he can cry. Rin openly cries at romantic movies, overt displays of friendship and sheer happiness. This embracing of male tears is why the odd line from Makoto to Nagisa in ES 13 feels so jarring. "Boys don't cry." I don't even have an answer for that one. It was just 0_o.

Yes, Rin is embarrassed and tries to hide his tears because Rin is still tied up in biases of masculinity, the same way he tries to defend himself when he's being too sappy, but that Rin can still bring himself to shed them is significant. Rin does have traces of toxic masculinity as a result of his character trope. Rin has grown up without his father and assuming he had to be "man of the house."

But Rin is also presented as the guy who loves flowers and romance, adopts stray cats and talks about dreams. Again, this goes very much against the image Rin presents as the jock bad boy. It's much different that the typical depiction of male friendships as dudes being jerks to each other even when they're bros.

But, Kitty, you cry, Rin is a jerk in S1 of Free. Right, you are. And this is viewed as an aberration to Rin's original personality and something that must be understood, and with help, overcome. That is the plot of S1. That Rin is the jerky rival is the trope. The twist is that Rin is not actually the jerky rival and is actually emotionally trouble and under the impression that his previous sentiments were wrong. Something he abandons in S1.

So supportive male relationships are the key to both the climax in S1 and in S2, with Haruka's anxieties. Which is nice to see and a theme that I hope continues in S3.

Then we have Rin and Haruka's relationship. This is probably my favorite part about how Free tackles toxic masculinity. Free takes the perceived main conflict of Rin vs. Haruka's rivalry (whereupon you expect it to resolve when Haruka wins) and makes it more about learning why the negativity of that rivalry is WRONG. So the conclusion to the conflict isn't a final match or even RH working together to defeat a bigger conflict. It's literally just resolving the negativity itself, which is Rin's fear of unimportance to Haruka and Haruka's inability to tell Rin how he really feels. In fact, this confused many original fans who expected the conflict to end with Haruka realizing he doesn't need to fight Rin and then walking away from the rivalry. But the show instead says it's not the rivalry that's the problem, it's the way in which the rivalry is expressed. Which was through toxic masculinity. Rin's need to defeat Haruka.

Once this problem is resolved, the rivalry is less about defeating the other and more about pushing each other to their limits. Which is a supportive rivalry.

Usually in sports anime, the conflict is resolved by defeating the rival and this makes the rival reassess the main and declare them worthy. This creates a deeper relationship that allows them to compete on a more even ground. But Free doesn't care about who wins. It's not about that. It's about the relationship of the characters. Which is why even though in S1, the characters win the race, they are ultimately disqualified. Because the results don't matter. What mattered was resolving the emotional conflict between Rin and Haruka.

And the end result is the extreme example of the opposite of toxic masculinity, which is Rin openly crying, showing physical affection and showing how happy he is to be with his friends again. It's not couched in any shows of feigned masculinity either. Rin doesn't get all flustered by his actions. He openly embraces them. None of the guys is embarrassed; they're just all so happy to be friends again.

Which is why Free leaves so many, including me, with such a positive message. While the latter parts of the series didn't execute this nearly as effectively, they have their overall theme of supportive male relationships amid sports. And I do appreciate how this is carried over into S2 in that Rin's drive to race Haruka is still not about defeating him, but about pushing Haruka to realize just what he can accomplish. Rin doesn't want to defeat Haruka; Rin simply wants to race with Haruka because it makes him happy. And that, in itself, is a really powerful message for male relationships.

Traditional sports anime would have Haruka realize he doesn't NEED to defeat Rin and that he doesn't need their rivalry and leave Rin to stew with his own feelings until he has some sort of epiphany but Free DOUBLES DOWN on the rivalry and says no Haruka DOES need the rivalry to grow. Rin and Haruka beating each other is never treated as a BIG thing, save the time that it was shown as a NEGATIVE thing because of WHY Rin wanted it. The win almost never matters, and it's very important that Haruka's loss isn't a matter of losing to a rival, it's a matter of losing RIN.

So when the whole "it made me just as happy" scene occurs, people might originally think it suggests that anime will take the traditional sports anime route. But Free INVERTS that by having Haruka double down on his need for Rin and their friendship. And yes, Haruka needed to learn HOW to express himself through Iwatobi to be able to reach Rin on that level, so Iwatobi is crucial to the resolution. The show is all about embracing your emotions and opening up. Which is a direct contrast to how men are usually expected to behave.

Then, of course, we have the powerful scenes in ES 12, where Rin openly admits his admiration for his rival. It’s usually something we see a junior say to a senior, not someone his own age. So it means a lot here in terms of openness amid male friendship and healthy rivalry.

But aside from Rin, who pretty much constantly ruins his image with his emotional nature, the Free boys are not concerned with typical notions of masculinity. In fact, in the rare occasions they are, it's almost jarring. So it's not just the overall absence of toxic masculinity that makes Free stand out, but also, unlike other female-targeted shows, it actively CONFRONTS toxic masculinity and shows how it can be overcome. At least to a certain extent.

Oh yeah, I must also point out that I'm not sure if this was Utsumi's original intent or if just a result of her lack of male bias and desire to tell a story exclusively focused on male relationships. We see Kawanami continue this tradition in TYM when Rin is so happy at the idea of just being able to swim with Haruka one more time before he leaves for Australia. "Swimming with you is a great enough surprise." Looking forward to more examples moving forward.

#meta

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xplrvibes · 3 years

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do you think Colby is just kind of oblivious to how many people don’t like BT? I feel like almost no one wants the calendar this year honestly

(TW: Lots of Brennen Taylor talk here, so beware)

Yes and no.

Here the thing: fandoms in general, are a very niche thing. It’s like this weird little bubble that a select few people (in the grand scheme of things) exist in and we can all sometimes forget that just because we know all of this stuff, doesn’t mean everyone does.

Colby has 1.8 million followers on insta (using insta as a basis here cause its he has the highest following on that sm base and he uses it the most). Of those 1.8 million, probably only about 20% are active stan accounts (meaning not ones that aren’t used anymore/backup accounts/fan art accounts/rp accounts, etc) or people who aren’t stan accounts but are in the fandom and in the know. The other 80% of that 1.8 million range from being fans who don’t get involved in fandom stuff but still follow his youtube content, all the way to people who probably saw him in a collab with someone else along the way, thought he was hot, and followed him just for the hot content.

So, of those 20% of active fandom accounts, it honestly seems to me that about 85% either has no clue, or does not believe/care about the accusations.

Now, of the tiny group that you are left with: most of them probably will never outright say anything to Colby, or tag him in anything directly about Brennen. Some people do say things, but they don’t say it directly to Colby. There is a lot of very vague statements that are said that if you aren’t in the know about fandom lingo and what it means, you’ll have no clue what they are saying.

This leaves a very small amount of people who actually have spoken up and tagged Colby in stuff about Brennen...a very small amount. In looking at his most recent instagram post with Brennen, I only caught maybe 5 comments that outright stated Brennen was a bad guy and maybe about 10 comments that were vague fandom shade. Out of almost 3,000 comments. The majority were people thirsting over Colby, or talking about buying the calendar. The likes on the pic were the same amount as he gets in any other pic he posts. Literally, there is no outward difference when he posts with Brennen vs anyone else.

If you look at the youtube views tomorrow, they will probably be on par with any video he has been putting out lately. They aren’t going to tank, because I can promise you that 95% of the people watching his videos on youtube know absolutely nothing about any of this. That’s where all the casual fans are.

And twitter? Well, they are a little more vocal, sure...but not by as much as people think.

To put it in perspective: when all of that stuff with Brennen went down over the summer, he only lost what, 4k followers on twitter? Out of roughly 700k? It may have seemed like a lot at the time, but...that’s less than 1% of his twitter following...and some people probably followed him back after his “apology.”

So, why am I saying all of this? Because, I think it’s important to understand that what we see on tumblr, or what stan twitter or stan insta sees, is only a small part of the cumulative total of what Colby sees, as he is getting the entire damn pie. He probably sees a few people bitching vaguely or outright about Brennen, which is par for the course-he probably gets that when he films with anyone who isn’t Sam/Jake/Corey (honestly, he probably sees more out right hate towards Amber and Shea than he does about Brennen). There are a lot of casual fans and even stans who like when he and Brennen film together, and there are a hell of a lot more who simply don’t care what he does.

So no, I don’t think Colby truly sees how many people don’t like BT, cause he is seeing so much more of the picture than we are.

That being said-Colby seems to be more observant than people realize. We’ve all seen that over the years. I’m sure he knows that there is a portion of the fandom that Does Not Like Brennen. He vaguely addressed it in the video about the queerbaiting, when he said he didn’t want to be associated with the things his friends do. (Now personally, I always thought he meant the fact that Brennen’s an ass who refused to take down the offending videos on his channel or apologize for his part in any of that, but there is room for interpretation there, I suppose)

I’m sure he knows at least a little bit of why people don’t like Brennen-especially since Brennen wrote out that bullshit apology letter and addressed some of the allegations earlier this year. I’m also sure that Brennen has him completely convinced that he’s an innocent, Jesus loving hippie now and those allegations are baseless. Colby only sees a small group of people that doesn’t like Brennen-same as a small group that doesn’t like Shea, Amber, Elton, and probably anyone else he’s ever come into contact with. He simply writes any Brennen hate he does see off in the same way he writes all the other hate off; because yes, he is oblivious to how deep it goes when it comes to Brennen, so he chalks it up to standard fandom hate.

I could be wrong, but that’s honestly how I see it.

#asks

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