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hussyknee · 9 months

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Opened Tumblr and Red White And Royal Blue is number 1 trending. I remember reading through some of your posts on the book, and i think you mentioned there was going to be an adaptation?? And that you were dissapointed with the casting and scared the adaptation will fall short of the substance of the book–or something like that.

I assume the reason it's trending might be because of some recent update about the series or movies production. So what are your thoughts on it?

Aha. Ahahaha. Hahahahahahaha.

Yeah there's a movie that came out last week. It was not just a royal disappointment, but so racist it was like spending two hours being repeatedly slapped in the face.

*rolls up sleeves* This is going to be a long, spoilery Rant. If you liked the movie, don't look under the cut.

The positives: Nicholas Galitzine was perfectly cast as Prince Henry and did his best with what he was given. He and Taylor Zarkar Perez as Alex had great chemistry and were quite unself-conscious in the love scenes. Some of the scenes in the first half (any time Zahra was on screen, the TV interview, the hot and hilarious Red Room scene) were worth the price of admission. Henry explaining the way he negotiated his role as a prince with his sexuality was unexpectedly moving. Amalgamating Secret Service Agents Cash and Amy into a trans woman of colour was a great choice that moved what would have been a side character into the main cast, and Aneesh Seth ate the scenes with Taylor. Rachel Hilson infused her role as Alex's best friend Nora with naturalistic warmth. Major props also to the intimacy co-ordinator. The whole thing with the hands during the sex scene was intimate and erotic.

That said.

I could have made peace with the fact that the characters were obviously much older than the just-out-of-university kids they were in the book. But I wasn't prepared for the character I know and love as Alex to not even be in the movie.

Things that defines my son and personal avatar Alex Claremont-Diaz:

short king rights

ADHD perfectionism

abandonment issues because of parents' divorce

has so much trouble letting people get close to him that his lifelong best friend is his protective, parentified older sister

chaos gremlin

repressed bisexuality

angry intensity and ambition of a burning star

cannot shut up or modulate himself to save his life, puts the offensive in charm offensive

very defensive of his worth as a person of colour in politics and an overachiever because of it

full of swagger and obsessive drive while being five inches away from crashing and burning at all times

Who Alex was in the movie: a laid-back fratty only child with nothing wrong with his life and this one uncharacteristic, inexplicable grudge against this poor white dude.

Said grudge against Henry was made out to be a non-issue that Alex only made into a big deal because he was an immature, petty asshole. Being dismissed by a privileged white person that was handed everything you have to fight for and then being compared to him for years no matter what you did is such a resonant experience for PoC and they just...shat all over it so Henry could make fun of Alex. They even changed what Henry said at their first meeting in the book so that they could make it sound even more ridiculous.

Henry himself was mangled less obviously, mostly because of his actor. But he was made this uwu soft boi out of a Victorian novel who had done nothing wrong in his life ever, instead of an inherently high-strung but hedonistic and fun-loving young guy struggling against institutionalized homophobia and lack of mental health support.

Which, you know, fine. I didn't expect this movie to capture any of the nuances in the book or even accurately portray the characters. I wanted to see two hot guys romance the fuck out of each other and have sexy times.

But producer Greg Berlanti's brand isn't just failing to meet expectations, it's creating new and exciting ways to fuck over women and minorities from wholecloth. Unlike the book, the villain of the movie is not the homophobic, abusive head of the British Royal Family. Nor is it the GOP Presidential candidate who in the book has the boys outed to sabotage Alex's mother's Presidential campaign. Instead, the villain is a queer Latino political journalist motivated by sexual jealousy. This character was created expressly for the movie to replace both Alex's gay best friend from high school as his first same sex encounter and the heroic gay Latino senator who was the key to unravelling the GOP plot in the book.

How do you amalgamate two characters of marginalized identities, one of whom is a heroic figure, and make them the villain instead of the characters that represent cis heteropatriachal white supremacy?? Because as I predicted, the King isnt even a bad guy. He's more a befuddled blustering old dude who even validates the boys' relationship although he's too concerned with appearances to consent to it.

What the fuck. What kind of racist, homophobic, white apologist, spineless CW bullshit is this????

(Also what is with Alex going on about being working class?? Latinos aren't working class by default?? The boy grew up the son of two senators and was captain of the fuckin lacrosse team??? He hasn't been working class a day in his life?? Henry even ribs him about it when he sees Alex's childhood home?? Are they going out of their way to make Alex look stupid??)

Given all of that, plus cutting out the book's principal Latina character (Alex's sister), and refusing to make Alex's mother President Claremont a divorcee with a blended family, an ugly pattern emerges in the treatment of this movie's women and minorities. In the book, Henry's mother is emotionally absent because the death of her husband precipitated a mental health spiral that she finally pulls out of when her son is outed. In the movie, she had left her kids behind after Arthur died and fucked off to Botswana for environmentalism (interesting choice) and never comes back. In the book, Henry's older sister Bea is a leather jacketed rocker rebel child as protective over her brother as a lioness over her cub– a sibling dynamic mirrored in Alex and June's relationship (this book is about parentified older sisters actually). In the movie she was made into his younger sister who had no personality other than flowery dresses and being his girlish confidante. Henry's Nigerian best friend Pez who is canonically a flamboyant, larger-than-life, billionaire genius had like three lines in the movie and might as well have been a cardboard cutout. Alex's best friend and US Second Granddaughter Nora's Jewish identity was completely erased (as was her whole personality). Worse, they cast a non-Jewish Black woman in the role and left her to handle the blowback for it, which is Berlanti's typical M.O. Oh, but the UK prime minister who was in the movie for five seconds was a Black woman! Totally not a token to shield against any accusation of racism and white liberal douchebaggery!

How the fuck do they expect props for "representation" when they erase, minimize and tokenize literally everyone who isn't a cis white guy?? Not even heterosexual rom coms with all-white casts are this hostile to women and non-white people.

On a purely technical level the movie was terrible too. The sets looked cheap and artificial, there was no crowded, high-energy feeling in any of the election scenes. One of the book's pivotal scenes sees Alex literally storming the castle by standing outside Kensington Palace getting drenched in the rain and shouting for Henry to get his ass down there until he's nearly removed by security. In the movie Alex is quietly let in by the staff and wanders into Henry's room inexplicably wet, like he'd been standing under a showerhead, and begins monologuing at Henry. The late night V&A excursion and slow dance in the book, that was a reflection of Henry's wistful, joyful inner world, is vacant, still and aimless in the movie. Alex made his historic public address to the country about their relationship without Henry, before he could even get to him (and the King wants to claim the emails are fake afterwards??). The fucking emails! Were! Missing! Except for like, one. Waterloo vase where?? Why would we even care about the emails being leaked if we never even got to see the intimacy and aching tenderness and open love in them??

They also kept shoehorning in lines from the book into the dialogue so that key lines like "History, huh?" sounded painfully clunky and awkward. Between Taylor's wooden acting, atrocious pacing and the self-conscious script, all the story's most romantic moments landed with a splat. You couldn't feel the emotional stakes in any of it. I deadass stopped watching twice because I was so bored and had to make myself sit through the last part.

(Maybe it's because I'm asexual and my love of smut, great as it, depends heavily on context, but– what was the point of Taylor's gratuitous bare-ass shot? Was that compensation for having kept the guys' crotches five feet apart at all times? What?)

Look, I was ready and willing to give director Matthew Lopez his flowers but he gave us a box of calcified shite. This is why I keep calling representation politics a white supremacist grift. It's a way of making cosmetic, token changes in exchange for retaining the core status quo with all its bigotry and bias while using our own artists and characters as a shield. It makes our talent both vulnerable to and complicit in the narratives spun by white institutions. No amount of female and queer Black and brown people at the helm will serve us justice if the ship belongs to white colonizers.

The best that can be said about the movie is that it makes the book look brilliant by comparison. And the book itself is a half-assed attempt at QPoC representation and generally middling, but draws in pathological fangirls like myself by having a compelling main couple and main cast, beautifully tender love letters, being peak white USAmerican Brand Hopium, and hitting every fanfic trope with a mallet. Being a mediocre white mess that gets a little worse when you look too closely at it is a prerequisite for me to obsess over something.

But if you want to an actual good book with the same appeal, read Alexis Hall's Boyfriend Material and Husband Material. Those are iconic. Hall's books are less "diverse" (how I hate that word) but a lot more honest and queer. (Queerness is fundamentally leftist* motherfuckers. Neoliberal queerness is just white bourgeois resentment at being marginalized).

*Well, Arden St. Ives trilogy isn't, but sometimes you just wanna get fucked by a billionaire in the fun way.

#asks #anon #knee of huss #anti RWRB #anti RWARB #RWRB negative #queer representation #queer media #QPoC #racism #antisemitism #queerphobia #misogyny #white liberals #white supremacy #hollywood #anti greg berlanti

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veggiesforpresident · 10 months

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im sorry i need to be a hater on main RWRB is just NOT a good book

- the dialogue feels like the author googled "british slang" and "latino slang" and dropped a couple references in. after reasing aristotle and dante it just felt SO jarring how fake it comes off

- theyre literally not even rivals?? they dislike each other for 2 chapters but its clearly just a repressed crush on both sides?

- MC realizes hes bi and immediately flashes back to remembering he spent like a year making out with his boy best friend? my dude im pretty sure men do not do that.

- the white gay one is The Bottom ofc

- they flirt via their PROFESSIONAL emails? that later get hacked?? bro what did you expect?? fucking idiots?

- the pacing is just weird and the characters feel very flat and just not interesting. nothing in the book stuck out to me at all.

#anti rwrb #fandom wank #sorry if youre scrolling the rwrb tag and see this im Trying to tag appropriately

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noahczreny · 9 months

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i want to hear all ur rwrb movie thoughts x

OOF OKAY buckle up this is gonna be a long one. i'll put everything under a read more because i really really didnt like the movie and also it's gonna be spoilery

but i will leave my one opinion that has no bearing on anything above which is THEY FUCKED THE TURKEY SCENE WHICH IS ONE OF MY FAV SCENES IN THE WHOLE BOOK. i wanted alex to say "puttheturkeysinmyroomputtheturkeysinmyroomputtheturkeysinmyroom" to the fucking president and then have a complete meltdown about the gobble and it DIDNT HAPPEN

also i should probably mention that ive read this book like 7 times and it's my comfort read so im v close to the source material

i really feel like they took out all of the heart in the story. i was reading that variety article that said they wanted to take out everything that wasnt focused just on the relationship or whatever but everything in their lives is what makes the relationship so GOOD and relatable. they took out all of the angst and pining and buildup and made the characters so flat and i didn't believe a single thing about their relationship.

the characters truly felt like different people. alex had none of the desperation that he does in the books. we dont see him teetering on the edge of everything and barely holding it together while pretending everything is completely fine. we don't see him working SO hard to ignore everything bad in his life while pretending he's just this golden boy who has his whole life figured out. we don't see him working so hard towards his almost unattainable political goals while simultaneously trying to prove himself. we don't see his meltdowns and panic attacks and insomnia. we don't see henry being the boy who just wants to be a writer but is forced into this role that he doesn't fit into. we don't see him spilling his guts in emails because he can finally talk about all of the things he's kept hidden and found someone he can finally be himself with who doesn't just see him as the perfect little princeling. we don't get to see his deep grief and depression or his anxiety about being out in public and always being on display or the constant battle he has about his duty to his country and just wanting to be himself. he kinda just turned into this broy prince dude who was kinda concerned about being gay and also being a prince but also sorta didnt really seem to care?

the fact that they made alex kinda know he was bi before the story started also completely changed his entire character. we don't get to see him figuring out parts of himself with henry, we don't get to struggle with trying to figure out what it means to be bi and also want the reddest parts of the US to relate to him. we don't even get the convo he has with nora about him being bi, it just got turned him whether or not he likes henry which felt way less impactful. also, keeping his parents together made parts of the story not even make sense. like why the fuck did they go to lake house to meet his dad if henry had already met him because his parents are still together?

the secondary characters were also SO FLAT and basically nonexistent. the fact that pez was called percy the entire time annoyed me. like i know that's his name but i feel like they toned down his character so much and part of that was never calling him pez. bea was basically nonexistent and was just like the sweet little sister (which, also, why the fuck did they change the birth order??). taking june out was a HUGE blow to alex's characterization and the storytelling as a whole and nora was so bland. she's one of my fav characters in the book because she's so fun and chaotic and movie nora was just like ,, idk cool and chill and was a total different character. also making henry's mom just be absent because she's travelling or whatever and then not be there when they're talking to the king was such a weird choice. also don't get me started on miguel, i can't believe took out raf just to put that jealous fucker in. aghhhh. also zahra was much less of a boss bitch than she was in the books. when she called shaan and was all snippy i was like ma'am you sound SILLY right now.

taking out all of the mental health rep also made me really sad. so much of the story was exploring grief and depression and anxiety and adhd and addiction and that just didn't exist at all. if they wanted to just make it a love story then that's fine, but you can't tell me that two guys in their situations would be neurotypical and not deal with any sort of grief at all.

and the EMAILS. my god, who was fucking in charge of that change because i seriously c a n n o t. where was the poetry and the angst and the historical references? why were they just like "hi im in texas, miss you" and "im reading this cool book, miss you too". so much of their relationship development happens in those emails and there's so many iconic lines and we got none of that. it also made it feel way less impactful when the emails got leaked. was there really so many scandalous things in those emails? between these flat ass characters? you can't convince me anyone actually cared about those. also the fact that miguel leaked them made NO sense. what did he have to gain? he was just mad that alex didnt wanna hook up with him again so he decided to be jealous and petty? i don't understand. also if they didn't fuck the emails they wouldn't have had to awkwardly shoehorn the "history huh" line into the museum scene. i half expected alex to turn to the camera and wink like he was in the office or some shit.

they also changed the timeline enough that everything felt so weirdly paced. they apparently aged them up, which i didnt even realize when i was watching the movie, so the love story would feel "believable" or some shit, but why can't 23 year olds be in love? why do they have to be older? also henry being like "i want to be make love tonight" EXCUSE ME SIR? in this hotel room? book henry would fucking NEVER.

my last gripe is alex's coming out speech. first, why did they have to change it? the speech in the book was SO good and impactful and the one in the movie was just ,, bland? where was "love is indomitable" and "he is my choice" and "im the first son son of the united states and i'm bisexual. history will remember us"? also why did he make the speech before even talking to henry? he essentially outted him to the entire fucking world without even having a little chat with him first which was truly fucked.

WAIT MY ACTUAL LAST THING was why did their outfits suck so much in the show. where was alex's bomber jacket during the reelection? he looked like an office bro and i was not into it.

#wow that was so long #thanks for letting me rant coco #mutual: cossette #anti rwrb #rwrb

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bayoudusion · 9 months

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Bitches be like "omg!!! RWRB is such a win for the lgbt community"

The non american/british el ge bee tea community:

#big L 4 da gieys #I love women's wrongs but just not this one #there's nothing more off-putting than a yt woman's idea of an mlm relationship #anti rwrb

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sanyu-thewitch05 · 9 months

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White Lgbt tumblr: F**ck the British Monarchy and Queen Elizabeth! We don’t support colonizers!

Also White Lgbt tumblr:

We love Red, White, and Royal Blue! We love our gay prince! Iconic!

Like:

#anti rwrb #anti red white and royal blue #hypocrisy #the hypocrisy #like how many times are we going to see time after time again that white people will always band together to support their own #no matter their gender or sexuality #like they don’t care if they’re supporting a genocidal monarchy #as long they got THEIR Royal white gay fantasy they don’t care #i repeat #the British monarchy doesn’t need any good promo #in any shape or form

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alexiaugustin · 1 year

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casey mcquistons downfall is finally here so let’s not only talk shit about them for calling taylor swift a bitch but also because the politics in rwrb are horrendous and because they’re a zionist

#casey mcquiston #red white and royal blue #rwrb #anti rwrb

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nero-neptune · 8 months

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Love, I fully understand you and your disinterest in watching rwrb as a queer woman when I, myself was like "nah I won't be watching I could give 2 fucks about this" upon first look. but they're not both white boys. I've seen multiple people say this dismissively without realizing one of them is half mexican and a lot of the story makes point to recognize this. and not that you shouldn't demand more diversity but sometimes getting to see queer love in media no matter the shade or the sex of the two people involved is powerful and beautiful. your followers must think highly of your opinion and are offended that you've turned your nose up to this one. I'm not trying to convince you to watch something you're not interested in but came in here just to say I felt the same way as you initially and found that it was actually worth the watch. bummer that you've been turned off by the hype amongst other things.

um, if my followers are offended bc I've "turned up my nose" (lmao?) at rwrb, they're free to unfollow. I'm not holding them hostage. it's not the first piece of media I've dismissed and it certainly won't be the last

secondly, I'm a gay woman and I'm at the point where I really can't be bothered to watch shows/movies focused solely on men (gay or otherwise), even if they have that token woman in the cast to add some spice. my tolerance is going down (unless it's a special case, and a monarchist movie is Not one of those special cases). you can't see me rn but I'm shrugging my shoulders in an "oh well" fashion

#respectfully i less wanna see 'queer' love and more wanna see women going down on each other onscreen but you do you!!#i have watched so many shows and movies about gay white people that i think im allowed to prioritize (as a black person)#a show that had a whole half the plot dedicated to black gay people #yeah im gonna tag this now what the hell ever #i dont give a shit anymore!#anti rwrb #anonymous

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hussyknee · 9 months

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This white liberal USAmerican nightmare used Perfume Genius's version of Can't Help Falling In Love WTFFFFF that is Alexis Hall's give it back!!

Luc and Oliver sweetie I am so sorry I can't believe an ugly ass cis het bootlicking bitch like Berlanti would even do that to you

#it wasn't enough for this book to be a white liberal USAmerican mess or for the movie to be two hours of racist microaggressions #they have to go and rob everything else i hold queer and dear #BERLANTI I AM COMING TO YOUR HOUSE WITH A BAT #anti greg berlanti #it could be worse. hollywood might have tried to adapt Luc and Oliver #if Berlanti goes anywhere near Alexis Hall's work I am personally killing him #anti rwrb #anti rwarb #alexis hall #boyfriend material #knee of huss

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the-paper-monkey · 9 months

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Is there a reason why you dislike Red, White and Royal Blue?

Honestly, I read it and enjoyed most of it, but the ending I hated. But that's just me, I like fluff, but that ending was something else...

What is your gripe with the book?

RWRB fans keep scrolling. I'll try to keep it nice (post-writing edit: this was not kept nice) but I really disliked this book. I am also NOT AN AMERICAN and I think that makes the biggest impact on enjoyment of this book. If it were a romcom between a random American boy and British boy then I could critique it on its writing merit alone, but the choice of the author to engage with politics in such a brainless manner is really symptomatic of the cancer that is modern American liberalism.

Disclaimer: I did not finish this book. It's one of the only books I've ever DNF'd. I paid real monnies to buy the ebook. This waste of $15 is probably why I'm so bitter.

With RWRB it really comes down to four Ps:

Premise, pacing, prose

This is perhaps on me, but when you look at the blurb: "photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations. The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince."

See now, to me, that premise reads as—fake friendship, enemies/rivals to lovers, where they slowly come to understand what they like about each other. From a narrative pacing perspective, I would expect to see this click for our protagonists at the midpoint or perhaps the climax. Certainly not them having a conversation and resolving all their differences within the first 10% of the book (hospital broom cupboard). It's been a couple years since I (attempted to) read this book, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I strongly feel that they went from hating each other—with no substance to that hate beyond a petty misunderstanding—to resolving their differences, to kissing and fucking, within the first 20% of the book. What is this pacing??

After that I realised that this book should've been pitched with a forbidden love/Romeo & Juliet premise, because clearly that was what the author was going for. I don't necessarily have an issue with that. It's just disappointing to me because it was misleading and I wasted my money on a book that's actual premise doesn't interest me in the slightest. I read romance primarily for the internal conflict within the relationship, not the external conflict, though having both is fab (e.g. Captive Prince).

I'm not quite sure anything happens in this book. The protagonists are 'enemies' for maybe 10 pages and then fuck for the rest of it?? I skipped pages and pages and pages of 'banter' between Alex and those girls, and politics that read like it'd been penned by a 12 year old, and somehow managed to miss nothing. I've never read a book where I could skip so many pages with it having so little material impact on my understanding of the narrative.

I also found the prose and dialogue very... 'aliens guess at the way humans speak based on a diet of nothing but mediocre social media themed fanfiction'. And I say this as a fic writer myself. There's a bunch of female characters that serve no purpose other that to cheerlead the main couple and be wholesome, flawless, quippy and supportive, because that's feminism, baby. I can't speak at length about the characters because I dropped the book pretty early on.

2. POLITICS

RWRB is very much a product of its time and its author's nationality. That it was written and published during the Trump administration is no surprise. I think, just as Cinderella (2021) will be a perfect specimen for future study of the hot mess that is 2020s liberal feminism, RWRB will serve the same for 'left-wing' democrat politics for the 2016-xx political landscape. It's an AU where a while, blonde female presidential candidate wins the election and leaked emails have no effect on the outcome of said election. Jee, I sure wonder who she's meant to be 🙄

I understand that this book was intended as a light-hearted romcom, a silly romance for readers to turn off their brains and enjoy the wholesomeness. But clearly I am not the target audience as I am incapable of turning off my brain under any circumstance, especially not when reading a book. I am also not a romance reader, nor much of a genre fiction reader. Again, not the target audience. I also do not think you get to introduce politics as one of the most prominent themes and then not have your book critiqued on its handling of that subject matter.

I am far too much of a political cynic to read about this wholesome good working-class American political family that hold all the right views and have no flaws. I was disappointed but not surprised as soon as I realised this was really gonna go for the pro-democrat lens. I'm too foreign to view that party as anything more than middling centrists and outright antagonists on the global stage. Perhaps some people enjoy reading books that put them in a fantasy lala land where everything is good and just in the world, but I think this sort of passive idealism is exactly why the USA is a conservative hellscape in the first place.

A goodreads review that articulates my thoughts well: "This is the most idealized, grotesque, good-versus-evil look at politics I have EVER SEEN. In this book, the Democrats are a rainbow-wearing gloriously diverse coalition of kumbaya-singing angels, and everyone else is a villain we won’t talk about. Democrats are 100% motivated purely by the love of Doing The Right Thing, and they have never done anything wrong, ever, in their lives. The American people love them implicitly and will turn historically red states blue just to show them that. It’s not only sickening, it’s damaging. DO NOT IDEALIZE POLITICIANS."

And even moving away from politics to just address the wealth and privilege of these characters who fly back and forth over the pond on private jets to see each other... like, I don't have an issue with rich MCs (tbh Henry should be exactly my fave type), but I do have an issue with the desperate, self-aware attempts the author makes to keep things 'progressive'. Yeah, sure the characters lampshade their privilege. But these themes are not engaged with in any meaningful way, to the point where I wish they'd been excluded entirely. If you're going to write a book about the top 0.000001%'s issues, at least be unapologetic about it. If you keep mentioning privilege but do nothing about it then it feels hollow and insincere. I have nothing but contempt for philanthropy, so don't get me started on that.

Bonus: (not a P but) Anglophilia

As a foreigner from a culture closer to the UK than the US, the British fetishism vibes were pretty hilarious. I am certainly not gonna call it 'problematic' (I hate that word regardless). It's just cringe and excruciating to read. No one talks like that! No one. Not even the Prince of England.

Edit: this goodreads reviewer really gets it

#i don't like to talk politics on this blog but let it be known i think both major american political parties are conservative af #who decided to publish this president!hillary au sdfghjkl #i'm sorry i'm a hater #asks #anon #the sorry attempt at politics that this book makes is honestly sickening #anti rwrb

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