#so suspect many of the issues in this film are just a result of being an inexperienced artist
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Queer Media Review: But I’m A Cheerleader (1999)
Originally posted September 16th, 2016
A tonally mismatched, endearing cult classic.
This review is part of a weekly series of pieces on queer and trans media. See them all here!
Jamie Babbit’s1 first feature film, But I’m A Cheerleader, has, in the years following its release, become something of a classic piece of queer representative media. It frequently tops recommendation lists of films about queer people that don’t end in tragedy (lists that are far shorter than they have any right to be), and it is a film I have heard described as “quintessentially lesbian.”
This film’s status as an iconic lesbian film baffles me. Cheerleader is not a bad film, per se, but it is, in almost every way possible, a sleazy teen comedy that attempts to mine humor out of an incredibly traumatic and horrifying scenario (namely, being sent off to a gay conversion camp). That designation isn’t inherently negative; the same can be said of the original American Pie and John Tucker Must Die, and both of those films are entertaining because they revel in just how sleazy they can be. If But I’m A Cheerleader had committed to reveling in the sleaziness of turning the trauma of conversion therapy in a light comedy, then it might have succeeded on those (less than savory terms.
But Cheerleader is caught in between two worlds. At its core, it’s a film that wants to be a down to earth romance about good people finding love in a dark situation, but that core is constantly at odds with the low-brow humor and unintelligent satire that fills nearly every scene. It never attempts to examine the absurdity inherent to its scenario, and the only clear statement it makes about conversion therapy is that it’s ineffective, which is as obvious a statement on the matter as a film could make. The film also has a wildly inconsistent visual language2, frequently switching between bland stationary shots and handheld tracking shots for no apparent reason, only to return to its bland cinematography a moment later.
And yet, despite all of those flaws, I still rather enjoyed watching Cheerleader. Even with all the poorly designed sleaze surrounding it, the emotional core of Cheerleader is damn compelling, presenting us with a slowly budding romance between two highly likable characters.
That solid emotional core is established early-on through Megan (Natasha Lyonne, of Orange is the New Black fame), a very sympathetic protagonist who is confused about her own sexuality. She frequently fantasizes about her fellow cheerleaders while making out with her boyfriend, and she has a picture of a bikini clad woman in her locker, contrasted with her friend whose locker is adorned with a male model. When she’s ambushed by her friends and parents (in one of the few good uses of visual storytelling, I might add), she’s completely blindsided by them, and she quickly submits to their demands that she attend conversion therapy, despite her beliefs that none of the “evidence” presented was abnormal or confirmed her supposed “homosexuality.”
Megan’s cluelessness and empathy make her romance with Graham (Clea DuVall), another attendee at the conversion therapy camp, all the more believable, as their coupling is treated as a subtle slow, burn. We see them holding hands and touching each other, carefully avoiding the watchful gaze of Mary Brown (Cathy Moriarty), the camp’s strict headmistress. There’s a clear understanding of the danger of their budding relationship in the film, as when Graham deflects suspicion off of their rebellion by claiming to have a crush on Joel (Joel Michaely), a gay Jewish man also attending the camp, Megan is never shown to be jealous of the affection he’s receiving (she even takes a chance to stare flirtatiously at Graham while she’s holding hands with Joel).
The film also does challenge one idea, and that’s the idea that gender expression and fulfillment of gender roles are connected to or determinate of sexuality, though it does so with mixed results. Early on, there’s a scene where the characters must all think about and confess what the “root” of their homosexuality is, and one of the men at the camp claims that his mother allowing him to wear her pumps was the single experience in his life that led to his same-gender attraction. The film wants to paint this as the ridiculous connection that it is, but its strength is lost because so many of the film’s jokes rely on the association between gay men and femininity.3
The film is more successful in challenging stereotypes about sexuality and gender when the masculine presenting Jan (Katrina Phillips) storms out of a group therapy session, upset that her love of softball and unconventional looks have led to her attending the camp despite the fact that she has always been fully and exclusively attracted to men. Her rejection of the camp’s attempt to foist femininity onto her rings true thanks to Phillips’ compelling performance and the film’s lack of insistence that masculinity in women is in any way indicative of same-gender attraction (an acknowledgement that is present in the film’s title).
The ending of the film, despite being rather annoyingly cutesy, is fairly compelling as well, setting up a scenario in which one of the members of the lead couple is about to “graduate” from the camp, and the other must fulfill a wish the graduating partner made in order to convince her to run away with her. It’s an incredibly sweet gesture, and their relationship is given a satisfying conclusion, capping off the film with passionate kisses and annoyingly chipper music. That this scene works despite its presentation is a testament to Babbit’s strength as a director (of actors) and Natasha Lyonne’s strength as an actress, as the two of them sell the emotion of the scene that would otherwise be drowned out by a bad pop musical score.
Such a tonally conflicted, endearing scene is arguably the perfect ending to this film.
Rating: 3.5/5
But I’m A Cheerleader can be rented and purchased on iTunes or streamed via Xfinity.
Critical Eye Criticism is the work of Jacqueline Merritt, a trans woman, filmmaker, and critic. You can support her continued film criticism addiction on Patreon.
1While Babbit hasn’t directed many features of significant acclaim since But I’m A Cheerleader, she has gone on to become a rather prolific TV comedy director, specializing in smaller, character-driven comedies such as Gilmore Girls (for which she directed eighteen episodes), Malcolm in the Middle, and more recently working on hit comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Silicon Valley (she even directed one of the best episodes of Supergirl’s first season!) All of this to say, she’s got a rather impressive body of work behind her, and it would not be surprising if her name were to show up on a highly successful feature comedy sometime in the near future.
2Bonus points if you caught the reference.
3These jokes are made in spite of the film’s inclusion of Dolph (Dante Basco), a varsity wrestler whose masculinity is never in question, and Larry (Richard Moll), an “ex-ex-gay” who looks like a lumberjack right down to the flannel.
#but i'm a cheerleader#jamie babbit#natasha lyonne#clea duvall#lesbian film#lgbt film#queer film#queer cinema#queer movies#queer media#queer media reviews#this review is pretty solid#only thing i have to say is that i was totally right that jamie babbit was capable of better#she directed three episodes of russian doll#and did an incredible job with them#so suspect many of the issues in this film are just a result of being an inexperienced artist#and she learned her craft plenty well later
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Deinfluencing DID? Cool
TW: injuries, dissociative seizures, fainting, general health problems, medication, abuse, forced switches, religion, burdning things down, mentions of rape
Our room is a mess, dirty laundry everywhere, clothes are not hanged up and thrown on our bed, we haven’t cleaned our table, and barely ever vacuum or clean anything else. Why? Nobody wants to do it, plus we have ADHD that's interfering eith daily tasks as usual.
Our host forgot to tell our partner system they sprained our wrist. They sprained it January 30th. Told them, by accident, on July 11th.
Speaking of sprained limbs. Our co-host & persecutor-caretaker sprained our foot because they were stupid and weren't looking at where they're going. Resulted in missing a step on the stairs. They got a yelling lecture from our host (very loving lecture), and what did they do? Called the thing we had to wear on our leg "foot prison." Nothing else.
We got sick... I wanna say 2 days ago (memory issues). How did we do that? I don't know. What are we gonna do about it? Idfk, why are you asking me, we have like one medicine we take, but other than that-
Whenever people tell us that we're a minor and shouldn't be researching/reading stuff involving sexual topics, our sexual alters' immediate response to it is "if they wanted us to act like a child, they shouldn't have let us get raped when we were 4."
We suspect we have dissociative seizures. When things around us are overwhelming, we can very well just faint. Still conscious but unable to move or speak. Everything we hear during it will be forgotten. And those of us who are not host and co-host can faint because simply being in the body for too long is overwhelming.
We forget to take our meds that prevent us from fainting fully. Teenage thing, but our blood pressure drops unexpectedly, and we might pass out. Does the threat of literally dropping in the middle of the day, for which we had previously gotten admitted to the hospital, work? No. It's not happening rn, so-
Outer world is being run by 5-6 people (alters) who are not equipped for the outer world shit. Dealing with parents? No. School? So-so. Basic biological needs? Who needs those, am I right? /j
A while ago, we found a spider near our room, and we are all, collectively, terrified of spiders. Who did we push to front to deal with it? Our co-host, who hates/is scared of them more than all of us combined.
We have a factive of our mother in the system who fused with a Ballora fragment. Like, yk, the person who potentially abused us most in our lives is their source. She's currently in inner world therapy and is actively getting better. And we are learning to separate her from her source.
When we first figured out we were a system, our host was so stuck and so determined to find out more about our alters, we had to force switches to happen, and for a while thought we were actually faking. I'm aware that that's exactly what DID/OSDD is supposed to make you feel like, but others literally could not front sometimes without being physically forced out. Moreover, we didn't even know how switches were supposed to feel. Everything felt fake. How did we accept it? Pushed through (quite literally) and focused more on the exciting parts of it, rather than sad.
Speaking of first figuring our about our DID, we filmed many videos of our switches when we felt them coming, and alters introducing themselves via filming. We are now looking at them and both cringing and feeling nostalgic.
We still sometimes want to be a smaller system because it feels like it would have been simpler, and we would love to have all members of the system get along. But we also know our brain created us the way it did for our survival, and our nostalgia about "simpler days when we only knew 4 people" is a romantization. This is the first time we have actually had a semi-stable environment in 2 years.
The only one who celebrates the body's birthday is our host. Everybody else has their own birthdays either from source or made-up. We still celebrate them. Today (September 14th) is, in fact, one of our alters' birthday.
Our host and co-host have a child-parent relationship (respectively). A while ago, they were in co-con, listening to a song. Our co-host was holding our host to their arms in front piggyback style, was hugging them and rocking them back and forth. Why? For comfort. Because they're family.
Are we all collectively doing schoolwork? Nope, lmao. Doesn't work for us like that, we simply don't have memories of most things we studied since like 4th grade, can't get them either. Our host used to do all the schoolwork, but they got so much trauma from school and homework that now our co-host is in charge of it. And only them unless it's Japanese. And even then, it's a big maybe. Nobody wants to, so we created a schedule that works for us and our switches when it comes to studying.
Did I just have to look up where I was going on the metro because I realized I have no memories of it other than autopilot, and I am doubting whether I wanna leave on the right station? Yes. Yes, I did. Am I gonna be fronting when I reach the destination? Nope.
A while ago we burned down an inner world kingdom. Why? Idk, we just didn't like it. Who cares anyway?
One of our prosecutors bought premium on one of the apps we use, and they didn't get in trouble for it only because our host liked it. We're still using it to this day.
We have a system quote book.
Everybody in this system is pagan. I might be the only one not, and even that's a big maybe.
We really wanna watch Elemental but can never get around to it. Also, Nimona, although we have a good reason to postpone watching it.
We haven’t brushed our teeth in 2 weeks. Did yesterday like once. When's gonna be the next time? Who knows? :D Hygiene issues are real.
On Halloween, we're probably gonna watch FNaF Ruin the entire evening-night with our sibling.
Our ex-host is so unhinged that we have to watch them whenever they front like a hawk.
We are not a perfect system. Any blog you see, no matter how real it seems, doesn't reflect day-to-day experiences systems have. Most posts, generally, are made with strong emotions in mind, or for aesthetic purposes, or for venting purposes. I repeat what has been said before a million times: don't trust everything you see on the internet. People are real, but they are not going to let you know anything personal about them.
Honestly? Not sure why I wanted to make this post. Not gonna give you a reason either because I don't know it.
I am currently going to get cocoa and push our co-host to study. Have a good day, y'all. ✌️
-sexual protector
#did#did system#osdd system#osdd#system#dissociative identity disorder#other specified dissociative disorder#system stuff#system things#did osdd#osdd 1a#osdd 1b#complex dissociative identity disorder#did positivity#osdd positivity#system positivity#plural positivity#deinfluencing
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Round 3 Poll 4: Rev. Green from Cluedo vs Davis (Juror 8) from Twelve Angry Men
Propaganda:
Rev. Green:
1) Literally just a random board game character 😪 2) Ok so basically here’s the deal. One day, about a year and a half or two years ago, I saw some random thing related to Clue online. I (dual U.S. American and Russian citizen, because I was born in America to an immigrant parent, I PROMISE this is important) was confused because among the cast of characters was “Mr. Green”. Now, I hadn’t played Clue in a very long time. It wasn’t my favorite game as a kid, my only memories of it were wanting to play as Ms. Peacock and then my brother taking her and making me pick someone else, but I was pretty confident the character was Reverend Green. What happened? Was he excommunicated?? I kind of figured the name was just changed to reflect a more secular culture and that I had unknowingly played an old copy of the game as a kid.
But it fascinated me. So I spent months on and off researching the topic. (poorly, might I add, it wasn’t a complicated issue. But still.) I found out about many changes from version to version. Clue Junior, Clue VCR Mystery, Clue Master Detectives, all of it. And the whole time, Green was there to greet me in each new version. It was the first thing I always checked. Was he Mister or Reverend? I found out in one version he was a defrocked priest turned businessman, and in another a scam artist who pretended to be a member of the clergy to pull of a scheme. Closer. I ran polls, I went to irl Clue events, and eventually I found what I was looking for the whole time. Green was a Reverend in the 1944 patent of the game, and the subsequent 1949 U.K. release of Cluedo. But, because of fear that U.S. Citizens would take issue with a member of the church being suspected of murder, Parker Brothers changed the name to Mister Green for the U.S. release.
That all could have taken me five minutes of googling, but honestly the chase made the result so much more worth it. And yet, there was something more there in the back of my mind. This all was well and good, but why was I so sure of the U.K. version of the name? My father’s family is Irish so we have a pretty healthy hatred of all things British, there’s no way my dad would’ve had us play that version of the game. Right? But thanks to a response from a poll I ran, I found out that the German version also went with Reverend. Because Green is an Anglican, I kind of assumed that the U.S. change might have been carried over into other international releases. But no! That made me realize that Mister Green is an outlier and that almost all languages of the game use Reverend. So then last night the pieces finally clicked together. I asked my mom to confirm a hunch I had, not expecting her to at all remember something this trivial. Like I said, I didn’t play it much as a kid. Maybe we didn’t even own a copy, and I had just played it at a library or a hurricane shelter or a relative’s house or something. But she remembered. We did, in fact, own the game. Not just any version, but a RUSSIAN COPY. I unknowingly grew up with Cluedo! So I had every reason to believe it was Reverend Green and be confused when I heard otherwise.
Tl;dr, minor version difference between Russian and American copies of a board game gave me a hyperfixation and a blorbo.
Davis (Juror 8) (these are all from the single submitter)
a quick lil list babes, and I apologise for all of this in advance:
He's from the fucking film 12 angry men. like, aside from letterbox bootlickers and middle school hass students NO ONE has watched this film let alone care about it, it was made in 1957, is shot almost exclusively in one room and the entire film is just middle aged white men yelling at each other over whether some not white poor kid should be sent to the electric chair. what the fuck.
Henry Fonda, the actor, was 52 years old at the time of filming
Henry Fonda is the father of Jane Fonda, the woman who would revolutionise the 80's with her home workouts and her blindingly neon leg warmers.
His name wasn't revealed until the very end of the film and even then it's just "Davis."
I could honestly give him a lil smooch
He's absolutely not girlypop but he's the ally-iest ally who's ever allied
He's categorised as a "Benevolent Leader" on the Heroes Wiki
instead of the overwhelming urge for me to coddle him like most all other blorbos, i would appreciate it switched
I have a photo of him inside my saxophone case and sometimes i forget he's in there, then he creeps into my saxophone bell and when I play it he shoots out like a ballistic missile
Dude, on ao3 there's more fanfiction about the real life 80's British punk band The Clash than the entire film of 12 angry men, let alone Davis (80 fics come up under the clash, while 10 come up for 12 angry men)
I have a counter, and I've watched 12 Angry men a total of 145 times. The figure is up on my wall in tallies. whenever the number goes up, I like to watch it in 5's so then I can put another full group of tallies on my wall.
I have incredibly detailed stories about how Davis would boogie down to ringo starr's solo career, and they're written within the margins of a book called Tobruk written by Peter Fitzsimons. The only reason I reread that book is to wonder at my elaborate works of fiction
My HASS teacher was the one to introduce me to 12 Angry Men as he played it for the entire class. He gave us a set of questions to complete on the film and a few Law based questions as a little treat, and he expected it to be handed in the next day. What he didn't expect was an 11 page monster of a response that included social commentary, 4 paragraphs dissecting the character of Davis alone, deeply discussed comparisons between the landscapes of politics and law in the 50's to the present, and basically an entire point-for-point summarisation of the film, completed with obscure quotes from Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Presley (Elvis). He presented the printed masterpiece in front of the entire class to shame me.
After class he explained how his favourite Juror would either be 6 or 5, because 6 seems like a big dumb teddybear and he just liked 5. I explained how I liked Davis because he didn't want to send a kid to die, then he told me how Davis would make a good cowboy (at this point in time I was unaware of Henry Fonda's role in Once Upon A Time in The West) and I proceeded to go home and write a 3 part orchestral composition that I could pretend would play as the soundtrack to Juror 8: A Cowboy's Tale or something like that
I had started to make an animation meme starring Davis but only gave up when photoshop literally deleted itself from my laptop
I didn't even hear that Juror 8's name was Davis when I first watched it in class, somehow I only heard it on my 6th rewatch but when I did I literally got so excited I literally got winded and cried a little bit, I had to take a panadol because I got so lightheaded
I have learned the musical motif that plays throughout the film on saxophone, clarinet, recorder, guitar, bass, ukulele, piano and trumpet
I have visions of him
One of Davis' 3 children HAS to be gay and nothing can convince me otherwise
honest to god I'd be a home wrecker if it came to him
I quote not only Davis but the film a lot, and sometimes in the dead silence of all my friends I go on about how the old man couldn't have possibly made it to the door in such a short amount of time to see the kid running down the stairs (because the old man has a limp, and Davis proved it my limping around the room, which I have to say was incredibly attractive of him)
He's literally an architect
I once had a dream where Davis was in my bass guitar case when I opened it, and i literally just picked him up and started picking him like a bass guitar until I tried to play a full chord and he bit the hand that was meant to be on the fretboard. I dropped him and he fell on his ass, and when I said "what the hell dude what was that for" he said bass chords are lowkey ugly to listen to, and since then i don't like playing bass chords because now they're lowkey ugly to listen to. before this ordeal, i enjoyed them, but alas
i once got my romantic partner to write me a davis x reader fanfiction as a birthday present
my parents believe that Davis is my first celebrity crush, and while they're actually wrong it's still actually so embarrassing they believe that because OH MY GOD it's literally JUROR 8 FROM 12 ANGRY MEN
I've attempted slam poetry about him
I've eaten a paper printed full a4 size photo of his hand
I would also not mind him to be literally my father, but given the rest of the things I've just said about him that's really weird and I recognise that
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Ace Attorney: Bonds of Fate: Turnabout Forgiveness Day 3 Investigation
Chapter 4 of Bonds of Fate: Turnabout Forgiveness has been posted on AO3 (I decided to just post there and share the link on my Tumblr.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/40703037/chapters/113167924
This is a long one, so I'm glad to finally get it out. The last two chapters should be much shorter and if I keep my writing pace, then they should be out much more quickly (Though I'm making a short film so there might be a bit of a delay).
Here's what happens in the chapter:
Phoenix, with the help of a bailed out Franziska, investigate the murder.
We learn more about Charlotte and even meet her daughter.
Phoenix and Franziska's day ends up becoming dangerous.
Many of the suspects are eliminated. Secrets of a friend's past are revealed
Turnabout Forgiveness Summary:
During the last few years, Franziska Von Karma has been trying to improve herself. She took a sabbatical from prosecuting and has been going to counseling for her many issues. During this time she has became a more calm and approachable person, but is now riddled with guilt at her past misdeeds. She started her road to redemption by confessing to using falsified evidence in multiple trials so they can all get a fair retrial, resulting in her own disbarment. Her next step in the road to redemption is to host a gathering where she invites many of the people she has wronged in the past in order to apologize and make amends. This includes Phoenix Wright and many of his old friends. At the gathering, Phoenix actually gets along with and befriends the new Franziska. Unfortunately, things take a dark turn. Phoenix and are both shot. Phoenix miraculously survives. When the lights turn on, Franziska is holding a gun, but she tearfully insists that she didn’t do it. Now Phoenix is defending his former rival/new friend in court against the surprisingly adept rookie Prosecutor Heal Yur Payne. This is despite Phoenix being one of the people Franziska is accused of shooting, and the fact that if Franziska is innocent, then the true killer is likely one of his friends.
#ace attorney#fan script#fan fiction#phoenix wright#Franziska Von karma#Maya fey#Trucy wright#Athena cykes#pearl fey#miles edgeworth#kay faraday#lotta hart#adrian andrews#detective gumshoe#maggey byrde#Larry butz#laurice deauxnim#klavier gavin#nahyuta sahdmadhi#moe the clown#Lawrence curls#angel starr#ema skye#winston payne#simon blackquill#bonds of fate#writeblr#fan game#writing#ao3
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Amsterdam (2022)
"Set in the '30s, it follows three friends who witness a murder, become suspects themselves, and uncover one of the most outrageous plots in American history."
Some legitimate historical plots are so outside the box within which normal life resides that you'd find yourself hard pressed to believe they were real. "You couldn't write that!" and yet this spectacularly bizarre take on a real historical event was written, and it was based on a legitimate conspiratorial plot. Upon walking out of the screen my brain was whirring at how much I had enjoyed this film, and I was conflicted as to whether or not I could use the word genius....... And i think I can.
David O. Russell has brought us a film that takes a lot of liberties, historically speaking, while telling us about an investigation into a plot to install a fascist dictator in the White House. He brings out some truly fascinating performances from the main characters, and really drew me in with damn good storyteling and really well done cinematography. It was a successful turn in the director's chair for sure.
The three main stars, in an a-list cast, are Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington. A trio brought together by the results of war they bond almost immediately and the chemistry, as far as I could tell, flowed smoothly between the three, giving an impression of genuine friendship and bonds.
Bale, as Burt Berendsen, is in full character acting mode. Providing a heady concotion of humour and pathos he is, to all intents and purposes, the narrator of the story all while being fully involved in the ongoing dramatics. Margot Robbie, as Valerie, is really very good. She is a character veiled in mystery and as that mystery unravels her performance gets better and better, and it was great to begin with. Robbie has an air of style in most roles she plays, and that is readily evident in ths film.
As for John David Washington....I find myself unable to recall anything I may have seen him in before, and that is my loss I'm sure. His turn as Harold Woodman, bouncing off Bale and Robbie, is one of the star points of the film. I'm certainly checking his IMDB later, to catch up on his previous work.
I've attached a cast list poster to this review because it is a well starred cast, that includes Robert DeNiro, Taylor Swift, Rami Malek and Mike Myers as well as many others, and it would simply take too long to go through the whole cast and each individual performance. Needless to say that, on the whole, the performances are great....but that leads to my only real issue with the film. Some of the "side" character performances are adequate, and not much else. They don't take away from the film, but they don't add anything other than seemingly just being there, and that seems such a shame in an otherwise outstanding film.
Overall this film is a slice of cinematically genius storytelling, based around a mind-boggling historical event, that is only less than perfect for the most minor of details. I'm definitely going to see it again in the cinema and because of that it's getting a thoroughly well deserved 9/10, with a full recommendation to everyone to go see it asap.
#amsterdam#christian bale#margot robbie#world war 1#conspiracy#Plot#robert deniro#War#movies#reviews#cinema#odeon#Liverpool one#taylor swift
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Opposing Opponents
It turns out there’s one thing worse than enthusiastically supporting a political candidate. This cruelly indifferent world wins again. Vote against something for results as uplifting as imagined. Enough people alarmingly keep believing in government even as it begs them to stop.
Their side sucks more. I’m grateful to see the electorate not care for either option. A nation founded by flipping off a king is supposed to loathe both sides. But a lack of redeemable qualities in both options means one idiot issues orders for a couple years. Making sure the fiend doesn’t hold office leads to Joe Biden. Work all week to afford bread by the slice.
Government must be helping if it feels like we’re enduring terms. There have been a couple presidential elections in a row where the choice who made participants despise existence slightly less held a default advantage. Thinking everyone who runs for office is a ghastly Satan stand-in is even more crucial than usual. Hate the guts of the runner-up to be thorough.
Tolerating one option is too much to ask. Backing a certain party doesn’t mean cheering for icky intervention: those exhausted from being harangued just need a couple politicians who are lazy by design so they don’t vigorously impose a brand-new ripoff. We stand against those who are against us, which is the healthy kind of intolerance.
Stop pretending that one option is going to create affordable bliss. Suspecting everyone who is technically serving in office of fraudulent grifting corruption is correct mentality for accountability.
Extra vigilance against your preference is an aggravation at a time you thought enabled relaxation. But pretending one side is cool ends up way more exhausting.
Potential political victims should especially suspect those in your own party of ripping you off, as trust is how they seduce victims out of their pearls and into their wills. That penmanship doesn’t match. Look for one ballot choice who’s slightly less interested in harassing you, then preemptively back the less atrocious choice. Civics should inspire.
I don’t want to alarm anyone, but there are literally millions of Americans who like politicians. Even worse, many of these sad human cases admire the technical leaders who take their stuff and rights if you wonder how things turned out like this. Thinking their crew is amazing shows why Two and a Half Men lasted for as long as it did. Imagine electing Chuck Lorre and being unable to change the channel, and you understand how our federal government acts.
Results are in, and way too many people don’t trust themselves. Connecting their personalities to a politician is the worst way to demonstrate faith. Sure, it’s not much of an investment. But they’d have more to contribute if they focused on developing skills instead of expecting Washington to provide.
Negative campaigns result from subtracting all candidates but the biggest minuses. It’s our fault for living in a republic. We usually enjoy such horrendous options that demonizing the alternative as even more ghastly is the easy option.
Of course all entrants suck. A country like ours shouldn’t feature an endless challenge to find a president who can perform actual job tasks while laying off on everything else. There are only a few listed, so the light shift should be appealing. We need a president who takes lunches long enough to last until dinnertime. Biden should preferably clock out and spend the afternoon looking for someone who’ll ride the seesaw with him.
A free vibe means feeling inspired by doing nothing. We should still not feel impressed with the figurative okay president as a principle. The hero may deserve a subtle not. Basic competence that leads to less work is not worth sending an Edible Arrangement or one of those pop-up cards that costs like nine bucks.
People shouldn’t be defined by what they hate. It’s naturally healthy to flinch at dreadful films and syncopated soulless irksome cynical pop music. And Chipotle is going to horrify anyone with functioning tastebuds. But having standards is a positive negative.
Let this serve as a reminder to despise all politicians like they stole your grandma’s insulin. Biden has done his best to actually do that. Giving everyone stuff makes it hard to find, if you can believe. Worst of all, messianic elected twits claim to have been the ones who tried to prevent shortages. There couldn’t be some other method like drug companies selling their product.
Alert citizens should especially distrust those for whom they vote. Federal prophets convince zealous dupes that it’s considered blasphemous to be suspicious. Believers elected them to save our souls and finances. Voters end up selling their most precious possession just to end up bankrupt. Even the Devil thinks this deal is unfair. Biden plagiarized off him in law school.
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vore rom-coms, which are commonly an actors last role
Might just expand this to movies in general, since I don't know enough about rom-coms to think of ideas for it. I'll try to get one in for them, though!
Stunt doubles are a necessity in most movies. Some actors simply can't get replaced, and no one ever knows if diving into your co-star's maw is going to result in you coming back out the way you went in or not. So, lots of stunt doubles have to be hired to do these scenes. They're considered much more disposable. The only issue with them is if several takes need to be done with several stunt doubles. Then reshoots need to happen to accompany for the fact that the actor gained an extra sixty pounds off of the guys being sent down his gullet. The director is starting to suspect the scene keeps getting ruined so the actor can keep chowing on stunt doubles. At this rate, they might just have to use the other actual actor for this scene and hope for the best.
If you're not a star-studded name in a movie blockbuster, you're pretty much an expendable face. If there's ever a scene where your character is getting eaten, you'll likely end up having to do the stunt yourself if you don't have your own doubles to take the place. And of course, that means there's always the risk of getting churned down right on camera. A blossoming career, and all it amounts to is digesting in another guy's gut for the big picture. That is, if your scene was considered a good take. If not? Well, they can always reshoot, and your final moment on film will never see the light of day.
Genres always have their own issues, and some are more obvious than other. In a slasher flic or an action movie, people are going to get eaten left and right and a lot of actors are going to get churned. Sometimes getting digested is played for laughs in comedies. But in rom-coms, well, those are just as dangerous--usually for the leads. Eating each other is usually played as a very intimate and close scene, but sometimes a co-star is just too delicious that there's no getting him back up once he's gone down the hatch. No one ever hires stunt doubles for movies like this, and it's a shame. So many actors end up getting churned because of this, and a lot of movies end up with a shorter run time than planned because of it.
#v.ore#male vore#gay vore#mlm vore#m/m vore#digestion#fatal vore#actor vore#male vore prompts#vore prompts#ask
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My Critique of Rebuild of Evangelion's Characterization: I originally wrote this post on the Evageeks forum and decided to post it here. It discusses the relationship between Misato, WILLE and the pilots and whether it is realistic and in-character. Warning this post contains spoilers and is very long. Also has references to self-harm and suicide.
With each revelation that comes out regarding the measures WILLE take against Shinji and their own pilots, it becomes more and more unrealistic for me to the point where it's almost comical. Let's go through some of them here:
They wear the explosive DSS chokers 24/7 which will kill the pilots should they risk awakening an Eva.
They are kept in a single room rigged with explosives.
In Shinji's case, he is (intended to be) put in 24/7 solitary confinement with explosives fitted as well.
Shinji is escorted around the wunder whilst restrained on a stretcher. (NOTE: The only time he isn't, is when Sakura takes him to Ritsuko).
It is confirmed in another thread that Misato gave clear permission to the crew for them to shoot Shinji on sight if they suspect he is attempting to get into an Eva.
Now let me attempt to deconstruct these measures one-by-one:
It is understandable that Asuka and Mari wear DSS chokers because after all they are pilots and there is a risk of awakening. However in Shinji's case, he is forbidden from piloting and so there is no risk of awakening (remember Ritsuko did not think NERV would come after him, so they had no reason to think he would escape). So why place the DSS choker on him? Well we have already established it is simply because they have a resentment against him; there is no special, pragmatic reason. Is this realistic? Well I would say no for reasons I will explain later but I can certainly understand why others may say it is.
I don't think I will understand why they would keep their two main "soldiers" if you will, in an explosively rigged room. I believe others have stated that from a tactical point, it's an extremely dumb move on WILLE's part. After all, if Asuka and Mari didn't have plot armor, what's to stop Gendo from tricking WILLE into killing their own pilots with these explosives? How would WILLE stop Gendo then? Will they use Shinji? No, for reasons I will state later. And another thing, we know that their rooms were already fitted with explosives so why on Earth would they add extra after the events of Q (when they stopped 4th impact). What do they hope to achieve with more bombs? Make the pilots more "deader" than they already are? In my opinion, this doesn't even come across as paranoid but just plain childish. Is this measure realistic from a story standpoint? No not in my eyes.
We know they intended to put Shinji in a solitary cell as this is what they do in Shin. If it was solitary confinement on it's own, then I believe it would be a realistic measure that would happen in real life. However I believe the writers did not factor in the effects of solitary confinement (especially one that is rigged to explode) on fully grown men; never mind a 14 year old who's just come out of a 14 year coma. Many people think solitary confinement is a walk in the park so I made another post a while ago highlighting why that's not the case:
"I remember when before Shin came out people here theorized that if Shinji stayed on the Wunder, they would eventually softened to him and let him help in ways that wouldn't have involved piloting. However with these revelations it looks like they intended to keep him in an isolated room far from everyone else that is (presumably) rigged with explosives as well as keeping the choker on his neck. Not even allowed to freely leave his cell without WILLE's permission (it is unlikely they would let him out judging from these measures).
Even though Asuka and Mari were treated like this as well, at least they had each other and were able to leave as they had responsibilities in piloting. But Shinji was forbidden from piloting and was to be kept by himself except maybe being checked up on by Sakura now and again. So judging from these leaks (we will have to wait to properly see the full context) WILLE intended to lock Shinji in solitary confinement.
I have copied and pasted some of the effects of Solitary Confinement from Wikipedia below:
“Psychiatric: Research indicates that the psychological effects of solitary confinement may encompass "anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis." The lack of human contact, and the sensory deprivation that often go with solitary confinement, can have a severe negative impact on a prisoner's mental state that may lead to certain mental illnesses such as depression, permanent or semi-permanent changes to brain physiology, an existential crisis, and death.
Self-harm: According to a March 2014 article in American Journal of Public Health, "Inmates in jails and prisons attempt to harm themselves in many ways, resulting in outcomes ranging from trivial to fatal." Self harm was seven times higher among the inmates where seven percent of the jail population was confined in isolation. Fifty-three percent of all acts of self harm took place in jail. "Self-harm" included, but was not limited to, cutting, banging heads, self-amputations of fingers or testicles. These inmates were in bare cells, and were prone to jumping off their beds head first into the floor or even biting through their veins in their wrists. A main issue within the prison system and solitary confinement is the high number of inmates who turn to self-harm. Many of the inmates look to self-harm as a way to "avoid the rigors of solitary confinement."
Physical: Solitary confinement has been reported to cause hypertension, headaches and migraines, profuse sweating, dizziness, and heart palpitations. Many inmates also experience extreme weight loss due to digestion complications and abdominal pain. Many of these symptoms are due to the intense anxiety and sensory deprivation. Inmates can also experience neck and back pain and muscle stiffness due to long periods of little to no physical activity. These symptoms often worsen with repeated visits to solitary confinement.
Social: The effects of isolation unfortunately do not stop once the inmate has been released. After release from segregated housing, psychological effects have the ability to sabotage a prisoner's potential to successfully return to the community and adjust back to ‘normal’ life. The inmates are often startled easily, and avoid crowds and public places. They seek out confined small spaces because the public areas overwhelm their sensory stimulation.”
And this is just for solitary confinement. There are so many other things going on with and happening (or could happen) to Shinji such as the things below:
Shinji being only 14 years old.
Shinji being abandoned and neglected by his father.
Shinji being coerced/emotionally blackmailed to pilot Unit 1.
Shinji seeing girls he cared for "die".
Shinji being in a coma for 14 years.
Shinji being told he has a bomb on his neck.
Being told it is because he is being punished.
Being told he cannot pilot the eva anymore (he is effectively "useless" now).
Have his former co-pilot and friend try and punch him after he thought she was dead.
[Potentially] being told he started NTI and devastated the world.
[Potentially] being told that the girl he tried to save is "gone" and that she was a clone of his mother.
Being imprisoned in a cell (presumably) surrounded by explosives and not being able to freely leave.
Be completely isolated from everyone except when being checked up by a girl who's father he got killed. (NOTE: Mari might want to see him so Shinji at least has her, maybe).
Have his mother figure (the woman who made him pilot the eva the most) threaten to detonate the choker around his neck and blow his head off when he tries to leave.
With the above list, is it any wonder his head is so messed up? I understand the purpose of these films is all about growing up and taking responsibility but expecting Shinji to willingly allow himself to be subjected to the treatment WILLE had in store for him is pure, unadulterated masochism. Much of what was is written here can safely be considered cruel, inhumane and arguably, torture.
There is a massive difference between taking responsibility for one's mistakes and just letting the whole world torture you because you did something bad. My main fear and problem with Q and Thrice is that their main theme, which is accepting responsibility, is equated with accepting unreasonably cruel treatment. And I just think that is an EXTREMELY unhealthy message to send to people especially if they are depressed or live in abusive relationships."
When you take all these into account, does it place into perspective how messed up Shinji would have been had he stayed on the wunder? This is assuming that they thought they would never have a need for him, but as we find out in Shin, they needed Shinji in the end to defeat Gendo. If Shinji never left with Mark 09 and Misato successfully kept him "protective" custody, then one of three things would have happened when WILLE actually needed him to save everyone:
A: He would not have been in the mental state to pilot Unit 1 and Gendo would have completely wrecked him due to shit synch ratios.
B: He would have told Misato and co. to fuck off and die. We've seen this nihilism before from Shinji (after the 5th angel). His incarceration alongside the humiliation and guilt from wearing the choker will have ratcheted up by a million.
C: He wouldn't have piloted because he would have killed himself. There's only so much a 14 year old can take and when subjected to a fate that causes even hardened criminals to resort to self-harm, genital mutilation and suicide, then what chance does Shinji have?
Now back to my original point, do I think this measure is realistic? I would like to say yes if it was the solitary on it's own, however when combined with the other things, then I think the chances of Shinji commiting suicide is extremely high to the point where it's not believable for him to continue as an anime protagonist. You have to make sure the protagonist goes through difficulty in order to experience growth and change, however if you make it too harsh (to the point of committing suicide) then it seems less believable that they live to continue the story. On a separate note, many people think that Shinji was immature for leaving with Mark 09 the first chance he got and that this is proof that he is, in Asuka's words, a "brat". But let's be realistic, if this story is about Shinji's growth and maturation, then how exactly would WILLE's treatment of him be conducive to that? The truth is WILLE's sheer hostility towards him would have completely stunted any emotional growth and maturation in Shinji and it would have destroyed the point of the film. Also no-one can argue that WILLE would have eventually "come round" or "softened-up" towards Shinji because even after 14 years they still don't trust their own pilots. So yeah, Shinji most likely would have been stuck in solitary with a bomb around his neck until he either killed himself or the war ended (but even this doesn't guarantee his freedom).
Regarding the stretcher business. I don't understand why you have to restrain Shinji on a stretcher when the kid has already surrendered himself and has come voluntarily. Maybe WILLE are just full of bondage fetishists; it would certainly explain the chokers as well.
If the DSS chokers and the explosive rooms weren't enough, Misato actually gave orders to the crew to shoot Shinji if they thought he was trying to pilot again. At this point, I just think this is just overkill. I mean the kid has a bomb on his neck that prevents him from awakening an Eva, you intended to keep him locked up even though he can't really leave the wunder except with outside help and now you intend to shoot him if you think he'll get into an Eva. The problem with this, is that piloting an Eva requires all the bridge-bunnies to sortie the damn thing. Shinji cannot enter Unit 1 by himself, especially since the thing is being used as an engine so why do they assume that Shinji is capable of being Sam Fisher and sneaking into Unit 1? We see that Sakura and Midori are actually willing to shoot Shinji in 3.0+1.0 and do so when he merely suggests that he pilot Unit 1. But seriously what harm would Shinji have done in Unit 1 considering the fact that Gendo was already going to start another impact anyway? Why actively try and kill (or injure in Sakura's case) the only guy that can save your ass? One cannot argue that they were just being "desperate or panicking" because in Midori's case, she actually takes the time to confirm her orders from Misato. This shows that at least, she was still of lucid mind. This particular altercation just beggars belief in my mind and the fact that Misato actually gave those orders on top of all the other measures is absolutely extraordinary. So as you can imagine, I do not think this was realistically executed.
However, I can already hear some detractors say: "So what? Misato hesitated to detonate the DSS choker and also took a bullet for Shinji. She redeemed herself from putting the DSS choker on him and the kill-order for if they thought he would try and get into an Eva."
And to those people I say….not really. There is an idiom attributed to Benjamin Franklin and it goes like this: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." How does this apply to Misato and Shinji's relationship? Well Misato wouldn't have had to hesitate to pull the trigger if she didn't put it on him in the first place. Misato wouldn't have had to take a bullet for Shinji, if she didn't give permission for the crew to shoot him in the first place. Let's take this following dialogue for example:
916-929:
Kitakami: "It's a good thing we got Major Shikinami back. But why'd we have to take that disease along with her?"
Aoba: "Just leave it alone. Better than Nerv still being able to use him."
Tama: "If he tries to get into an Evangelion, all hands have permission to shoot on sight. There's nothing to worry about this time."
Kitakami: "Come on, that's all for show. The last time he broke out of here, the Captain couldn't put him down. I've got zero trust about this time either."
Nagara: "He was a kid. I can understand why she'd hesitate."
Kitakami: "That 'kid' caused Near Third Impact and murdered my entire family!"
Hyuga: "Near Third was a consequence of what he did, not his goal. The Captain's doing her best to atone for that too."
Takao: "That's right. She's who Kaji entrusted with Wille, and it's our job to trust the captain."
We learn a few things from this dialogue. Firstly, the older WILLE members are much more understanding to Shinji and Misato's situation: Aoba and Hyuga understand that it's better to keep an eye on Shinji and that he never meant to start NTI, Takao is one who always trusts Misato's judgement and Sumire understands that Misato would have found it difficult to kill a child, especially one that Misato was close with.
Secondly, it appears that the younger WILLE members (Midori, Sakura and Tama) are the ones that are fearful/hateful towards Shinji (NOTE: Tama is a strange case, he strikes me as the sort of kid that just follows what everyone else is feeling. He might not feel anything towards Shinji beyond what you'd expect).
Finally it appears that most of WILLE crew members are actually reasonable people and are not the extremely desperate and paranoid individuals some people on the forum believe. Remember this is AFTER Shinji started the 4th impact in Q. The fact that some of the WILLE crew members speak of Shinji in this way, show they are capable of understanding. Most actually trust Misato and respect her judgement except for Midori, who questions Misato's capabilities in following through on her threats.
Which brings me to my next point. Misato has had no hesitation in pulling rank in the past. In 2.0, she even has an altercation with Ritsuko, her best friend, right before they fight the 8th angel. Misato is a woman that will tell even her best friend to STFU, when it comes to doing what she wants. Having said that, (timeskip shenanigans aside) there's no reason why she couldn't have done the same with the younger WILLE crew members. She could have nipped all of it in the bud by telling Sakura, Midori and the rest of them that Shinji was groomed to cause NTI and it was not his fault.
Instead, despite being the captain that everyone loves and fears, she kowtowed to the crew's paranoia and had the pilots fitted with explosive chokers, put in explosively rigged solitary confinement and gave the order to kill Shinji if they feared the worst. This is the sort of thing that drives fully grown men to suicide, never mind 14 year olds that have just come out of a coma. Imagine if Shinji did commit suicide in his cell. Who would Misato and WILLE have turned to in order to defeat Gendo in the end? What if Gendo tricked WILLE into killing their own pilots with the explosives? They would be properly screwed then. If Misato actually cared, as we are led to believe from her hesitation to kill Shinji, then she would have told the rest of the WILLE crew to fuck off, instead of alienating and putting Shinji and the pilots in that much risk. Are we really expected to believe that Misato placed such extreme countermeasures on Shinji just to appease Midori and Sakura? Not likely. This is why I believe that Misato would not have put the DSS choker on Shinji in the first place, and her doing so in Q was extremely unrealistic and out of character, even with anything that happened during the timeskip.
Some of you will say: "Who cares about realism? It's a show about aliens and growing up." While this is true, Anno has proven that he is able to pull the themes off much better when you look at the NGE series. Disregarding the self-contained narrative, it is obvious that the purpose of Q was to bring Shinji to the same point he was at after episode 24 of the series. If we look at how NGE/EOE handled Shinji's depression, we see that it is quite realistic:
The neglect and coercion by the adults in his life, almost dying to angels multiple times, the sexual tension with Asuka, almost killing Touji, finding out Rei is a clone of his mother, Misato putting the moves on him and having to kill Kaworu all culminate towards Shinji's mental state during EOE. Shinji is passively suicidal but it's due to the *situation* and his own introverted tendencies instead of people actively trying to hurt and isolate him. He finds the will to live again due to his mothers words despite knowing just how difficult living might be. If you remove all the Evas and the Angels from the story, the themes that are touched upon (isolation, neglect, misunderstanding) still apply and the audience can still resonate with them.
The rebuilds however go about it completely differently. They bring Shinji to that same suicidal state by having all the characters/plot actively harm Shinji's mental health by:
Putting him in a coma for 14 years so he is completely clueless. Imagine how groggy you are when you wake up in the morning and then multiply that by a million.
Have Misato psychologically castrate Shinji by telling him he won't do anything with a look of disdain on her face.
Have Ritsuko make Shinji feel dread by telling him he has a bomb on his neck and it's because he is being "punished".
Not tell him why he is being punished when he asks Misato.
Have Asuka try to punch Shinji after he thought she was dead.
Tell Shinji the girl he saved is "gone”.
Have his "mother figure" threaten to blow his head off for wanting to leave with the girl you just told him is gone.
Have Asuka and Mari attack Shinji in Lilith's chamber even though Shinji was seemingly willing to listen to them had Asuka not kept attacking. (Watch that scene again and you'll see when Asuka learns what Shinji is trying to do, she stops attacking but instead of explaining that he's being manipulated, she just calls him a brat instead).
Even Mari was willing to potentially kill or cripple Shinji with the Anti-AT rounds. (We don't know what the AA rounds are truly capable of because the only time they are used on screen, they don't work. The round cartridges state that they are armor and AT field piercing and have explicit restrictions on their use. The fact that Mari requires Asuka's explicit authorization to use them imply that they are most likely lethal and would have killed/crippled Shinji had he been in a normal Eva).
Have Shinji's friend's head explode with the device Shinji's "mother figure" actually meant for him. Imagine seeing someone's head explode and then remember that your "mother figure" actually meant that to be for you. That would certainly mess anyone up.
Have Asuka then kick and manhandle him when he is catatonic.
Have Asuka force feed him to the point where he pukes whilst he is still grieving the death of his friend.
Have Shinji only be escorted whilst tied to a stretcher despite him coming voluntarily.
Have Misato place Shinji in 24/7 solitary confinement in a cell rigged with explosives.
Have Misato tell the WILLE crew to shoot Shinji on sight if they think he's getting into an EVA.
Have people tell Shinji that he's being a brat the entire time for reacting badly to all this.
By having Misato, Asuka, WILLE reject and "punish" Shinji so harshly so it kicks off his isolation and desperation, it makes Shinji's "recovery" seem less believable. Anno himself didn't even know how to make Shinji recover psychologically in 3.0+1.0 and he actually had to ask the voice actors on how to make that happen. The story made the WILLE crew go full scorched-earth and in doing so made Shinji's "growth" and his reconciliation with Misato seem impossible.
I have already stated that I believe Q represents "Condemnation" and Shin represents "Compassion" and I think both films pull that off brilliantly. But that doesn't mean I think the characters acted in a realistic manner. I do not believe that Misato would have placed such harsh sanctions on Shinji in the first place for the reasons I have stated above. And if she did, I do not believe that Shinji would have easily forgiven Misato (even IF she took a bullet for him) as we see he does in the film. I do not believe that WILLE were merely "scared and desperate" because as the dialogue above shows, they are surprisingly understanding (but still disapproving) of Shinji's situation despite him literally starting another impact. I do not believe that Misato would have bent over to Sakura and Midori's resentment and taken measures against Shinji, just to ease their minds.
In summary, my main problem with the post-timeskip rebuilds is that I feel they gaslight the audience in thinking that Shinji was just being a "brat" the entire time by having Asuka and Mari say: "You have grown a little/You smell like an adult now." However, the truth is Shinji's been through so much mental suffering perpetrated by the people he cares about, that it's a miracle he's not killed himself. It would certainly break most of us on this forum. The movies seek to show Shinji "finally" taking responsibility when the truth is, the plot went so above and beyond putting him down in such an extreme manner in the first place.
#evangelion#nge#nte#rebuild of evangelion#evangelion 3.0 you can (not) redo#evangelion 3.33#evangelion 3.0+1.0#misato katsuragi#shinji ikari#asuka langley shikinami#mari makinami illustrious#ritsuko akagi#3+1 spoilers#spoilers
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Caltiki, the Immortal Monster
We've talked about how there are an awful lot of fishman movies. There are way too many Bigfoot movies. There are even a surprising number of movies about monsters named Paul, but one thing I swear I never thought would be in two different movies is growing space blobs in the Mexican jungle. Yet here we, are following up The Flame Barrier with Caltiki, the Immortal Monster. The cast includes Gérard Herter from Secret Agent Super Dragon and Daniele Vargas from Hercules Unchained. Mario Bava insists he didn't direct this but Riccardo Freda says he did, while most film websites blame both of them.
Long, long ago, the Maya were doing math and building pyramids in Mexico when a sudden unknown cataclysm forced them to abandon their cities. In the present (or at least the 60s), a group of scientists have come to the ruins to see if they can solve this mystery. Two of them venture into a cave, and only one returns, raving about Caltiki, a Mayan goddess. The rest of the party set out to find out what happened and perhaps rescue the other man, but instead discover a huge carnivorous blob monster! Most of this beast is destroyed by crashing a gasoline truck into it, but they take a sample back to Mexico City with them for analysis. Because that's a great idea that won't bite them in the ass at all.
The opening titles of this movie tell us that it is 'based on an ancient Mexican legend'. I don't know anything about Mexican folklore but I did look through the List of Mayan Gods and Supernatural Beings page on Wikipedia and there are no names there that you can remotely bend into 'Caltiki'. I'm going to assume this movie has about as much to do with ancient Mexican legends as Village of the Giants has to do with H. G. Wells' Food of the Gods. The same credits also tell us that the dancer we see ripping her own clothes off in some 'native ceremony' was a woman named Gay Pearl. The early 60's was around when the word 'gay' stopped being used to mean anything other than 'homosexual', so I suspect she changed it shortly thereafter.
Although the basic premise of a growing space blob in the jungles of Mexico is strongly reminiscent of The Flame Barrier, in several ways Caltiki, the Immortal Monster takes an opposite approach to telling the story. One of the things that made The Flame Barrier kind of annoying was how it puttered around in the jungle with character-driven stuff for ages before it even introduced the monster. Caltiki goes almost entirely in the other direction. The first thing we see is the aftermath of a monster attack, with the dying archaeologist staggering back to camp. In the minutes that follow, we watch the rest of the expedition puzzle over what happened to their colleagues, but we have almost no idea of who they are. Most of the character development has to wait until they get back to Mexico City.
Unfortunately, the characters are really not very interesting people. Our supposed hero is the dishwater-dull Dr. John Fielding, who is one of those movie science guys whose significant other whines because he would rather look down a microscope than gaze into her eyes. Fielding promises his wife Ellen that he'll pay more attention to her, and I guess he does because next time we see him he appears to be happy with her and their little daughter, but if I were to call the issue 'minimally addressed' I would be giving it way too much credit. The other subplot in the movie is about a mixed-race woman named Linda (repeatedly described as a 'half-breed') and her relationship with one of the archaeologists, Max. Max was a dick to begin with, and when he goes mad with pain after being attacked by the blob monster he only gets worse. He never seems very interesting or threatening, and since the audience knows there's a blob monster coming, we feel our time is being wasted. Linda, as the only major character who isn't white, is killed when Max decides she is no longer useful to him.
Another place where Caltiki does exactly what The Flame Barrier didn't, but with far better results, is with the monster itself. In The Flame Barrier the space blob was immobile and basically just looked like somebody spilled a truckload of petroleum jelly. The blob of Caltiki, however, truly is the coolest thing in the movie. It's a pulsating, leathery mass that reproduces by stickily dividing in two, and dissolves people's flesh to leave only their skeletons. There were worse monsters on Star Trek: the Next Generation nearly thirty years later. Not only that, but the blobs are active, able to roll around and grow to engulf screaming victims, with a satisfying sense of weight and volume to their movements. There are also some pretty good gore effects, my favourite of which is a guy who's still breathing despite having had his face dissolved.
The Flame Barrier kept its blob in the distant jungle, where the only people it was menacing were three explorers and a chimp. We were told about the threat of its exponential growth, but that was fairly abstract. In Caltiki we still don't get the city-smashing rampage depicted in one of the posters, but just knowing that the city is there and having Fielding's wife and daughter around to be chased by swarms of blobs makes the threat feel far more concrete.
So this movie gets right a lot of things the other Mexican Space Blob movie got wrong, but I wouldn't be reviewing it if it wasn't still a bad movie. The dull characters and the refusal to deal with their arcs is one big problem. Another is the poor picture quality. The lighting is mostly good enough that you can tell where people are and what they're doing, but the film stock itself is not very good, which makes for a loss of detail. In some of the wide shots you can't tell who's supposed to be talking because it's impossible to see whose mouths are moving. In another, Fielding consults a book that appears to consist entirely of blank pages.
The dubbing is also not great. Fielding and his wife have very bland voices, which is a big contributor to them seeming like very bland characters. The guy voicing Max gnaws on the scenery, sounding like a villain from an old Disney movie. Fielding's daughter Jenny has the voice of an adult woman trying to talk like a child, and it sounds even worse than the same thing did in Manos: the Hands of Fate.
The script is pretty ham-fisted at times, particularly in the character scenes that tell us things far more often than they show us. Much of this is the fault of whoever wrote the English dialogue, but there's also the series of ridiculous plot devices that prevent anyone from warning Ellen Fielding that the blob in her basement has begun to grow. First, Max escapes from the hospital and goes to the house to get help from Linda, and pulls out the phone cord so nobody can turn him in. One of the scientists, finding no answer on the phone, tries to drive out to the house to talk to Ellen, but gets into a car crash. The police block the road off while they investigate the wreck, and Fielding runs the road block in his own haste to get home, leading him to be arrested and thrown into jail! I have to admit, it was pretty funny just watching these contrived events pile up.
As far as having a point to make goes, Caltiki, the Immortal Monster kind of shaves by one in two different places, but never quite gets there. For starters, there's the idea of archaeology as a treasure hunt. When the diver first ventures into Caltiki's sacred underground lake, he finds the bottom littered with bones but also with the gold jewelry the sacrificial victims were wearing. He returns to the surface and does not even mention the skeletons, but brings fistfuls of gold and goes back for more despite the risk of running out of oxygen. I suppose he is punished for this, as is Max when he tries to retrieve a piece somebody else dropped, since they're both attacked by the blob. It doesn't really qualify as a thematic thread, though, since the gold is never mentioned again. For the rest of the movie, the characters are motivated by scientific interest in the blob itself.
This leads into what's sort of a second motif, people disregarding the danger posed by the blob. Fielding has a sample he wants to study (the movie has no idea what kind of scientist he is. An archaeologist? A microbiologist?), and upon discovering that radiation makes it grow, he pumps more into it to see what happens. He and his colleagues are admittedly more cautious about this than the characters in Reptilicus, but the idea's still there: scientists who think they have everything under control, but don't understand how dangerous what they're working with really is. Again, this doesn't really go anywhere. At the end they about-face and insist on destroying every scrap, not even leaving enough for an “... or is it?” ending.
Caltiki, the Immortal Monster comes very close to being so bad it's good. There's plenty of stuff to laugh at, while the actual monster is threatening and well-executed enough to be entertaining in the way it was intended to be. If the film-makers had diverted a little of that money into better film stock, I probably would have enjoyed the movie very much.
#mst3k#reviews#episodes that never were#caltiki the immortal monster#i reference star trek#60s#we're running out of plots
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Aizawa x Reader 18+
Title: Easy Come
Rating: Explicit/R-18+
Words: 4914
Warnings: established relationship, 69 position, oral sex, cunnilingus, anal fingering, competitive sex
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674393
♥♥♥♥
Peaceful evenings at home with Shouta were the best. It was easily the highlight of your week and had been for the last year since you’d started dating. He was such a busy man that just finding the time to be together was often difficult but, somehow or another, the both of you made it work. There wasn’t a single thing in the world you’d trade this time for and you suspected he was in full agreement with that sentiment. He hadn’t come right out and said as much but he may as well have.
The tranquility in his demeanor when it was just you two was impossible to miss and such a stark difference from how he was in public that you couldn’t help wondering how many other people knew this side of him. You had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t many. Although a good man through and through, Shouta didn’t exactly have a reputation for being easy to get on friendly terms with. A tough nut to crack would likely be a good metaphor but you cherished that part of him more than you could put into words. It just made the soft spoken endearments and late night cuddles all the more meaningful. Of all the potential partners he could have chosen, he’d picked you and that had to count for something.
“What are you in the mood for tonight?”
You thought about that for a moment. “Surprise me.”
Issuing a good natured scoff, Shouta picks up the remote from the nightstand and turns on the TV.
You could hear him clicking through multiple screens to pull up an almost endless list of movies that were available at just the touch of a finger while you finished getting ready for bed in the attached bathroom. His apartment was starting to feel more like home than yours did and a smile touches your face when you looked down at where your toothbrushes were nestled together in the same holder. That something so small and insignificant could hold so much weight still took you by surprise even now but you were slowly getting used to it. He’d been very open about wanting you to make a space for yourself once the relationship reached the point of being serious whereas you’d had plenty of lingering reservations. Past hangups and all that.
But you were both slowly moving forward together as a couple and you felt good about the future. Everything seemed to be falling into place one piece at a time, against all odds and, perhaps, your better judgement. Only time would truly tell if what you had was meant to last though and you were determined to enjoy every possible moment with him that you could.
Finishing up at the sink, you pull a fluffy headband over your forehead to keep the hair off your face before switching off the light. Shouta glances up from the TV when you step into the bedroom. You catch the corner of his mouth hitching with what could only be amusement and it lights a mischievous spark in your chest as you cross over to climb up on the bed.
“What’s that look for?” You tease, scooting close to give him a peck on his stubbly cheek.
“Don’t make me say it. You know what that headband does to me.”
“Maybe that was my intention.”
A snort of mirth rumbles out of him as he reaches over to first tweak one of the plush cat ears sticking up off the top of your head and then further back so he can pinch at a loose strand of hair. Absently curling it around his finger, Shouta turns his attention back to the glowing screen against the wall. You sigh in contentment and lean into the firm weight of his body, listening to the click-click-click coming from the TV as he scrolls through the list. You’re positive that this has to be pretty close to what heaven feels like.
“Are you sure you don’t have any preference?” He asks at length. “Action, horror, romcom. Anything stand out?”
Thoughtfully humming, you regard the screen in quiet contemplation for a moment. “Maybe something light?”
“Romcom it is then.”
Your lips curl at the put upon tone in his voice, knowing full well he enjoys those kinds of movies more than he’d ever admit. He’d taken you to the theater on one of your first dates and you’d been surprised at his choice of film, initially writing it off as one made in deference to what you liked rather than what he liked. But then it kept happening, over and over again. You’d seen every romantic comedy blockbuster in the last year and then some, his inclination for that particular genre delighting you to no end. It was such an unexpected surprise but one that made perfect sense in retrospect. Shouta was a true romantic at heart even if he didn’t outwardly look it, after all.
“How about this one?” He says, nudging his shoulder to get your attention.
“Oooh, a classic. Good choice.” You sit up and wiggle over to your pillow as he selects the title and starts it up.
Setting aside the remote, Shouta reaches over onto the nightstand to turn off the light. The both of you settle in and get comfortable, snuggling close to each other with his arm curled over your shoulders and your cheek resting on his chest. It’s the perfect way to spend a Friday night with the promise of the weekend looming just on the horizon and, try as you might, you can’t shake the feeling of being genuinely happy. It was hard sometimes but so, so worth it at the end of the day.
You don’t make it very far into the movie before the close proximity with him overrides your wish to simply relax though. It’s near impossible to keep your mind out of the gutter when the clean, soapy smell of him is surrounding you like this, invading your nostrils and leaving a vaguely reminiscent taste of him on your tongue. The rhythmic rise and fall of his breast just under your cheek serves as a silent reminder of the densely packed muscle his lithe frame carries. With it comes the memory of how it feels to have those same muscles heaving against you, driving into your body and working you over right to the breaking point.
The desire you harbor for Shouta had not waned at all in the last year. If anything it had only gotten stronger. Just lying next to him in bed was enough to make you want him and you squirm, squeezing your thighs together in an attempt to stave off the growing heat there. But it’s no use. Your urges are simply too strong where he’s concerned and you can feel yourself starting to get wet, particularly when the steamy sex scene with the leading actress’s soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend starts up on screen. Shouta had taken you in similar fashion down in the apartment complex's laundry room late one night when you’d first started staying over for extended periods at a time and the thought alone is enough to make you ache.
He shifts beside you the third time you start to squirm, a wave of pleasant tingles erupting across your skin when he tightens his hold around your shoulders and pins you against his side. He’s strong enough to crush you in his arms if he felt so inclined and it makes your breath come a little faster. A little harder. The notion of letting this scratch go unitched doesn’t even cross your mind as you grasp at the plain black t-shirt he’d put on for bed, tilting your pelvis forward to discreetly grind into his thigh. You had to have him.
“Don’t tell me this is getting you riled up, kitten.” Shouta murmurs, the reverberation from his deep voice making your head feel like it’s vibrating. “If you’d wanted something a bit more explicit, all you had to do was say so.”
“No … this is fine.” You quietly assure him. The somewhat breathless quality of your words makes a shudder race up your spine and you arch, stretching your legs out to wind them around his. If you could get any closer you’d be on top of him by now and you can’t quite convince yourself that it would be such a bad thing.
Noising a muted sound of agreement, Shouta obligingly angles his body away from the TV and towards you. The rough pads of his calloused fingers give you a brief squeeze before tracing lazy circles into the meat of your upper arm. You tilt your head back to peer into his face, a mere hair's breadth from yours, and for a small eternity it's as if you’re simply passing the same oxygen back and forth. Every exhale feeds into the next inhale, his breath mingling with yours until you can’t be sure who's is whose anymore. Then, finally, he closes the distance.
His lips are slightly dry against yours, they always are, but it’s nothing a quick swipe of his tongue won’t fix. The second kiss is more demanding than the last and you all but melt against him, opening your mouth to grant him the access he seeks. A needy moan tries to claw its way up your throat when he slips into the hot, wet cavern of your mouth for a taste only to pull out a regretfully short moment later. You try to follow him, eager to give yourself over, but Shouta’s attention drops to the spot between you two instead.
“What’s got you so worked up tonight?” He brings the arm that’s not wrapped around you forward, giving your breast an idle squeeze through the thin cotton of your shirt, and you keen.
“You. It’s always you.”
“Is that so?” He says with a mirthful snort. Adjusting his hand, Shouta brushes his thumb over the pebbling peak of your nipple in taunting slow motion until you whine. “Am I really that good or am I just lucky? What do you think, kitten?”
“Both.” You croak, jutting your chest towards him for better access. “I love what you do to me and that makes you lucky.”
“Can’t argue that.”
A genuine smile graces his face, highlighted by the glow from the TV. You’ve completely forgotten about the movie by now, its low chatter mere background noise as you focus in on Shouta and how he makes you feel. His hooded gaze is still locked on your chest and you watch with bated breath when he delicately takes your nipple between his fingers, rolling the bud to stiff attention. The resulting friction makes your pussy clench and tingling warmth spreads throughout your body to set every nerve ending on fire. You draw a slow breath to try and ground yourself. It doesn’t work but, to be fair, you hadn’t really expected it to.
Shouta looks up at the sound though and you exchange a long look with one another. Keeping his eyes on your face, he pulls at your top until it's bunched under your chin and your nipples immediately start to pucker in the open air. Moaning softly, you watch as he dips his head to catch one of the meaty nubs in his mouth and suckle. He starts off slow and gentle but gradually increases the suction he’s applying until you finally gasp and writhe against him.
He comes up off your tit with a dull pop. The quiet breath he lets out fans across spit lathered skin, making your nipple pucker all over again and even stiffer than before. You seeth and blindly reach behind him to worm your hand into his dark plaid boxers. Pausing long enough to give his ass an encouraging squeeze, digging your nails in for good measure, you work your way towards the front of his body so you can grasp the half hard length between his legs. Wiry pubic hair tickles your knuckles as you subduedly pump at him, teasing him to full arousal while he idly flicks at your nipple with his index finger. Despite the thrumming arousal pumping through your system, it seems neither of you is in a hurry to rush this and you can’t say you have any complaints about that.
“Was it the sex scene in the laundry room?” He husks after a long moment.
“It certainly didn’t help.”
“Hmm. Maybe we should revisit that later. You might have an unrealized kink for having your pussy ate on top of a washing machine, sweetheart.”
You outright laugh at that. “ I think I just like having you go down on me period. The setting doesn’t really matter.”
Issuing a low, rumbling growl, Shouta drops his arm to worm his fingers between your pliant thighs and possessively cup your pussy in his hand. “Is that what you want? Want me to eat you out until you’re screaming and begging me to stop?”
Your breath hitches with a little gasp. “God, yes …”
He takes a moment to grind the heel of his palm into the apex of your slit, applying just the right amount of pressure to leave you desperate for more. Then, too quick for you to react, he rolls over onto his back and drags you on top of him so that you’re half sprawled out across his chest. Your pulse jumps at suddenly finding yourself nose to nose and you brace your palms on his firm pecs, intending to give him some breathing room. Shouta is fast though, much faster than you, and he brings his hands up to catch your cheeks before you can retreat. He pulls you into another deep kiss, the stubble on his chin abrasively scratching your skin in the process. You shudder at the dominant gesture, feeling your cunt gush more sticky slick to coat your labia as you moan wantonly into his mouth. His ability to drive you wild was as profound as it was unfair. You’d have to make sure to pay him back for this later.
“Turn around.” He grunts upon pulling back just enough to speak. “And pants off.”
A sharp swat to your ass has you practically vibrating with eager excitement as you carefully stand up on the bed and start shimmying your sleep shorts down your hips. Shouta watches you with nothing short of barefaced interest, his hands coming up to caress the soft skin of your legs where they’re bracketing his ribs. One foot at a time, you cautiously step out of your bottoms and toss them over the edge of the bed before turning to face the TV. You glance back over your shoulder with a sly grin, giving your behind a taunting little shake.
“Like this?”
He snorts. “Come here before I decide to punish you, kitten. You already know exactly how unpleasant I can make this for you.”
Your pussy tightens at the playful threat which ultimately only succeeds in exciting you all the more. You’d rather not endure another one of Shouta’s infamous edging sessions though and you lower yourself down onto your knees, fighting back the anxious flutter in the pit of your gut that always accompanies this particular position. No matter how many times you do it, shoving your ass in your boyfriend's face will probably never not be an awkward experience.
It’s clear as day that Shouta doesn’t mind it one bit though and he loops his arms under your thighs so he can take your waist in hand and guide you into place. The fact he actually pulls you closer doesn’t come as a surprise and you wait with bated breath for him to deem your positioning satisfactory. You start slightly just a moment later at the tickle of his coarse hair on your inner thigh, unable to shake the feeling that he’s nose deep in your pussy like this. It’s a bit embarrassing but somehow thrilling at the same time. A real conundrum.
“There.” He says at last, stilling behind you, and you shudder at the sensation of his breath on your skin. “Remember what you asked for, kitten. I won’t stop until you’re screaming.”
“You would’ve done that anyway, whether I’d asked for it or not …”
He chuckles faintly in response. “That’s true.”
You start to smile, that undeniable spark of genuine happiness making itself known again. But then you feel him lean close and your mouth warbles, dropping open with a silent groan instead as you brace for the first expert stroke of Shouta’s tongue. It doesn’t come right away though and he takes his time merely nuzzling into you, placing wayward kisses along your puffy slit and taking deep breaths of your scent. A slow moving tremor works its way up your spine, causing you to shake and clench your pussy in anticipation. The suspense alone was enough to make you start begging.
But Shouta knows exactly how to tease you to vibrating fever pitch and giving him any more ammunition to work with would just be inviting one of his drawn out games so you stay silent, biting down on your lip when you can feel the word ‘please’ bubbling to life inside your throat. He’s as aware of the underlying tension as you are and he grunts against your cunt. Dragging his palms up the backs of your thighs, he reaches up to squeeze the doughy soft flesh of your ass and spread your cheeks apart, baring you fully to the room. You whimper, unable to hold back such an instinctive sound when you’re totally exposed like this, and Shouta’s lips curl against your labia.
Apparently pleased with that, he presses his lips to the center of your slit and kisses you. The ministrations of his mouth are hungry and demanding, the friction of his facial hair against your petal soft folds leaving a burning trail in its wake while he works you open. You sway slightly on your knees, eyes slipping shut as you bask the sensation.
His tongue emerges a brief moment later and you give your hips an encouraging wiggle when it slips and slides through your wet cunt lips in search of your entrance. He takes his time just circling the rim, lapping up the accumulated slick and swallowing the taste of you before delving in deeper. Your muscles contract at the slimy intrusion, fluttering in delight, and you teeter forward to brace your hands on his sharp hip bones so that you can better present yourself to him. A rumbling groan rises up behind you, the vibrations traveling through your pussy, and you twitch in pleasure.
“Mmm … that feels good, Shouta. Do you like how I taste that much?”
You receive an incoherent grumble in response and it makes you smile.
Cracking your eyes open, you glance down at the straining tent in his boxers. Knowing you could never leave him hanging like that, you lift your hand to tug at the cotton. Inch by excruciating inch, you push it lower until his hard cock pops up into the air with an enthusiastic bounce. He tenses underneath you, just enough for you to notice, and you tuck the elastic waistband under his balls before taking him in hand. A slow pump is all you reward him with at first but then, as if sensing your intentions, he withdraws his tongue from your body in favor of licking his way down to your clit. Your grip on him eagerly tightens and you rear back, grinding your pussy on his face.
The resulting grunt of pleasure goes straight to your head and you do it again. Dragging your cunt across his mouth and no doubt smearing your arousal on his skin, you give Shouta’s cock another tug that makes the foreskin bunch at the tip. He issues a rumbled warning and pulls back just enough to speak.
“Watch yourself, kitten. We can still do this the hard way.”
With that ominous reminder, he dives back in. Shoving his face so deep into your cunt that it's a wonder he doesn’t suffocate, Shouta works the meat of your labia open again and his tongue darts out to lash at your clit. You go ramrod stiff on top of him, twitching and shaking like a leaf at the sharp starbursts of pleasure that shoot through your nerves. It’s enough to make you freeze up, so overwhelmed by the sensation that you almost overlook the very obvious challenge he’s presented you with.
You’ve played this particular game with him more times than you could count though and, through sheer force of will alone, you start to pump him in earnest now. It takes a staggering amount of concerted effort to do it but if it's another round of who-can-successfully-distract-who he was looking for then that’s what he’d get.
Lowering yourself so that you can lie down on top of him, you angle Shouta’s cock towards your mouth and seal your lips around the head. Your free hand travels further south, curling around and cupping his balls so that you can massage them. He was particularly sensitive in this area and, just as expected, the muscles in his legs jump at the first gentle squeeze. You feel real proud of yourself for all of five seconds before he retaliates by closing his mouth on your clit and sucking. Hard.
You come up off his dick with a half strangled squeal, futilely trying to squeeze your thighs together and shut him out. It’s a losing battle though and Shouta merely tightens his elbows around your hips so that he can hold you in place no matter how much you squirm. A shock of static electricity zaps up your spine and you arch so hard that something in your lower back pops. The damp presence of reflexive tears wetting your lash line manages to ground you somewhat and, with a haggard gulp of air, you take his stiff cock into your mouth again.
Swallowing him as far as you can in this position, you start bobbing your head and laving the underside of him with your tongue while your hand pumps at the base where you can’t quite reach. He lets up on your clit long enough to groan appreciatively and flex his hips off the bed to meet you halfway. Bending his knobby knees towards the ceiling to accommodate the awkward angle, Shouta begins thrusting into your mouth enthusiastically enough to make his balls bounce and a tinge of victory lights up inside your chest.
It’s regretfully short lived though and you stiffen when his fingers abruptly find your slit. He wastes no time pushing one inside, giving the searching digit a taunting wiggle for good measure, and you moan around his cock. The sudden pressure on your upper wall has you clenching around him as the tension in your gut doubles and then triples. You know it's only a matter of moments until you reach the breaking point if he keeps that up but, much to your surprise, he pulls out after a prolonged beat.
Confusion curls at the back of your mind but he’s still fucking your mouth and you can’t think straight. The drool spilling out around his cock and running down your chin is particularly distracting. All you can seem to do is wordlessly noise your bewilderment and dig your nails into his flexing hip, hoping he understands what you’re trying to say.
You get your answer soon enough in the form of that same finger, sticky with arousal, finding the pucker of your asshole. Squawking wetly in surprise, you jerk against him but Shouta hold’s fast. With one hand pulling your cheek to the side, the other applies just the right amount of pressure at the center of your entrance to sink inside your body. You freeze, feeling the muscles clench and flutter around the intrusion, but this is not the first time you’ve had your ass penetrated and it offers only a cursory amount of resistance. Your eyes start to water again, rolling towards the back of your head, and Shouta stills underneath you with his dick rammed as deep into your mouth as he can reach.
A small eternity seems to pass and then you feel the ring of muscle give way. Once the first joint makes it through, the rest follow suit easily enough and Shouta wiggles his finger into you straight down to the knuckle. You groan in perverse pleasure, rocking forward on your knees, but the only place you can go is further down on his cock. You’re thoroughly trapped between two equally unrelenting forces like this and you can’t quite shake the impression of being a spit roasted pig. Damn him. What a devious bastard.
“That seems to have gotten your attention.” He groans, very softly, and the sensation of his lips brushing against your cunt makes you jolt. Allowing himself a strained chuckle at your expense, Shouta nuzzles into you again and your body responds with a warning tremor that he doesn’t miss. “Maybe I should start using your ass more often. You seem to like it.”
You gurgle noisily in response, struggling to swallow around the girth shoved in your mouth.
He seems to take that as an agreement and tilts his head, slowly dragging the flat of his tongue across your throbbing clit. You shake so hard that your eyes rattle about inside their sockets but there’s nothing you can do to turn the tables now. He’s got you completely at his mercy and he was just as aware of that as you were.
With his finger plugging your ass, Shouta takes a leisurely pace to eating you out and it very nearly drives you insane. It quickly becomes apparent that he intends to drag this out for as long as possible, which he was adept at even under the best of circumstances but it was particularly torturous in this case. Your clenching muscles gave you away and any time he felt you starting to tighten around him, he’d merely shift his attention to kissing the outer portion of your pussy until the tension began to fade. You were toeing the line of release for such an extended period of time that it actually started to hurt and you whine around him, trying to pull yourself up off his cock. He wouldn’t permit that either though and merely tightened his arms around you or jutted his pelvis up higher as needed. It was maddening in the best possible way.
It seemed as if hours had gone by in this fashion before he finally spoke up again. “Are you ready to cum, kitten?”
“Rrmmhrm.”
“Are you going to scream for me?”
“Rrmh!” You jerkily nod your head, fingers fisting in the sheets.
“You’ll have to try hard if you want me to hear it while you have my cock in your mouth.”
Groaning, you weakly jut your pelvis back against his face, urging him to finish you already. Shouta quietly chuckles, sounding more like a moan than a genuine laugh.
He tilts his head then, slotting his mouth over your clit, and you let out a muffled wail when his tongue drags across the swollen nub with real intent this time. Every inch of your body shakes in rapidly mounting tension, the sheer force of it almost too much to bear. He holds you tight as you quake on top of him though, your chest heaving frantically against his stomach, but he won’t let up this time. Now he wants you to cum and you’re entirely helpless to stop it even if you’d wanted to. It takes everything you have to keep breathing through your nose as starbursts erupt across your vision and, before you even realize it’s happening, you tip over the edge.
Squeezing your eyes shut, you wail around his cock. A fresh wave of drool dribbles out of your mouth as you struggle to keep your jaw open while you ride out the cresting waves of ecstasy, realizing in some far off, dreamy way that the ball gag training was really paying off now. It’s a hysterical thought to have when your mind and body were being overwhelmed with a flood of dopamine but you don’t even have the wherewithal to find it funny. You were soaring on cloud nine, somewhere far above the physical constraints of your body, and you’re only vaguely aware of your asshole sporadically squeezing his finger when you start to come back some moments later. It was the sort of transcendental orgasm you’d only ever experienced with Shouta.
You were positive that no one else could ever hope to take you to such dizzying heights as this and you go limp on top of him with a frazzled sigh.
After a long beat, when he’s sure you’ve milked your release for all its worth, he slowly eases his hips back down to the bed. You gratefully spit his cock out, watching it bob and glisten wetly in the dim light from the TV while you try to steady your breathing. He gives you another moment or two before idly tapping his fingers against the meat of your ass.
“That didn’t exactly sound like screaming to me, kitten.” He says quietly, the sly note in his voice not escaping your notice. “I think we might have to give that another go.”
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Splash Mountain, Br’er Rabbit, and the Tragedy of Being Represented By Other People.
So, this is probably going to be the realest post I’ll make for a while - or at least until The Boondocks arrives, but it seemed apropos. Immediately after this I’ve got rants about sci fi and Star Wars and other unrelated things coming up, but for now we have my earnest opinions on a decision I feel should have been better thought out than it was. This is going to read more like an article or an essay than a review, but I think it needs to be said.
It hasn’t come up too often on this blog, but I am African American. It’s my life and my perspective. And as an African American, a lover of animation and - though this definitely doesn’t come up on the blog - a passionate folklorist in what you could call an academic sense (in that I’m a writer and a student, and folklore is the subject of most of my research), people I know in real life have asked me more than once what my opinion on the removal of Splash Mountain in favor of Princess and the Frog, how I must be glad it’s finally being removed, what my take on the history there was, and…
Well…
To really give that opinion, I’ve got to start at the beginning. Not Song of the South - that, if anything, is the very middle. We have to start with Br’er Rabbit and who that character was. Sit back students, info dump incoming.
Br’er Rabbit is an folklore character of African American origin with - like many folkloric figures - a difficult to place date of origin, but he was known to have existed at least since the early 19th Century, He has obvious similarities to the far older figure of Anansi - with several Br’er Rabbit tales even taking elements of Anansi stories verbatim - though with a the notable difference that unlike Anansi, Br’er Rabbit was more often a heroic figure: an underdog and seemingly downtrodden figure who used his wits and his enemies’ hubris rather than physical force to win the day. The meaning of that kind of figure to an enslaved people is obvious, especially when you compare Br’er Rabbit to another, contemporary trickster figure in African American history by the name of John. Br’er Rabbit’s stories could even arguably be seen as a more child-friendly version of the John tales, in which a human trickster pulls the same kind of momentum turning ploys on villains - but those villains tended to be explicitly slave masters or overseers, and John’s payback often came with explicitly deadly results. The existence of John as escapism for the enslaved or just-post-enslaved (IE Reconstruction) populations is clear: a person who with no power who could fight back with nothing but their mind, preying on the fact that their enemies see them as incapable and helpless, and the connection of Br’er Rabbit to that message is difficult to deny. If anything, Br’er Rabbit comes off as a somewhat more child-friendly version of the concept.
But the most important thing to glean from this is who and what Br’er Rabbit is: a product of the African American community and its history, as a means of those people to express themselves and their values in the face of oppression.
Now we fast forward to 1881, and along comes Joel Chandler Harris: a white Georgian. Harris was a folklorist himself, and travelled the country collecting stories - most famously Br’er Rabbit stories. His stated reason was to bridge African American and white communities by sharing stories, but he was tainted by the perspectives of his world and his place in it, infamously creating a framing narrative for those stories in which the character telling them exuded the imagery of subservience and simplicity that was typical of perceptions of African Americans from the post-Civil War Southern environment in which he collected them: Uncle Remus, in other words. Harris is hardly the only white curator who adapted stories of black or brown peoples in a way that played up the people the stories came from as something of a theme park piece, as if noble in unintelligence and simplicity, but he’s one of the most famous ones to do so - and that’s because of the adaptation.
To note, when people criticize cultural appropriation, this is the kind of thing that really triggers the outrage. Not any situation in which a white person is inspired by someone who isn’t white and creates something accordingly, but situations where someone else’s creation is taken and used for the fame and profit of others, to the detriment of the people who made it. It’s these situations like the one Joel Chandler Harris created centuries ago, specifically, that people are trying to draw attention to - even if sometimes social media gets a bit trigger happy sometimes, that’s the real, underlying problem. With that in mind, let’s put that aside and move forward.
Fast forward again to 1946. Walt Disney Productions, then less the company of grander, wider scale stories of epic quests and emotional upheaval that make us all cry and more a company more known for folktale adaptations in general, were looking for a but of American folklore to headline a live action, animation mix - a medium that allowed a bit more financial benefit, as straightforward animation was not always particularly profitable those dates. This wouldn’t be the last time they produced an adaptation of an American folktale or short story - their version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow a few years later being actually one of the more faithful adaptations of that short story put to film. Disney, who evidently read Chandler Harris’ stories, put together a project to see if they could adapted. Which they did. Pretty much verbatim. This is actually worth pointing out: the actual Br’er Rabbit stories in the films are very accurately adapted, and the actors involved in the story (including James Baskett, how also played Uncle Remus) did a fine job characterizing them. The issue is that Disney also adapted Chandler Harris’ stereotypical and offensive framing device pretty much verbatim, bringing Uncle Remus. And therein lies the problem.
To put the issue with Song of the South in perspective, the movie - with the framing device - can be categorized as something called Reconstruction Revisionism - which is basically a genre of post-Civil War media meant to present the pre-war South was perfect and idyllic, and that people are racially more natural in that environment’s dynamic and never should have left. One of the most infamous movies in history, Birth of a Nation, is the crowning example of this genre. Obviously, Song of the South is nowhere near as awful and inflammatory a movie as that, but there’s a degree to which it was seen as the straw the broke the camel’s back for black depictions in media, only a couple of years after Disney’s Dumbo also did the same. The end result, an African American creation was used in a film that ultimately demeaned the African American community, a decision that Disney has been ashamed of ever since.
Fast forward to now. Disney is removing Splash Mountain, the sole remnant of Song of the South that focuses exclusively on Br’er Rabbit - a choice we’ve had reason to suspect was coming for about a year now, but which was unveiled conspicuously in the middle of protests and campaigning for better treatment of people of African descent worldwide. The reveal was a rousing success, with people applauding the decision to finally wipe away the rest of that movie - though remember that for later, that the response relies on the perception of Br’er Rabbit as something that starts with Song of the South - and replace it with something else. Surely, as a black person I should be happy that they’re finally getting rid of that racist character for good and replacing him with something more positive? And again, well…
To put short, Br’er Rabbit has finished his journey from African cultural symbol to discarded pariah, all because others used the character in racist ways that they themselves now regret. And for that… let’s be clear, I’m not angry so much as saddened. I’m not railing against the company for making the choice, since I can see how from their point of view it was the wisest and most progressive thing to do. Song of the South is a badly old fashioned movie that they’re right to want to move on from, and it’s their right to downplay characters within their purview if those characters reflect badly on the company. I’m just outlining the tragic waste of it all.
For now, compare Princess and the Frog - the thing they’re replacing it with. I do love the movie, or at least any problems I have with it have little to do with representation, and I definitely don’t have anything against Musker and Clements and their beautiful visions and creations, but it’s difficult to deny that its an adaptation of a European story, adapted by a collection of mostly white creators (with Rob Edwards comprising but one third of the screenwriting team, but not of story conception), that’s ultimately just dolled up with African Americans characters and a very Hollywood-esque depiction of a African diaspora religion (Voodoo, which unfortunately has a long history of such portrayals). If we’re talking about representation specifically - which this move had definitely been presented as a champion for - it’s not the perfect example, more of a story with a surface covering of the black experience than one with an especially strong connection. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem (Tiana and her story do well depict strong black characterizations, and approach an interesting (if light_ implication about racism and hardship during the 1920s) if Disney had yet created any other franchise that was another actual adaptation of an African or African American tale or story (with involvement from such actual people), but Song of the South is actually it. They legitimately have nothing else to call on.
This is something I feel we should do more to remedy. I am a writer/prospective screenwriter myself, and trying to put more stories out there is one of my primary focuses and goals should I ever truly enter the industry, but at the moment we just don’t have very many options.
This is hardly the only time that people of color have had little control over depictions of their own culture - literary and film history is full of such situations in both minor and terribly major ways - but it’s something that stings especially hard due to being such a current example, and because of sheer irony of the end result. Now we have a situation where African Americans are being told that something their people created to represent themselves is negative and wrong, because years ago other people appropriated that creation and used it to paint a negative picture of the people who actually held claim over it, and now the enterprise that those people created wants to save face: another example of culture being treated like a possession of the ones who are poised to make money of off it. And what’s worse, while the culture is used and abused like trash, the people are now presented with this removal like it was a prize - like they’re finally being given something - when little has really changed.
Ultimately, the Splash Mountain news - though it had been coming for a while - made me rather upset for that reason. As a studier of folklore, I suppose I knew better than most where these things came from, and so the buzz around the move being a belief that Br’er Rabbit was an intrinsically racist character just highlighted the tragedy of how African Americans and their culture tended to be tossed about by American media. So no matter what, I can’t feel particularly happy about it.
Let me iterate, in the film industry, being represented by people who aren’t of your culture group is basically inevitable. That’s essentially how the industry works. I’m not saying we should rail against anyone who would try to represent cultures that aren’t their own. The people who produce and create are few, and eventually the truth is that you have to be represented by other people - at least for the moment. We shouldn’t be railing against representation by others in general, as that wouldn’t be cognizant of the situation and thus self destructive. What I’m saying is that we - both we trying to be represented, and those doing the representing - should be aware of the problem there: that when others choose to represent you in media, you essentially have to trust them to have a real interest in you and your best interests when doing so, and when they don’t that depiction is there forever. So it behooves us to try to be the ones who are representing ourselves as much as possible, and in situations where we can’t, to remind those who want to represent us that they have a responsibility to do so effectively.
This is Animated Minds for Animated Times, and really this blog is ultimately about emphasizing what makes animated media work, what makes it fun, and what makes it worthwhile no matter how old you are. And so in several years of sporadic and infrequent reviews, reactions and fandom posts it’s been rare for me to get this real about a topic, but this is something that is a serious issue feel was overlooked. Representation is complicated. And more often than not solutions that are handed to us are more band-aids that look like cures than necessarily being actually helpful, and that’s what happens when ultimately the decisions about how you’re represented lie in the hands of other people. Representation is one of the biggest things we need to work on in coming years, especially with stories and adaptations - which refer to history and culture that are often not widely known or accepted. Ask someone if they think there should be an African princess, and they’ll tell you they didn’t even have kings and queens in Africa - something that’s bluntly wrong, but is widely believed simply because those elements of culture are never represented.
And that’s the sum of my thoughts on the subject. I hadn’t updated the blog in months because this whole thing was stewing in me, and I couldn’t really go back to cheerful posts about new things until I got it out. I’ve got great thoughts about the Owl House, Amphibia, the new seasons of BH6 and Ducktales that are totally coming up soon. But for now, just a few sobering thoughts from someone who grew up loving cartoons, and desperately wishes people like me had more to look at in that field beyond apologies and promises.
#splash mountain#disney#song of the south#the princess and the frog#brer rabbit#social commentary#black lives matter#representation#walt disney world#joel chandler harris#uncle remus#cultural appropriation#real talk
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Anonymous asked…
What is your take on Bruce Banner's love interest?
Whether we’re mutuals or not, feel free to ask me about Bruce!
Oh, this is a good question, and something I haven’t discussed in months. Thanks for asking it!
This version of Bruce is hopelessly in love with Betty Ross. He’ll always love her, even if they’re miles apart, and both of them have moved on and dismissed the hopes of seeing each other again. Even if Bruce were to meet someone else, his feelings for her would remain in perpetuity.
I’ve written some headcanons with someone (she's no longer on tumblr, sadly) where Bruce and Betty met in a library during their university years, and the whole dynamic was very much a friends-to-romance one. Their earlier interactions were essentially the "study buddies" kind, and I imagine it was the combination of their shared work and interests, and the comfortability in talking about that stuff, that snowballed into other conversations and ultimately, a romantic relationship. And it continued up until Bruce's accident.
This pairing has always been very special to me because, unlike the others, Betty was the first person to see a far more vulnerable side of Bruce. Bruce has always been an extremely closed-off and reticent person; he hates revealing too much about himself because he feels this information could be abused somehow; that somebody would take issue with what he was telling them, just like how Brian would react vehemently whenever he watched educational children’s television shows, or played with certain toys. Betty was the first person that Bruce felt comfortable enough to open up to, in multiple manners. Not only would he discuss Brian with her (granted, sometimes he didn’t say much, but even dropping a few tiny mentions of Brian was huge for him), but he also felt like he could simply be himself around her. He didn’t need to keep his guard up around Betty like he did around other people. He was still sky, awkward, and nerdy around Betty, but he could voice his opinions more confidently in her presence. And the adaptation I've been writing with; she’s a slightly more modern version of the character — soft and gentle, but she has a temper of her own and a tangible boldness in certain situations, and it can be a subtle juxtaposition to Bruce’s own personality at times. It’s quite lovely.
There are other aspects of the relationship, here and there, that I also love. In "The Incredible Hulk" (2008), Betty could swear that she saw some aspect of Bruce in the Hulk, and Bruce refused to accept such a possibility at first, because he believed the Hulk was a sentient and autonomous being — a belief that had grown over the years, predominantly because of his immense guilt and an unconscious desire to reduce his sense of culpability. If the Hulk somehow wasn’t him, its destructive actions were no longer entirely his fault. But after the Chitauri invasion, at which point he was able to remember his actions as the Hulk, and self-assess his behaviour in that state, Bruce realized she was correct about everything. If it wasn’t for Betty and the statement she made, he may not have fully accepted the Hulk as a part of himself — as himself, and he would’ve been stuck in denial for years. Lots of his development can be attributed to Betty, even if they aren’t in touch anymore.
Not only this, but Bruce met Betty during a time where he hadn’t experienced all his hardships with Ross. He was nowhere near as world-weary, and while he didn’t trust people much back then, either, it was better than his tendencies nowadays. In that sense, Betty is one of his last few connections to the past, and a time when he was more hopeful and innocent.
But while Bruce can control his condition now, he hasn’t reconnected with Betty. She's been in the dark ever since the Harlem incident, save for glimpses of him on the news here and there.
Bruce does want to see Betty again. He would love to see her. But he’s made some personal discoveries related to his condition that convinced him he’s not a good fit for her, or anyone in general. He doesn’t see himself as completely human anymore, which has become even more of a tangible sentiment ever since his transformations became a typical and even daily occurrence. As a result, there are some philosophical quandaries that prevent him from resuming a romantic relationship with her, or with anyone else. Given his current development trajectory, he would be the Hulk almost constantly in later verses. It’s not an ideal scenario to create a potential relationship from — especially with Betty, because he’s unable to meet some of her needs when he's the Hulk. Additionally, he cannot guarantee Betty’s safety with Ross still around, because he doesn’t know if Ross is still looking for a way to capture him. He suspects there were times in the past when Ross backed off temporarily, like after the Chitauri invasion, because capturing the Hulk at that time would have caused a huge public outcry, but nowadays, he’s unsure where Ross’ intentions lie. He's unwilling to take the risk.
All this being said, Bruce doesn’t expect Betty to remain loyal to him, or vice versa, because he understands the necessity of moving on and not dwelling on the past. It would be melancholic if Bruce discovered that Betty had met someone new, yes (this was certainly the case with Leonard Samson), but ultimately, he would be happy for her, and he’d tell himself that his own feelings don’t matter if it means she’s content and safe. Of course, there is always the possibility that Banner could reach out with letters, or another kind of communication channel. And it's possible that if Ross was gone and the world was more settled, he would meet her in-person, even if he didn't intend to restart a romantic relationship. At that point, there’s nothing stopping them from sharing their work and collaborating professionally, too. This kind of interaction could eventually become the norm. But I don’t really see their relationship shifting to a romantic one again.
So I suppose in the end, I don’t see their relationship as having a clich�� happy ending, in the sense that they end up together, are happily married, and are living in their own little cottage somewhere. I see it as a mature progression from young love, to a failed effort to make things work in a terrible situation, and then an acceptance of knowing, while their situation has improved, it’s still not going to work out. And they both have the courage to run with things and make the best of it. Betty would be understanding of Bruce’s situation, as she’s always been, and in concurrence, Bruce would be happy as well, because he knows Betty can have a romantic relationship with someone who completely presents as human. They can still work together too, which is a callback to how their relationship first began in the library. And it continues to build on all the trust and confidence they initially showed each other, and continued to show each other, over the years.
So it’s very bittersweet.
I’m also going to mention the pairing of Bruce and Natasha, because I need to assert that I do enjoy this ship! As a matter of fact, it’s something I’ve enjoyed for years and years. I was one of the wierdos who was shipping them soon after the release of The Avengers, earlier than most to the point where the tag was completely blank. I guess for me, there was something unique about their dynamic in The Avengers that stood out from Bruce’s other interactions. Natasha was ordered to approach the doctor in Kolkata, and at that point, she had seen the Hulk's capabilities in-person during her involvement in the Culver University incident. Her distrust of Bruce and his alter ego was justified, especially given her personal experiences with everything, and while it may (or may not) have lessened over the course of the film, Natasha clearly came to respect Bruce at the very least, and she understood the benefits of not only putting his intellect to good use, but the Hulk itself. During the final battle, Bruce had come on his own volition and was fully prepared to transform, but she still made the active effort to tell him the Hulk was valuable. Given her past experiences with the Hulk, this meant a lot coming from her. And it's clear this wasn't just a "tactical" choice on her part; if she didn't say anything, the outcome wouldn't have been any different. This was a nice way to end the film and create a foundation for their future development between them. If their relationship continued to open up, I could certainly see them developing feelings for each other.
But the next film... Eugh. I was gravely disappointed by the sudden schoolgirl-crush syndrome that Natasha was demonstrating, which was unrealistic in itself (I'll explain my reasoning in a bit), and the total handwaving of everything that led up to it, which ultimately did nothing but break Natasha’s character and make it difficult for most of the audience to accept what was happening. Because... What initially made Natasha go from having a reluctant admiration for him, to downright falling for him? We did not see the process, or the catalysts. They had jumped from Point A to Point Y, and we saw nothing of the points in between. So the whole thing immediately fell apart for me.
A common argument I see in defense of Natasha’s behaviour is, simply put, she’s in love, so it’s natural for her to act a little kooky. However, love doesn’t have the effect of completely negating deeply-ingrained character aspects, especially fundamental traits. And Natasha has many traits that are the complete antithesis of how she was behaving in that movie. It’s the same as seeing Christopher Nolan's Bruce Wayne, a normally close-mouthed and subtle character, gushing, nudging up to, and grinning like a little boy around Rachel Dawes. It doesn’t make sense... So why is it suddenly acceptable for Natasha?
In that sense, I could also presume that Natasha’s behaviour was Joss Whedon’s misogynistic projection of how he, himself, believes a woman in love should behave. There’s a real possibility, given how Natasha was characterized in earlier MCU films, versus how she was acting in this movie, that Whedon threw out her characterization in favour of playing out a fantasy; a stereotype. And unluckily for him, that stereotype (as the word itself implies) does not fit all people or characters. So it was noticeable, and not in a good way.
And honestly... I’m disappointed that this disaster has caused so many people to discount the ship as a whole, even though that film was simply one poor adaptation of it. People also tend to dismiss the pairing because they believe Bruce and Natasha are too different. But they both have trust issues. They both have experiences where they’ve been used for other peoples’ goals. Natasha has seen a very vulnerable and intimate side of Bruce that most people never have (that look he gave her before he transformed on the helicarrier, honestly, was completely unlike the self-composure he obsessively tried to convey in all their prior interactions)... And frankly, I'm sick of hearing about the “age gap” between them, because my aunt and uncle were twelve years apart, and they were happily married for decades. Not to mention, Bruce and Natasha have been through countless hardships, and they probably have a lot more common ground than many people with an “age gap”.
So if things were properly written? That would have been phenomenal, I think. The potential was certainly there in the first movie; it’s just a shame those foundations were ignored and not directly built on.
But that’s enough salt from me!
As for this Bruce in particular... I can see him having a relationship with Natasha in the earlier part of his timeline, before the Sokovia incident occurred. There would've been a lot of opportunities for their relationship to develop, especially because Bruce wasn't just working with the Avengers; he joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and was working on the same helicarrier as Natasha for around a year, too. He would've avoided her a lot, but I can easily see Natasha approaching him eventually, or them running into each other and trying to reconcile. Especially once Bruce remembers everything that happened during the helicarrier incident, and how scared Natasha was. He had offered Natasha a brief apology during the Chitauri invasion, but after those memories were dredged up, it would suddenly become insufficient.
But during or after the Sokovia incident, I doubt they would start a relationship with each other. This is simply because Natasha caused Bruce a lot of turmoil around this time, and afterwards. She betrayed his trust during the Sokovia battle by forcing him to transform, which also worsened an issue that Bruce was currently having with his condition. Her support of the Sokovia Accords didn't help either, because Bruce was vehemently against them from the very beginning, having seen Ross’ wish to exploit the Hulk’s abilities, and he feared this would continue on a much greater scale if the Accords were ratified, with hundreds (if not thousands) of identified superhumans now vulnerable. I hesitate to say Bruce will never trust Natasha again, but while he could probably reach a tentative comfortability around her, a romantic relationship might be asking too much. There’s simply too much negative history between them, a lot of which entails broken trust. And once Bruce’s trust in someone is broken, well, it’s monumentally difficult to restore.
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A Tale of Two Videos: Why the Images of George Floyd Dying Broke the Nation
Why is the footage of George Floyd dying beneath a policeman’s knee the video that finally broke the nation?
I actually think the story of our current public chaos stems from two videos, brought to the public at nearly the same time, that outline both ends of a system which elevates white, moneyed people at the expense of everyone else -- especially those of us who are darker than blue.
In one, a white woman threatens a black man by telling him she will call the police and lie about him threatening her life. In another, a black man is pinned down by several police officers, pleading for help to breathe, until he dies.
One video shows the nightmare of overpolicing black bodies; losing your life because a store clerk thought you tried to pay with a counterfeit bill. The other shows a white woman well aware of the power that such overpolicing gives people like her when she calls 9-1-1. She knows – and assumes the black man she’s threatening also knows – whose interests will be defended, possibly with lethal force, when officers arrive.
Amy Cooper’s confrontation with Christian Cooper and the death of George Floyd have revealed the full scope of white supremacy non-white people live with every day in America. We have been talking about it for a long time; I wrote a book about it in 2012. But it is a reality many other Americans will not believe, until someone grabs a cellphone at a fateful moment, records it, and shows it to them. Again and again.
Because we have seen these videos before. We saw Philando Castile, a black man filmed in his last moments by his girlfriend, shot by a police officer during a traffic stop. We saw John Crawford, a black man who was going to buy a pellet gun at WalMart, shot to death by police within seconds of their arrival at the store after a 9-1-1 call. We saw 12-year-old Tamir Rice, playing with a toy gun in a park, gunned down within seconds of a police car driving on the scene.
We saw Levar Jones, a black man who survived being shot by a cop during a traffic stop at a gas station as he was retrieving his license (the reason the cop stopped him? He was driving without a seat belt just before turning into the gas station.)
Eric Garner. Darrien Hunt. Botham Jean. The list of black people hurt or killed by police under suspicious circumstances is long and infuriating. How can a white college student suspected in the murders of two people who inspired a nationwide manhunt get taken into custody without incident, while a black man accused of passing a bad $20 bill winds up dead on a street, killed in broad daylight while cellphone cameras captured it all?
Beyond the frustration of the rising body count, there is frustration at the high price America demands before it will believe there is a problem in the first place.
People of color constantly have to rip open their wounds to prove to white America that racism is killing us. The videos are a blur of bottomless tragedy; a parade of pain where victims are often left screaming at officers: What did I do? Why won’t you help me?
And every time a new video emerges, black America asks that same question of the nation.
The challenge we face is summed up in a statistic from my book. I quoted a September 2011 study which found 46 percent of Americans believe discrimination against white people had become as big a problem as discrimination against racial minorities.
A study published in November 2017 by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health came up with different numbers. In that study, 55 percent of white Americans said discrimination against white people exists and 63 percent of white Americans said local police were just as likely to use unnecessary force against white people as non-white people.
This is the question at the heart of so many political and social conflicts in America: The fight over the very existence of systemic racism and prejudice.
It’s one reason conservative-oriented Fox News Channel is often so tone deaf on issues of race. Many of the channel’s pundits resist the idea that systemic racism against people of color is a serious issue. Lots of conservatives have decried George Floyd’s death; but the question of whether that death is a result of a few bad cops acting out or a result of systemic overpolicing and overpunishing people of color is the real dividing line in this crisis.
When Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson interviewed Ted Cruz on the unrest in Minneapolis, both men were careful to note they were horrified by the actions of one officer, while extolling the bravery of most police officers. But what about the notion that police officers work inside a flawed system that can shield bad cops and make it tougher for good officers, regardless of their race, to stop something terrible as it is happening?
This “one bad apple” idea – a notion expertly dismantled by comedian Chris Rock years ago – was also advanced by White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien Sunday on Jake Tapper’s CNN show State of the Union.
“I don’t think there’s systemic racism,” O’Brien said during one exchange with Tapper, before praising “99.9 percent” of police officers. “But you know what, there are some bad apples in there.”
Given all the videos we all have seen of black people hurt or killed unfairly by law enforcement in recent years, that sure seems like a lot of bad apples. And again the question rises: How many videos do you need to see, before you consider another possibility? How much pain leads to contemplating another explanation?
Of course, Donald Trump has only made a volatile situation worse. I think his actions are summed up by a phrase I read or heard someone else say about him years ago: He can’t help saying the quiet part out loud.
So when Trump tweeted about the unrest in Minneapolis on Friday, he called protestors “thugs” – a word sometimes used as demeaning code for unruly black people – and dropped the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” That’s a saying traced back to a speech by 1960s-era Miami police chief Walter Headley, often accused of racist policing tactics during the civil rights era.
In another tweet, Trump promised protestors who came close to breaching the White House fence would be “greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons,” invoking another terrible image from the 1960s, when segregationist police would use attack dogs to break up civil rights marches.
The quiet part. Tweeted out loud.
As cable TV news was filled with reports on looting and unrest in cities across the country, I was struck by a tweet from celebrity comic Chelsea Handler, who posted “Something for all white people to think about. Reflect on our privilege and ask ourselves if we’ve ever had to protest for the lives of our white brothers and sisters.”
With all respect, I suggested something a little different. Perhaps white people should find one element in their lives that supports or reflects white supremacy: that Fox News-loving relative, the pal who posts terrible things on Facebook or the boss/coworker who says awful things about non-white people when he thinks they aren’t listening (guess what: we usually know, anyway).
Find one element and do something to address it. Do what you can to dismantle the system where you can.
Beyond that, governmental leaders of all stripes need to learn that platitudes and the “one bad apple” philosophy will not satisfy people who feel like an endangered species in their own country.
Don’t make us rip open another wound to prove something we have been telling you for a long time. Maybe this time, when black people say they need help, you could just listen. And then help.
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Hi! I’m part of the lgbtq+ community and Severus is my favorite HP character and I was wondering (if you have the time and feel obliged) if you could please give me a few examples of how he’s queer? It’s been a few years since I reread the books, and def before I came out, so I’m a little in the dark here lol Thanks!!
First of all, I just wanted to apologize for how long it has taken me to properly respond to your ask. I’ve been dealing with some ongoing health issues that have turned me into something of a moody writer. I’ll get random spurts of energy and inspiration and then hit a wall of absolute writer’s block assisted by a major case of executive dysfunction every single time I try to respond to the multiple asks languishing in my inbox. Fortunately, I found myself involved in a discussion just today that addressed your ask so perfectly that I wanted to share it with you. In the very least, that discussion has also managed to shake off my writer’s block temporarily so that I have found myself in the right head-space to finally be able to give this lovely ask the thought and attention that I feel it deserves.
Although, in regards to the Snape discourse I linked above, I feel that I should warn you in advance that the discussion was prompted by an anti-Snape poster who made a rather ill-thought meme (I know there are many in the Snapedom who would rather just avoid seeing anti-Snape content altogether, so I try to warn when I link people to debates and discussions prompted by anti-posts) but the thoughtful responses that the anti-Snape poster unintentionally generated from members of the Snapedom (particularly by @deathdaydungeon whose critical analyses of Snape and, on occasions, other Harry Potter characters is always so wonderfully nuanced, thought-provoking, and well-considered), are truly excellent and worth reading, in my opinion. Also, as I fall more loosely under the “a” (I’m grey-ace/demisexual) of the lgbtqa+ flag and community I would prefer to start any discussions about Snape as a queer character or as a character with queer coding by highlighting the perspectives of people in the Snapedom who are actually queer before sharing any thoughts of my own.
In addition, I also wanted to share a few other posts where Snape’s queer coding has been discussed by members of the Snapedom in the past (and likely with far more eloquence than I could manage in this response of my own).
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Along with an excellent article in Vice by Diana Tourjée, in which a case for Snape being trans is convincingly argued.
Importantly, you’ll notice that while some of these discussions do argue the possibility of Snape being a queer or trans character others may only discuss the way that Snape’s character is queer coded. That is because there is a distinct but subtle difference between: “This character could be queer/lgbtq+” and: “This character has queer/lgbtq+ coding” one which is briefly touched on in the first discussion that I linked you to. However, I would like to elaborate a bit here just what I mean when I refer to Snape as a character with queer coding. As while Rowling has never explicitly stated that she intended to write Snape as lgbtq+ (although there is one interview given by Rowling which could be interpreted as either an unintentional result of trying to symbolically explain Snape’s draw to the dark arts or a vague nod to Snape’s possible bisexuality: "Well, that is Snape's tragedy. ... He wanted Lily and he wanted Mulciber too. He never really understood Lily's aversion; he was so blinded by his attraction to the dark side he thought she would find him impressive if he became a real Death Eater.”) regardless of her intent when she drew upon the existing body of Western literary traditions and tropes for writing antagonists and villains in order to use them as a red-herring for Snape’s character, she also embued his character with some very specific, coded subtext. This is where Death of the Author can be an invaluable tool for literary critics, particularly in branches of literary criticism like queer theory.
Ultimately, even if Rowling did not intend to write Snape as explicitly queer/lgbtq+ the literary tradition she drew upon in order to present him as a foil for Harry Potter and have her readers question whether he was an ally or a villain has led to Snape being queer coded. Specifically, many of the characteristics of Snape’s character design do fall under the trope known as the “queering of the villain.” Particularly, as @deathdaydungeon, @professormcguire, and other members of the Snapedom have illustrated, Snape’s character not only subverts gender roles (e.g. his Patronus presents as female versus male, Snape symbolically assumes the role of “the mother” in the place of both Lily and later Narcissa when he agrees to protect Harry and Draco, his subject of choice is potions and poisons which are traditionally associated more with women and “witches,” while he seemingly rejects in his first introduction the more phallic practice of “foolish wand-waving,” and indeed Snape is characterized as a defensive-fighter versus offensive, in Arthurian mythology he fulfills the role of Lady of the Lake in the way he chooses to deliver the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry, Hermione refers to his hand-writing as “kind of girly,” his association with spiders and spinners also carries feminine symbology, etc.) but is often criticized or humiliated for his seeming lack of masculinity (e.g. Petunia mocking his shirt as looking like “a woman’s blouse,” which incidentally was also slang in the U.K. similar to “dandy” to accuse men of being effeminate, the Marauders refer to Snape as “Snivellus” which suggests Snape is either less masculine because he cries or the insult is a mockery of what could pass for a stereotypical/coded Jewish feature, his nose, Remus Lupin quite literally instructs Neville on how to “force” a Boggart!Snape, who incidentally is very literally stepping out of a closet-like wardrobe, into the clothing of an older woman and I quoted force because that is the exact phrase he uses, James and Sirius flipping Snape upside down to expose him again presents as humiliation in the form of emasculation made worse by the arrival and defense of Lily Evans, etc.).
Overall, the “queering of the villain” is an old trope in literature (although it became more deliberate and prevalent in media during the 1950s-60s); however, in modernity, we still can find it proliferating in many of the Disney villains (e.g. Jafar, Scar, Ursula, etc.), in popular anime and children’s cartoons (e.g. HiM from Powerpuff Girls, James from Pokemon, Frieza, Zarbon, the Ginyu Force, Perfect Cell, basically a good majority of villains from DBZ, Nagato from Fushigi Yuugi, Pegasus from Yu Gi Oh, etc.), and even in modern television series and book adaptations, such as the popular BBC’s Sherlock in the character of Moriarty. Indeed, this article does an excellent job in detailing some of the problematic history of queer coded villains. Although, the most simple summary is that: “Queer-coding is a term used to say that characters were given traits/behaviors to suggest they are not heterosexual/cisgender, without the character being outright confirmed to have a queer identity” (emphasis mine). Notably, TV Tropes also identifies this trope under the classification of the “Sissy Villain” but in queer theory and among queer writers in fandom and academia “queering of the villain” is the common term. This brings me back to Snape and his own queer coding; mainly, because Rowling drew upon Western traditions for presenting a character as a suspected villain she not only wrote Snape as queer (and racially/ethnically) coded but in revealing to the reader that Snape was not, in fact, the villain Harry and the readers were encouraged to believe he was by the narrator she incorporated a long history of problematic traits/tropes into a single character and then proceeded to subvert them by subverting reader-expectation in a way that makes the character of Severus Snape truly fascinating.
We can certainly debate the authorial intent vs. authorial impact where Snape’s character is concerned. Particularly as we could make a case that the polarizing nature of Snape may well be partly the result of many readers struggling against Rowling subverting literary tropes that are so firmly rooted in our Western storytelling traditions that they cannot entirely abandon the idea that this character who all but had the book thrown at him in terms of all the coding that went into establishing him as a likely villain (e.g. similar to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Snape is also coded to be associated with darkness/black colors and to represent danger and volatile/unstable moods, while his class status further characterizes him as an outsider or “foreign other,” and not unlike all those villains of our childhood Disney films which affirmed a more black-and-white philosophy of moral abolutism, such as Scar or Jafar, the ambiguity of Snape’s sexuality coupled with his repeated emasculation signals to the reader that this man should be “evil” and maybe even “predatory,” ergo all the “incel” and friendzone/MRA discourse despite nothing in canon truly supporting those arguments; it seems it may merely be Snape’s “queerness” that signals to some readers that he was predatory or even that “If Harry had been a girl” there would be some kind of danger) is not actually our villain after all.
Indeed, the very act of having Snape die (ignoring, for the moment, any potential issues of “Bury Your Gays” in a queer analysis of his death) pleading with Harry to “look at him” as he symbolically seems to weep (the man whom Harry’s hyper-masculine father once bullied and mocked as “Snivellus”) memories for Harry to view (this time with his permission) carries some symbolic weight for any queer theory analysis. Snape, formerly portrayed as unfathomable and “secretive,” dies while pleading to be seen by the son of both his first and closest friend and his school-hood bully (a son that Snape also formerly could never see beyond his projection of James) sharing with Harry insight into who he was via his personal memories. For Harry to later go on to declare Snape “the bravest man he ever knew” carries additional weight, as a queer theory analysis makes it possible for us to interpret that as Harry finally recognizing Snape, not as the “queer coded villain” he and the reader expected but rather as the brave queer coded man who was forced to live a double-life in which “no one would ever know the best of him” and who, in his final moments at least, was finally able to be seen as the complex human-being Rowling always intended him to be.
Rowling humanizing Snape for Harry and the reader and encouraging us to view Snape with empathy opened up the queer coding that she wrote into his character (intentionally or otherwise) in such a way that makes him both a potentially subversive and inspiring character for the lgbtq+ community. Essentially, Snape opens the door for the possibility of reclaiming a tradition of queer coding specific to villains and demonstrating the way those assumptions about queer identity can be subverted. Which is why I was not at all surprised that I was so easily able to find a body of existing discourse surrounding Snape as a queer coded or even as a potentially queer character within the Harry Potter fandom. At least within the Snapedom, there are many lgbtq+ fans of his character that already celebrate the idea of a queer, bi, gay, trans, ace/aro, or queer coded Snape (in fact, as a grey-ace I personally enjoy interpreting Snape through that lens from time-to-time).
Thank you for your ask @pinkyhatespink and once again I apologize for the amount of time it’s taken me to reply. However, I hope that you’ll find this response answered your question and, if not, that some of the articles and posts from other pro-Snape bloggers I linked you to will be able to do so more effectively. Also, as a final note, although many of the scholarly references and books on queer coding and queering of the villain I would have liked to have sourced are typically behind paywalls, I thought I would list the names of just a few here that I personally enjoyed reading in the past and that may be of further interest should you be able to find access to them.
Fathallah, Judith. “Moriarty’s Ghost: Or the Queer Disruption of the BBC’s Sherlock.” Television & New Media, vol. 16, no. 5, 2014, p. 490-500.
Huber, Sandra. “Villains, Ghosts, and Roses, or How to Speak With The Dead.” Open Cultural Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2019, p. 15-25.
Mailer, Norman. “The Homosexual Villain.” 1955. Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays, edited by Sipiora Phillip, Random House, 2013, pp. 14–20.
Solis, Nicole Eschen. "Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater." Queer Studies in Media & Pop Culture, vol. 1, no. 1, 2016, p. 115+.
Tuhkanen, Mikko. “The Essentialist Villain.” Jan. 2019, SBN13: 978-1-4384-6966-9
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Sorry, But I Don’t Support Minorities (Any More)
For a start: I will not use inclusive language in this text. (I usually don’t, only in this case I want to make sure it’s known from the start.)
Secondly, if you identify as trans or non-binary and / or are a huge Harry Potter fan, I am warning you: don’t read this.
If you do want to hear me out, be respectful in your comments or hold them back altogether. I won’t tolerate bullying merely because I am expressing my own opinion. Though the topic touches a sore spot in me, too, I will be as objective as I can.
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I am not and never was a fan of J.K. Rowling and her works. I found the Harry Potter hype strongly exaggerated, the books mildly unoriginal and biased, the films ok until they became so overloaded with derivation from other sources (dragons, elves, magic wands, brooms, unicorns, centaurs, phoenixes, basilisks, flying horses - stories like Star Trek or Star Wars at least have their own world-building) and later so dark that they were no fun anymore. In my opinion an average writer was lucky because she tapped into a trend and was at the right place and right time with her stories. I daresay years from now many fans will wonder why they liked these stories so much and realize that they just jumped on a train, having been too young and naïve to question it.
I don’t own any of Rowling’s books or DVDs or merchandise and I never have been part of the fandom. So, I come from a different corner when I say that I have my own attitude about the current shitstorm regarding J.K. Rowling now being coded as “transphobic”. This is due to personal reasons of my own.
1. The Discussion Can Add Confusion
Rowling stated that in her youth she had problems with her own identity due to her father having wanted her to be a boy. I can understand that because I went through a long period in my late teens and early twens where I had difficulties identifying with the sex I was born with. At times I also felt physically attracted to females. In my case, it turned out to merely be a phase: I am an average cis woman. I can understand that for some people, such doubts may turn out to be more than a phase. But I know what Rowling refers to because I have been there. And I am grateful that there was no gender discussion when I was young because it would have confused me even more than I actually was, and I already had more than enough other problems. I was and I am a “common” woman, but there was a time in my life when I did not like it very much. That time was bad enough, combined as it was with other aspects in my life I had to come to terms with, which at times almost drove me to despair to the point where I contemplated suicide. So, I am glad that in my time being gay / straight / trans / cis / non-binary or other was not such an issue, at least not where I grew up. With my confusion and disorientation, well-meaning people might have taken the opportunity to encourage me to “embrace my lesbianism / trans identity”, when in truth I am neither. I was discouraged, from many sides, to liking myself, and that self-loathing took many forms.
I am extremely cautious when it comes to gender identification because I know that finding one’s way in life under difficult circumstances can take years and years and end in a very different place from where it started, well beyond adolescence. In my case, for a long time I thought I was “not really female” because I love my independence and never wished for children: this is not due to some masculine trait inside of me but to my growing up with a disturbed mother who strongly invaded my life and mind and did everything that was in her power to trap me. I suspected that something was wrong with her since my early teens, but I found out the truth only about twenty years later. I had to accept her the way she is and put distance between us.
Then there were my peers: where and when I grew up it was trendy to be (or appear) as tomboyish and easy-going as possible because this was seen as a sign of a “strong, modern, emancipated female”: fie on you if you wore your hair a little longer, liked clothes or only had to much as a flower-pattern on your notebook. Again: I simply had to get away. For many years I had been led to believe that my too “female” or “masculine” traits were a problem, when the actual problem was not mine. And if this happened to me, I daresay there may be many others in similar situations; which is something that who supports and encourages trans people usually does not consider. People who are confused about their sexuality without actually being trans need understanding as well.
2. What About Us?
As a native Italian, I cringe when I only think e.g. of Lady and the Tramp’s silly “Bella notte” scene or films like Good Fellas or of The Godfather trilogy, cultural phenomena that did a lot to cement the general audience’s idea of how Italians are like. Not to our advantage. - No, “bella notte” is not correct Italian. No, we don’t play the mandolin, it’s an outmoded instrument that you are more likely to find in a museum. And no, spaghetti with meatballs are not Italian food!
Following the 2009 economic crises many countries in the European Community applied for financial “umbrellas”; Italy didn’t, it paid into those funds. Italy was the first Western country who went into lockdown as the Covid-19 crisis struck. The country functioned, though under huge restrictions and security measures. In both cases, other countries’ reactions in and outside Europe were like: “Typical - Italians are too lazy to work!” When it came to negotiating an economic pact to help Europe start again, the countries who had said this the loudest held their purse-strings tight - after having locked down too late and hidden the truth about the casualties in their own countries. Convenient.
Italians are generally often seen as silly and not trustworthy. And nobody talks about how demeaning and disrespectful, and on the long run damaging, it is to portray us in such a stereotyped way which at best is good for a laugh. The prejudices stick, and they have destroyed or turned into a living hell many existences.
There are huge now discussions about banning films like e.g. Gone With the Wind due to its “clichéd portrayal of Blacks”. Nobody talks about abolishing The Godfather or other films of that kind although they contribute to the stigma that Italians are either all in league with the mafia, or easy-going, silly folks who sing and drink wine all day and have no idea of what hard work means. Most Italians have too much personal pride to victimize themselves and bo-hoo “the rest of the world just won’t understand us”. They love their country but that does not make them not blind to its shortcomings. I hope they stay that way. In any case, I intend to.
3. The Actual Problem: Bullying
I can sympathize with anyone who comes out as trans because I know what it’s like to be bullied. I was bullied myself for many years due to my Italian origin as well as my upbringing while I had to live among persons who were on a lower social level than I. I was e.g. accused of being stuck-up and “inhibited”. I know now that the female bullies were envious of my self-esteem and insinuating that I was missing “fun”; while the males were counting on another girl being at any guy’s disposal for free and were angry when I didn’t let them have their way with me.
The actual problem with any kind of intolerance and discrimination is bullying. Whatever form it takes, bullying is or ought to be unacceptable. Bullies will be bullies, they do not care who they harass and why: if they e.g. can be convinced to leave trans people alone, they will vent their frustrations and build up their self-image by bullying people who are fat or black or whatever. Except trans people won’t be there to witness that (unless by coincidence they are both trans and fat / black etc.)
We live in a world that gives a great deal of importance on competitiveness; as a result, even in families, schools and other institutions that ought to educate children and youngsters to be respectful towards themselves and others, bullying is often not seen as such, or simply downplayed as “assertiveness”. Bullies do not want to hear reasonable argumentation and learn to be sympathetic: they want to show off their power, provoke an emotional reaction from their victims to see how far they can go, and gloat when they can hurt them. They will not change their minds and they will never be trustworthy, no matter how many discussions about your particular situation you have with them.
To bullies, the world is a jungle where only the strongest have the right to survive; any attempt to make them rethink their attitude will only make them laugh at their victims’ alleged stupidity (because that’s what a humane, respectful attitude is to them) even more. The only language they understand is violence. If you are bullied, protect and, if you can, defend yourself; never try to discuss. Minorities were silent and subdued for such a long time with good reason: because they knew that the more they held their heads up and did not hide what made them different, the more targets they offered for bullies. No one ought to go in hiding because he is queer or black or Jewish etc., but sometimes it’s unavoidable simply for self-protection. I am almost fifty years old and I have never witnessed a nasty person changing for the better. If anything, they became worse, because every time they got away, they felt more superior than before.
Particularly sly bullies will make their victims believe that they have changed, maybe even pulling off the role “I’m a victim myself”. Please, please, whether you belong to a group of minorities or not: don’t listen to them. Ever. Maybe they once were victims, but it turned them into arseholes, and now they are sunk too far in their own filth to care. Compassion is a good thing, but it should never go as far as to delude yourself, endure abuse and sympathize until you become an object for compassion yourself.
For instance, I like wearing dresses, cooking and sewing and looking after my household. Fifty years ago, that would have made me a pattern housewife; nowadays, feminists would either want to strangle me or at least have a good laugh at my expense. This just goes to show how short-sighted any kind of prejudice and bullying is. Any human being ought to follow its own nature with a healthy self-esteem, and esteem others as well. But with our today’s view of the world we are supposed to be not altruistic and respectful but “strong” so that “we will make our way in life” (i.e. feed capitalism in any way we can); and nothing can make you feel “strong” more easily than finding someone who is allegedly weaker and pick on him. We are expected to be “winners”, and the first thing winners need are “losers” to serve them as a foil. The pool from which to choose is large.
4. Who Is Subject to Intolerance Can’t Be Intolerant… Really?
For many years of my life, I always found myself a supporter of someone who was ostracized for one reason or another.
A woman who had left her husband. (It was the early Eighties.)
A gay man.
A girl who had been harassed by being called ugly.
A woman who had been abused sexually by a family member.
A woman from East Germany (I live in the West and there are lots of prejudices.)
For the record: these persons were of different age, origin, upbringing, social status, intellectual level and character, and they did not know one another.
I knew and supported them for years, listening, loyal, supportive, interested in their problems and personal development. I never attacked or criticized them. And each and every one of them sooner or later accused me of “not understanding them” and “being prejudiced towards them”. In the case of the abused woman this was particularly unfair because I have been abused myself in my family, though psychically and not sexually. The divorced woman, my own mother, viciously accused me of lying and being in league with her ex-husband after I had been loyal only to her for entire decades.
It appears these people only were my “friends” as long as I told them what they wanted to hear. When I suffered, I was put off with “pull yourself together”. Like I had no problems, because the only people in the world having problems were them. Thank you very much. So, I was supposed to accept their growing insolence due to their being such poor victims, while from their point of view I deserved neither understanding nor respect.
Only recently, in the aftermath of the riots caused by the killing of George Floyd, I posted a comment on a video on youtube… guess what. I was immediately attacked by a black woman saying that my “stupid remark” just went to prove how a white person would never understand “things like these”. She had not even read my post carefully enough to understand what I actually wanted to say, she simply felt entitled to offend me.
I do not say that I dislike trans people or that they are bad, I’m sure there are as many good or bad people among them as anywhere. If someone says e.g. that though born with male organs they identify as female that is their very own affair. I must not like it or understand it. Tolerance means leaving other people alone to do as they please. Any person is “bad” only the moment they behave badly towards others; being different from the mainstream does not count.
But when I have to watch and read people nowadays defending trans or gays or blacks or some other minority, believing to be being open-minded or particularly noble and heroic by supporting them, all I can say is that I have been there and it did me no good. I won’t get caught up in another wave of “minority tolerance”: in my experience, it’s a waste of time. Many of those who now proudly burn their Harry Potter books and proclaim that they will no longer support the author, respectively that they “love Harry Potter but love trans people more” will make the experiences I made. Except they most probably won’t talk about that, because these experiences are so humiliating.
Minorities of any kind do not want to be supported, understood and defended by people who are not in their shoes: it hurts their personal pride. Which I can understand, although it’s a lame excuse for being mean to the very persons whom they expect help and support from. They will tend to envy the ones who do not have their problems due to being white / straight / cis etc., and consequently turn a blind eye to the fact that these can have huge problems of their own. Many of them expect their supporters not only to understand them but to support them enthusiastically at every turn, and if these don’t, (or if there is the slightest reason for them to assume that they don’t) these “victims” will feel entitled to be offended and become vicious aggressors, with a whole fan club behind them protecting their backs and convinced of promoting a honorable cause.
I am fed up with being tolerant. It seems you can hardly do anything anymore without offending someone: watching Disney movies or old classics, wearing a pink dress, calling a woman a woman instead of woman / trans / cis / non-binary etc. There is always someone who will point to these things saying why they’re not right.
I’m sorry but clichés, prejudices and stereotypes can’t be totally avoided: the human brain is not wired to know all facts about everything and everyone. What you can do is teach children and adolescents to be respectful towards everybody, even if they don’t like a particular person or group. Nobody has the right to force you to like everybody and to agree with every life style. But it seems the world has become full of people who seem to have nothing better to do but feel personally offended at the drop of a hat and make a fuss about how hurt their feelings are. Helping someone out who is in a difficult situation is not the same as catering to the keyed-up hysterics of some entitled brat. Seeing the difference between these two can be quite difficult because the latter often show their true face only after years and years, when they realize that for some reason or other, they can no longer squeeze you out for their personal benefit giving nothing back.
Who follows my account is aware that I did not like The Rise of Skywalker. Heaven knows I wrote enough about it. But I did not and will not harass the studios twittering, mailing, making youtube videos etc. ranting and raving about what rubbish it supposedly is for years, like the haters of The Last Jedi. Listening to them, one would think their whole reason for living had been destroyed on purpose. We most probably largely have to thank them for the Episode IX disaster, the flattest and most uninteresting Star Wars film ever made; not to mention the harassment the actress Kelly Marie Tran was subject to. Anyone has the right to dislike the development the authors chose for the saga, but for heaven’s sake: after all, it’s just a movie. If such a relatively insignificant thing can be hyped up like this, I don’t want to know what’s in store coming from people who feel offended for much more personal reasons, like race or gender.
Tolerance cannot be one-sided; it cannot mean that whatever one side wants does not have to be reasonable or useful, but they are entitled to scream and yell until the other side gives in. (If for no other reason than to satisfy them so they will finally shut it.)
Conclusions (I did warn you…)
I. Hogwarts is not my world
Hogwarts is supposed to sound like a dream come true, but I never liked the idea of a “school” where pupils, who are still children and adolescents, are taught spells and engaged in games and tournaments where they have to risk life and limb. These facts are commonly overlooked, I guess, because “the heroes” usually don’t get hurt. The heroes overcome their traumata but do not get wiser from them, on the contrary: their suffering is supposed to make them seem nobler so that we will root for them more. Harry loses his parents before he could get to know them; his adoptive family mistreats him, but he doesn’t care about them; Cedric dies in his stead, but they were not close friends; Dumbledore dies when Harry was getting too old for a father figure; Snape dies, but Harry never liked him either. The list could go on. Harry always remains an innocent; he never gets to look into a metaphorical mirror where he has to see all of the bad that is inside of him, his darker sides are always projected and personified by someone else. (When he does look into a metaphorical mirror in the first book and movie, he finds out that the Philosopher’s stone is, magically, in his pocket. How convenient.)
I can’t invest emotionally in a fictional character who stands out before having earned or deserved it. Harry is like a Chosen One who skips the hero’s journey: from an abusive household, he is catapulted into a whole new world made of mystery and wonder, where he immediately is singled out, admired before he lifts a finger, unexplainably lucky, awed due to his heritage, envied by who is not as special as he. Harry remains untainted by own sins because other people do the dirty work for him; which seems ok because they are, for one reason or another, uncool - Dumbledore = old, Ron = weak / foolish, Hermione / Snape = unpleasant, his parents = dead, and so on. Yes, Harry sometimes makes mischief, but people usually cut him slack because of his past as an abused child, his parent’s tragic death, and his undefinable power that makes him resist the Evil One. The Dursleys, Snape and Draco don’t tolerate him, which is why they are coded as villains or at least very disagreeable characters. How do you recognize a villain in these stories? Simple, he’s being mean to Harry. Everybody else gives him special treatment because you don’t want to upset the person whom you expect to defeat the ultimate villain. I always found his character bland and uninteresting. We e.g. learned why Snape was so lonely and bitter, but not why Harry was so “good” although he had grown up unloved, in an abusive household, until he was eleven.
For decades now Harry Potter fandoms and clubs gather all over the world proudly proclaiming that they are something really special and not like “them Muggles”. No wonder these stories are so popular with who feels misunderstood and downtrodden. Wouldn’t it be nice to be born with capacities ordinary people can’t even dream of? When maybe you’re just a common person, shocking thought. Nowadays, if you want to be someone outstanding, make it up in your mind and it automatically becomes true. And if you identify with the protagonist, you get to be a hero before you did anything special into the bargain. Harry is a victim of other person’s sins and / or blunders and his story is about unfolding the details of his victimhood and correcting them so he gets his happy ending. We are supposed to sympathize with this: well, I can’t. Victimhood and alleged inborn virtue are insufficient to make a protagonist “overcome his trials” and emerge triumphantly over his sidekicks or enemies, without any real loss on his side, while they get killed or, at best, ridiculed. And I will not pick up the part of that sidekick any more.
II. Feminism Is Not My World
While I am an advocate for women’s independence, I do not identify as a feminist. I have an independent nature: that does not mean I am or should be ashamed of being a lady. This where we live is the era of the tomboys, of the feisty, cool, tough females. And often they don’t just go their own way but feel entitled to scorn women who do have their own job and live with a man who respects them, but also like the color pink, pretty clothes, flowers, romantic stories and everything else the new wave feminism likes to dismiss as “brainwashing”. Today you can hardly let your daughter watch a Disney movie without being accused of undermining her identity with false ideas about womanhood because, oh wonder, it seems a “real woman” must think and act like a badass guy.
Louder for the feminists in the back: you can actually look and behave in a way that is coded as “female” and be intelligent, independent and self-respecting. Women who went their own way have existed in every age and culture, often making great achievements and changing the world around them; they were intelligent, compassionate and took matters into their own hands. They did not proclaim that they unfairly were victims of men: they knew how to make men respect them. Being a woman is not a stereotype thrust upon you, it’s natural. If someone rejects qualities that are identified as “female”, it’s their very own affair. If I wanted to return the offense, I might as easily say that “feminists” and “empowered females” are just too smug to do the dishes.
III. Trans, cis, binary etc. is not my world
For millennia, people had to accept the sex they were born with. Now you can have surgery and take hormones to get rid of a problem which you can’t solve on your own. Sorry, but I can’t get my head around it: to me the gender diversity discussion is unnatural. Good and right things are always the same, they cannot change with time and “scientifical / medical progress”. Tomboyish females and same-sex lovers are as old as the world, but it’s only a few decades since you can surgically have your sex changed if you feel uncomfortable with it, and even less time since you can claim the right to be both male and female or not to choose any sex at all. Excuse me, what’s behind it? Fear of missing out? I know, nowadays we are supposed to “change the stars”, but excuse me, it’s not possible. Rowling did not change the stars: as I wrote above, she got lucky.
I can say from own experience that for healthy growth a person needs limits. It is not “tolerant”, in my opinion, to say that one can be male or female or binary or none of that, all by choice. If I raise a child calling it a boy because he was born with male organs, or by Catholic standards because I am a Catholic myself, I believe no one has the right to say that I am intruding into its personality. I would be intolerant if said child would later come out to me e.g. as trans or atheist and I would dismiss its identification and opinion as a matter of principle, or disown it altogether. Rejecting rules and values is like pretending that it is wrong to be e.g. female, or straight, or that Catholic values are rubbish. None of that is true. It is true that a trans or gay or atheist or Buddhist etc. is not automatically an immoral or inferior person.
I can accept other people’s choices about their gender identification; that doesn’t mean I must like or support their mindset. It doesn’t automatically make me “transphobic”. If it is intrusive or intolerant to say that someone is male because he was born with male organs, what will come next? Will “normal” females no longer be entitled to protect their most intimate privacy because any guy can share our private space, like a public toilet or dress room, claiming he’s a woman (and he might well not be trans, but a lying voyeur?) Will we no longer give our children male or female names? Not teach them any values? No longer send them to kindergarten, to school, maybe not even feed or clothe them or furnish their nurseries according to our own judgement, because the poor babies can’t choose by themselves yet?
We all did not choose to be born in the first place.
If you want to protect your children from suffering, don’t have them: suffering is a part of life. Trans is not my world. I don’t want to destroy it or to behave rudely towards it; I simply do not want to have part in it. I want people to care for me, and to do so because I am me, not because I come out with this or another sexual orientation or make myself an advocate for people who belong to this or another minority.
All of the above is why I will not jump on the current “I defend minorities” respectively “I defend downtrodden victims” train. The good part is that I don’t have any Harry Potter book or merchandise I could burn anyway. 😊
Anyone who is uncomfortable with my point of view can unfollow me. Bullies will be blocked and reported without further ado. Greetings from a notorious Muggle.
#minorities#jk rowling#trans#harry potter#disney#gone with the wind#the godfather#goodfellas#feminism#prejudices#bullying#read more
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Vladimir Kara-Murza is spot on about how we in the West must fight President Vladimir Putin.
Some excellent quotes:
His predecessors, in their own different ways, tried to placate a strongman who never hid his desire to solidify authoritarian control at home while furthering his ambitions on the world stage.
Not just in America. Here in Britain, our government has an embarrassing history of appeasing Putin, most notably in and around 2006, when our government refused to act swiftly against the Kremlin for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
We have since learned that the then Home Secretary sat on evidence implicating Putin in this crime, for fear that its revelation would damage diplomatic relations with Russia.
Many Western leaders assumed that anti-democratic abuses in Russia could be ignored as long as they can “do business” with Putin on other issues.
Absolutely correct.
For his part, Biden noted that he had “looked into Putin’s eyes and saw no soul.”
A good laugh from this, and very true. Putin likes pontificating about spirituality, yet had no compunction in trying to murder a husband and father last August, simply because he feared criticism of his regime. This man has no respect for basic decency, let alone the rule of law. He is mentally unfit for office, and belongs in prison.
(By the way, I have heard that President Biden is an expert on foreign policy).
It is not for the United States, or any other foreign power, to effect political change in Russia. Russians should — and will — do this themselves.
Absolutely SPOT ON. I want Russian democracy to be upheld by the Russian people. They should be able to choose their own leaders. Currently, with Putin raping the Constitution so that he can run for power until 2036, this is not the case. Russians should continue to agitate against the fake constitutional referendum result, only achieved by rigging over 20 million votes.
Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, those of us who oppose Putin are not asking foreigners for money, political support or regime change. All we ask from the West is that it stay true to its values and stop enabling the Putin regime’s kleptocracy on a global scale.
Agreed. For example, while Putin likes calling Navalny a “blogger”, he also insists that the dissident is being funded by foreign powers. In fact, Navalny’s FBK is funded solely by Russian donors, and he made it clear that he did not have to rely on foreign money.
“sanctions aren’t working because the West has refrained from sanctioning the people with the money.”
Words of Alexei Navalny, about why sanctions against Russia have failed. This is because many Western nations, including my own, do not want to upset the Russian investors in our economies. So they shuffle their feet over financial sanctions, because they do not want to lose Russian money, currently tied up in many British institutions and businesses.
Financial sanctions, like those promoted under the Magnitsky Act, are the only way to cripple Putin’s global criminal enterprise. Putin does not respect the rule of law. He has no integrity and no decency. The only thing he loves is money, as this documentary about his secret palace shows.
When Putin realises that his money is not safe abroad, he gets worried. Consequently, he has expended time and energy getting lawyers and businessmen to intimidate and bribe Western politicians so that they will not adopt the the Act, which recommends asset freezes and visa denials for suspected human rights abusers in Russia and abroad.
Putin’s friends hide his stolen funds through various proxies and shell companies, much of it in Western nations. Pretty ironic, when you consider how RussiaToday loves posting articles claiming that the West is collapsing and only Russia is stable, because of Putin!
Yet this investigation shows how much money the chief of RussiaToday has swindled from the taxpayer, much of which is held in a network of offshore companies. Thieves such as Margarita Simonyan have made many enemies in their home country, and are under constant threat of investigation by opposition parties.
Word to Western nations: name and shame the abusers. Freeze those assets. Tear up those visas.
Above all, the Biden administration must not equate Russia with its abusive regime. Too many Western leaders fall into this trap. “Punish the scoundrels, not the country,” was Nemtsov’s message to Biden at their meeting.
AGREED! I reject Russophobic sentiment.
My problem is with President Putin, his friends, allies, enablers, propagandists, and thugs. I support the ordinary and decent Russians fighting against his criminal enterprise.
Russia is not a miserable country, as is often portrayed in Western films. On the contrary, it is an incredibly beautiful country with a rich culture. I have been fascinated with it for almost 12 years now, particularly in terms of history, literature, and its language.
One of the best ways to defeat Putin is to show that we have no animosity towards Russian people, as he enjoys using paranoid conspiracy theories to inflame xenophobic sentiment against the West.
As Kara-Murza suggests:
And it should resume the normal issuance of visas, giving young Russians more opportunities to engage with their American peers. Nothing counters false propaganda narratives like seeing the reality.
Though it is worth pointing out that, no doubt thanks to Putin’s robbery, many Russians either want to leave or have already left. This is sad, and will have negative economic effects.
Either way, greater cultural exchange with Russian people still brings great benefits. For one thing, the West is not collapsing. We’re not perfect, but we have enough leaders who believe in the rule of law, such that the kind of criminality Putin engages in would be unthinkable in many Western nations.
A great read from Kara-Murza, twice poisoned for his advocacy against Putin. Highly recommend!
#алексей навальный#Навальный#Навальный живи#Отравление Навального#Алекcей Навальный#арест навального#Протесты#Россия#свободная россиа#свободу Навальному#русский блог#Vladimir Kara-Murza#foreign policy#president biden#president joe biden#politics#american politics
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