#FUCK mainstream media

[diablo1776]

The HodgeTwins - Media Corruption

[tomfrogisblue]

i forgot to post this during june but i think one of the reasons qsmp was so important was how unapologetically Gay it was

for starters, the number of creators and admins involved who are irl queer of some variation, just chilling in a place where any kind of phobia would get Philza's legendary ban hammer faster than you could say "rainbow jelly"

and then the characters.

i remember showing up that first day and being shocked that somehow foolish had an ex-boyfriend already (I had missed the squidcraft lore apparently)

that server. gay. all the gay. all kinds of gay.

govermentally assigned platonic husbands that stayed together the whole time (despite one of them being gone for months at a time), not a chance in hell of infidelity. Proud fathers of two wonderful children.

governmentally assigned partners who yelled full volume at each other about cheating any time they were in the room together and between the two of them killed two children.

a grieving father and ex-convict becoming one of the most solid couples in the server, with a beautiful wedding and consistent public displays of affection via the in-game chat.

a demon ashamed of who she was and a lonely detective struggling with family trauma, now with a lil girl of their own, to love together and take care of, with more moms than could ever allow the little girl to ever be lonely herself.

a 2b2t warrior coming to terms with his sexuality with the support of his beautiful baby boy at his side, slowly but surely opening up to his eventual Brazilian Boyfriend. Where they went from the most cautious couple (baby steps) to the most sickeningly sweet couple on the server.

- and this list doesn't even scratch the surface.

gay characters, trans characters, ace characters, aroace characters, gender fluid characters, all kinds of relationships and families.

all presented without negativity or shame.

the point of the server was to exchange languages and cultures, without the biases and barriers seen so much in both the content creator scene and the wider world.

it also had a beautiful little side effect, practically by accident.

our lgbtqsmp.

[hildegardladyofbones]

One of the best things about Disco Elysium by far is that it does not fear ugly women. The world is full of ugly men, but ugly women are so hard to come by.

[nando161mando]

[thisgingerhasnosoul]

Every time I try to claw back some sense of normalcy, I see another casually (or sometimes explicitly) antisemitic gesture from a random goy who knows fuck-all about anything.

It’s just really hard to find any sense of safety or normalcy knowing that “Jews are oppressors and deserve to die” is a mainstream opinion again.

[alluralater]

“i like you” okay but do you support the freedom of palestinians from israeli colonization or are you fucking gross? are you in favor of indigenous people keeping their land and culture intact or are you a genocidal piece of shit? there is only one opinion on this and if you differ, you lack critical thinking skills and basic empathy. are you silent on the matter? don’t be confused, inaction is action. to whittle genocide and ethnic cleansing down to “politics” is to say you don’t mind because it isn’t happening to you. if your government is funding this genocide like mine is, you should be fucking furious. you should be disgusted. you SHOULD feel tired and upset. the least you can do is feel something about it. it is not a war. it is a genocide.

respect indigenous people and their right to fucking LIVE. call for a ceasefire or don’t ever call me again.

[heartless-aro]

Reminder that just because a character isn’t explicitly referred to as aspec doesn’t mean that it isn’t harmful to the aspec community when the character is written in a way that implicitly ties their cruelty or their violence or their evil acts to their disinterest in romance, sex, or other forms of relationships. Dexter Morgan may have never been called aromantic or asexual in-text, but when I came out as aro ace to my family, I still got a reaction of “Oh, so like the main character from Dexter! He doesn’t have interest in those sort of relationships either, because he’s a serial killer.”

J.K. Rowling may have never called Voldemort aromantic, but she did directly tie his evil acts and his choice to be a genocidal monster to the fact that he cannot feel love. People have told me that this wasn’t arophobic of her at all, because “his inability to love is psychopathy, not aromanticism!” Ableism against people with personality disorders aside, this doesn’t actually change the fact that Rowling’s writing, specifically her characterization of Voldemort, is deeply arophobic. When I read the Harry Potter series as a kid, it made me feel broken and dirty, and I remember realizing abruptly that this writer whose work I had gotten so invested in would likely have seen a part of me—which I didn’t yet have the words to describe but which was a core part of my being—as something evil, immoral, and shameful.

Anyway, a character doesn’t have to identify as aromantic or as asexual to be written in a way that’s arophobic and/or acephobic. Discussions of aro coding and ace coding are often relegated to the realm of headcanons, and that can make it feel almost like we aren’t “allowed” to call out arophobia and acephobia in mainstream media. This character who kicks puppies and commits genocide every other Tuesday due to being incapable of love isn’t really aromantic, right? That’s just a headcanon.

But even without our words being used to describe these characters, we are still harmed by the existence of characters who are evil because they don’t love or who are just too evil and gross for the writers to feel comfortable imagining them in a sexual or romantic relationship (We don’t want to think about Dark Lord Puppy Kicker kissing someone or having SEX! Ew! He’s far too repulsive to be thought of in such a light. Let’s just imply he doesn’t care for such things.). This rant is a bit messy and disorganized because I’m very tired, but hopefully y’all get what I’m trying to say.

[sparklecryptid]

I had no patience for people policing other peoples ships before i went to library tech school and library tech school has make me a little bit pissy about the entire thing actually.

[diablo1776]

[gottagobackintime]

I find it fascinating to witness the straight audience of any media not being able to pick up what the makers of the movie/show puts down.

It’s like when people reacted to the “You wear fine things well” scene in Our Flag Means Death with “aw, they’re such good friends” whereas the queer audience went “omg, this is happening”. We all had access to the same scene, we’d all watched the build up to that scene but the straight audience wrongly read it as friends/straight whereas the queer audience had suspected they were building up to a romance but this was the confirmation. Even the creator of the show was baffled that people were surprised that Ed and Stede fell in love. Because he thought they had made it obvious.

And as I said, we, the queer audience picked up on it. And I feel like the same thing is happening with Ted Lasso. Do I know that Ted and Trent will get together? No, I am unfortunately not a writer on Ted Lasso. But you can’t deny that there are clues pointing to it. But the straight audience barely pick up the fact that Ted and Trent like each other, be that in a platonic way or romantic way. I’ve seen several reactions to the last episode of season 2 and ONE of them included the scene where Ted reacts to Trent not being in the press room. All of them severely cut down the scene in the parking lot. One of the scenes most of us Ted/Trent truthers point to as a huge piece of evidence for it going canon. The parallel of them meeting in an empty parking lot, just like Ted and his ex-wife and Roy and Keeley. But because Ted and Trent are both men it couldn’t possibly mean anything. And Ted has an ex-wife and a kid so he can’t possibly be into men, as if there is no such thing as being bisexual. “But I’m pretty sure Trent has a family, he has a kid right?” So? He could be divorced, we also have no idea if his daughter has another dad or a mum. And the same thing applies to him, it doesn’t mean he can’t be into men (take also into account all of James Lance’s interviews, and his choice of shirt in one of them, friend of Dorothy anyone? He's the captain of this ship, we're just along for the ride tbh.)

Then we have the wonderful “I’m so not homophobic, in fact, you are homophobic because you think Ted is gay just because he likes musicals and has ‘feminine’ traits” um no… it’s the fact that he kind of acts in a way that an ally wouldn't. Yeah, he called himself an ally in that one episode. But every single person who is now out as queer who at one point considered themselves an ally because "I’m not one of them but I sure think they're neat" raise a hand 🖐️ (been there, done that. Was very into queer things before I realised I myself am one of them). What it always comes down to is "it's pandering", "it's tokenism" (having the main character on the show be queer wouldn't be fucking tokenism), "not everything has to be gay", "why can't men just be friends, there is a severe lack of male friendships on tv". And like the last one makes me go??? There are a MILLION friendships between men on TV. There are even multiple friendships between men in Ted Lasso. Beard and Ted, Ted and Higgins, Ted and Roy, the himbos and so on. Having Ted and Trent become a couple wouldn't really change anything because there are still friendships between men. They also claim that Ted is needed as the "straight without toxic masculinity" representation. As if Beard isn't right there. The man who has no problem going to an immersive show about the menstrual cycle. Has no problem with shrieking when he's surprised and so on.

I also like that if we'd get Ted and Trent together, we'd get two middle aged queer dads. Which isn't that common. It's not even super common to see people realising they're queer late in life on TV, and yet it happens every day. Because let's face it, most queer men on TV kind of look like Colin, and I don't mean that as a bad thing. And I'm looking forward to his storyline. But it's also nice seeing middle aged or old people finding themselves and being allowed to be who they are (see Ed and Stede from OFMD). Also would enjoy seeing people lose their minds when they realise they've been fooled this entire time. It'll be like Black Sails all over again.

I do not have any doubts about the fact that, had Trent or Ted been a woman and they saw Trent give up his career because of Ted's influence, they sure as hell wouldn't protest people thinking they'd become a couple. But because it's two men it's just delusional for some reason (homophobia).

What I'm saying is, it's clear that the straight audience has a hard time picking up subtext and clues that the makers are planting. Because they've never had to do that. Because they are always clearly represented. They don't have to look for minor side characters and hope that they might be queer. Because the main character is straight and most of the supporting cast too. When you've grown up with a lack of representation or with representation that is meant to be subtext, you'll learn to pick up on it. And you do look at media differently. I just wish that the straight audience could listen to us for once, without getting defensive and dancing around the fact that they are uncomfortable relating to a character that turned out to be queer.

[90363462]

Love this!!!! And yes, the mainstream media, minus

@Lawrence

, brings the darkness!

FQ The media except Lawrence

[sameschmidtdiffname]

"God doesn't have favorites" idk man we're getting FNaF 2, LiS 2 for lesbians this time, new Hunger Games and Chappell Roan. I feel very favorable rn

[redshoes-blues]

Do you understand how impeccable the writing has to be for me to go feral over a canon m/f pairing??? Like it’s one thing for me to occasionally ship a m/f pairing that are never canon who I enjoy the potential unexplored dynamic for, but it’s so rare that I actually like canon m/f pairings, it’s basically the highest praise a writer can receive from me if I’m losing it over one

[waterberry-strawmelon]

just gonna go ahead and say this in advance—

if Riz does indeed come out in junior year, and he says, “I’m ace” or “I’m asexual” when referring specifically to his lack of romantic attraction, aromantic people are allowed to be upset about it.

[alluralater]

i'm so over capitalism. can't go anywhere without these corporate ugly bitches trying to use my money to senselessly murder indigenous people. and you know what??? i'd rather starve. do large food chains really think i'm that down bad to suck the dick of genocide for profit? they really think i value five minute conveniences over the worth of an entire human life?? are you joking?? the fuck is it gonna take to bring back the guillotine for these war criminals to face justice before a merciless international court

[crimeronan]

i think the wildest cognitive dissonance i've had re: the realization that the average (?) tumblr user Truly Does Not Look At The News was when like. people started bitching and moaning that "everyone" was focusing on crimew being a trans catgirl anarchist without actually looking at the importance of her work in leaking the no-fly list.

when earlier that day i had clicked on a top CNN headline reading something like "hacktivist leaks US no-fly list, exposes racial discrimination, islamophobia, bans on two-year-old children"

(i don't remember the exact wording. i know it was About The Important Shit.)

and then i'd logged onto tumblr. and only THEN found out that the hacktivist was a trans catgirl anarchist. CNN's early reporting did not give A Fuck about that At All, because THERE WAS A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THE NO-FLY LIST.

so imagine my surprise scrolling thru tumblr's meme coverage like

me: oh shit the no-fly list leaker who exposed all that heinous shit is a trans catgirl? good for her that's delightful :)

a sizeable portion of tumblr's population, for some fucking reason: nobody would come to my house and click on article links for me so now i'm mad that my memes don't double as exhaustively researched current event bulletins :( HOW DARE THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA SILENCE US >:(