#Subjectified

[deancasforcutie]

Testaments to Cas' Testament by its Heartfelt Architects

Jensen:

x x x x x x x x x x

Misha:

x x x x x x x x x x x x

(art by @sketching-fox and @masterofevilmonkeyness-moem)

Speight:

x x x x

Bobo:

x x x x

Misha: "I'd been working with the writer of that episode, who was a producer on the show as well, for a year on that scene. He did stick around. He was gonna leave the show for the final year but he was like 'if we can get this scene as the final scene for Castiel, then I'm gonna stick around for another year.' And I was like 'holy shit' because that's a really big devotion." (x)

[joelletwo]

:)

[benicebefunny]

inb4 someone accuses Nathan of sexism for ~forcing his poor mother to cook for him~

[belmottetower]

So, if you saw my last reblog, I am officially helping to cover Ted Lasso season 3 on Subjectify Media.

I actually posted a review there last year of my experience at the cast charity match.

And now the show is back, I will be writing about the show every week as part of Subjectify Media's conversation reviews. So if you've ever been keen on my author's notes, any of my meta opinions about Ted Lasso, character analysis from ask memes, football details from my primer... Anything I've ever said about the show that wasn't fic really, please check it out and tell me what you think!

I am the Megan side of the conversation.

And if you can't be bothered scrolling back to my last post, you can reblog the article from Subjectify Media's tumblr. (Probably share that one and not this post!)

[apas-95]

masks that cover the face but leave the eyes visible give someone a deeply personal character - they present someone as a thinking, feeling person first and foremost, and anonymise them physically.

on the other hand, masks that cover the face but leave the mouth visible do the opposite - they present someone as a body, a visceral and physical being. where the eyes subjectify, the mouth objectifies them.

[archivizte]

while watching dunmeshi i did not register falin's boobs as particularly appealing or sexy because her chimera self just seemed to be depicted the way any untamed animal would be?? the scenes of her and marcille bathing together depicted comfort in non sexual physical intimacy very nicely i thought. but coming to the fandom, every second post abt falin is abt her boobage. all the chimera cosplays sexualise her greatly. in other news everyone on this site earnestly believes that boobs aren't inherently sexual

[theabigailthorn]

Do you think you’ll ever write a book, either philosophy related or maybe memoirs? I really love your content and your ideas and would love to know more about how you organize your worldview.

FUNNILY ENOUGH

I've been seriously considering writing a book about the way the NHS treats trans people, and more broadly about institutional pathologisation in the current global moment we're having. I've had meetings with some big publishers, even drafted an introduction and proposal, and gotten offers back!

BUT

I don't think I'm going to do it, for a few reasons. In no particular order:

Writing a book about that subject might raise the consciousness of a few folks, but does it help build material power for trans people against my country's healthcare system, and the other systems that subjectify trans people globally? Not really, no. In fact it would legitimise the elite media consensus that engaging with elite media is the path to achieving change. Books aren't just books, they're "media events," and accordingly they increase the power and prestige of the media they happen in. If I wrote this book, newspapers would review it, chart it, I'd be invited onto Radio 4 and shit to "debate" and "discuss" it... Does doing that actually help get medicine into trans people's hands? Not really! Writing books and "getting ideas out there" is pretty busted as a theory of change unless it builds power. The fantasy of writing a really good speech or article or book and suddenly the scales fall from cis people's eyes is just that - a fantasy. No minority group has ever gotten change or justice that way. All that would happen is I'd "enhance my brand" - which means that I, with my private education and privilege and opportunities, would make money and get clout whilst contributing to the elite capture of trans rights as a political struggle. I'd become "a leader in the community" and get invited to some dinners and media events and blah blah blah - meanwhile the violence continues. That media event would also enhance the brands of those cis-dominated media outlets and the "having conversations" industrial complex, who are part of the fucking problem! The struggle should be led by the poorest and most vulnerable among us and link up with other material struggles like resisting immigration raids, prison abolition, decriminalisation of drugs and sex work, etc. So I could likely do more good for my community by donating my time and money to good causes and also by some uhhhh... other stuff - let's call it 'direct assistance' - which I already do and find fulfilling.

The offers aren't that big! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Writing that book might do harm if it's co-opted into ongoing right wing attempts to dismantle the NHS and all trans care. It'd be intellectually satisfying but not creatively satisfying or fun. I'd have to immerse myself in a very bleak world for a long time: I would enjoy having done it but not the doing.

It'd ruin my career. Right now I actually fly pretty under the radar of a lot of my country's nastiest transphobes. That would end if I wrote a book about the NHS. Newspapers, editors, publishers, journalists, and probably some MPs and Lords would become very invested in tearing me down. I've seen it happen to queer writers and journalists before. Remember, Britain is a small country and our media is run out of one city by a very small group of people who all know each other and who also know all our politicians, in some cases because they're literally the same people! That book would be like kicking a hornets' nest. Maybe they'd come after me publicly, or maybe it would be more British: somebody would make a quiet phone call and I'd suddenly be radioactive. Bye-bye acting career, bye-bye any public career.

For related reasons, writing that book and doing the necessary media campaign would expose me to a WORLD of harassment and shit from some of the worst people in the universe, which I frankly don't want. That might include lawsuits.

My dream job is to play [REDACTED] in [REDACTED]. Writing a book wouldn't take me closer to that. It would cement my brand as 'trans educational writer' instead of 'actress and writer,' which is what I am.

So yeah, all in all, I don't think I'm going to do it. Not right now anyway. I reserve the right to change my mind. Think I'll write a screenplay instead!

[hhhhhoijlkjlk]

Don't subjectify me

[itslucyhenley]

i’m sorry but didn’t James Lance have this exact mug in the Subjectify Media interview though

[thedanceronthestreets]

The future of Trent Crimm: Have we only just begun?

If you are a person that isn’t into overanalysing interviews with actors, then keep scrolling because this post is not for you lmaooo. All subsequent screenshots are taken from Jimmy Lance’s subjectify interview and are in chronological order as they appeared in the interview. Let’s get right into it. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about this interview recently since we’re now in the post-Amsterdam era and I believe the things that happened in that episode recontextualise a lot of things mentioned here. Most obviously, this was the interview that really made fans believe Trent was going to be confirmed to be homosexual since he actively dodged an answer to that question (see screenshot number 3). Additionally, it made a lot of tinhatters believe that there might be something happening between Ted and Trent... Et voilá, Trent is gay now. And so, as I read over the interview again with that new nugget of knowledge in mind, I thought “I can read this a lot more delusionally now considering we were right about Trent.” Little did I know I’d be faced with a bit more of an emotional rollercoaster. 

@ishouldbedoingalright and I were kind of disappointed to find that a lot of the things Jimmy alludes to in the interview are already well explained by the fact that Trent is gay. The fact that he speaks of a “truth” to be revealed (screenshot 1) now makes me think he was simply speaking of the fact that Trent is gay, which now has been revealed to the audience. “There’s a lot going on” could very easily relate to the new Trent lore we were presented with: the fact that he only recently came out to his (presumable) ex-wife and daughter means there was a lot of upheaval in Trent’s life independent of his career change and even if he didn’t come out because of Ted, he very likely found the courage to do so because he saw that kind of authenticity was achievable for himself, inspired by Ted. It’s perfectly reasonable therefore that Jimmy is just referring to his own headcanons for Trent here, i.e., Trent being grateful for Ted’s presence because it gave Trent the push he needed to pursue the life he so desperately wants to lead (fitting in with what’s said in screenshot 2 here). That thinking took the wind out of my shipping sails a little bit because it already makes sense with what’s happened in the show sans tedtrent shipping agenda. Ted touched Trent’s life in a way that allowed Trent to become true to himself and try new things. Those things included coming out as gay and changing his career (which is still very touching in non-shipping terms and hence a perfectly plausible way to explain the things Jimmy said in the interview). 

But then I reread the interview again and something I hadn’t realised before caught my eye. The question of “Is [Trent] meant to be gay?” only appears ¾ of the way through the interview and is not what Jimmy is answering when he says “there’s a lot going on”. At that point, all they are talking about is how Trent looks at Ted. And I do find that an important detail to point out, especially considering what happens at the end of the interview. When the question of “Is [Trent] meant to be gay?” comes around, Jimmy refuses to answer it, which makes sense considering he wasn’t allowed to break his NDA and any answer would’ve been a spoiler for what happens in Amsterdam. But then Natalie Fischer aka the interviewer circles back to what they spoke about in the beginning by connecting the two points of Trent’s relationship to Ted and Trent’s sexuality. She says “That’s because of the look [Trent gives Ted], [...] the gaze I spoke about” after pointing out that despite Jimmy not being able to comment, many people back then interpreted Trent to be gay (see screenshot 4). And to this, Jimmy also doesn’t give a straight-forward answer and even more so, he says “I mean, it would be”, which half implies that to his understanding people are getting the idea that Trent might be gay not just from the ‘hair and the whole vibe’ but from the way he looks and behaves around Ted specifically (which wasn't the case, most people based this headcanon on Trent's...well...general vibe). To me, that implication isn’t explained by what has happened so far in the series. Sure, Trent can look at Ted admiringly considering how Ted has canonically affected Trent’s life, but that alone shouldn’t give people (and apparently Jimmy Lance) the impression that Trent is gay. The fact that it has could imply that there’s more to Trent’s admiration for Ted than gratitude and I don’t want to call gay people media literacy geniuses but the fact that Jimmy refuses to answer two questions in this interview and one of them has already turned out to be true just as fans predicted is all things considered... interesting. 

Plus, I want to talk about the tone indicator given in this interview. At the end when Jimmy says “all I will say is people are really forensically looking at stuff in a way that is kinda like... okay!” coupled with what he mentions earlier with people saying “Ted and Trent, they just need to kiss or whatever like, what the hell!” immediately made my queer fan alarm bells ring with the alert ‘the actor is making fun of the queer fans, you’re overinterpreting again, you’re going to get burnt for being invested’ etc. Reminiscent of other fandoms... but we’re not going to go there. However, the tone indicator struck me since Natalie really wanted to make sure people didn’t get the impression that Jimmy was being snarky, and readers would feel offended or even attacked by what Jimmy said here. And the fact that right in the beginning he says “that’s really funny to hear [...] that you pick up on that and if other people are picking up on that” makes it sound like he’s genuinely appreciative of the fact that people are invested in his acting decisions and his character’s admittedly minor scenes. So, I want to cautiously presume that even though we’re all delusional and aware of it, there might be more ground to our delusion than we’re giving ourselves credit for.

Peace and love guys. In the end, it's all just a bit of fun, isn't it.

[an-irrelevant-truth]

if you want to be objectified it might be useful to subjectify one or more of your partners

[mountain-sage]

The scriptures speak of three Holy rivers within.

These are Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss.

Being beyond thought or effort they cannot be objectified or subjectified.

They are so dear, so near, behind the retina and before the breath.

You need not see This, you are It.

Papaji

[heraverick]

would you weawwy subjectify me? 🥺🥺🥺

[belmottetower]

3.11 - Council Estates and the Right To Buy

In 3.11, we saw Jamie go home to his mum’s, and we learned that she still lives in the council house that Jamie grew up in. This has interesting implications and possibly negative ones if construed the wrong way. In the Subjectify articles, we've already discussed those implications, because it's something I've been concerned about since we first saw the trailer shot of Jamie's childhood bedroom. I knew even then that the story beat would have to be about throwing back to the Roy poster - that's why they had to keep Georgie in the house Jamie grew up in, rather than have her in a new house elsewhere. It was a choice made specifically so Roy could see the poster. 

But in making sure that could happen, it leaves us with the unfortunate framing that Jamie didn't buy his mum a house when he got rich, and "buying your mum a house" is basically the first thing a working class footballer like him would do with his money. It's a really standard baseline. I have been nervously obsessing about Ted Lasso accidentally implying that Jamie wouldn’t have done that, for months now. I had already decided, before the episode aired, that if they did not clarify either way, I would have to assume that she did not want to leave the place she lived, and that rather than a new house, Jamie had bought her their old house on the Right To Buy, a government scheme introduced in the 1980s that allows most council tenants to buy their council home at a discount. (I do have issues with this policy generally, and the impact it had on the amount of council housing available, but that’s not for now.)

There is sort of a level of visual evidence for this - the inside of his mum’s house is really well maintained and clearly full of pretty expensive furniture and items. They definitely own it, and having now met her, gotten her vibe and seen the kind of house it is, it makes a huge amount of sense to me that she stayed there. It might have felt different if we saw a different KIND of council home, but in this specific situation, it tracks. 

There’s a bit in my primer about this, but in the UK, council housing comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes. Some of them will be flats in tower blocks (like the one Roy points to from the Westway sports pitch in 2.05 - in real life that is a council housing block in Ladbroke Grove and private apartment buildings like that simply don’t exist, Roy is a council estate kid too) or the flat fronted buildings with outdoor walkways (think Kingsman, or Rose’s place in Doctor Who) but a lot of them are houses like the one you see Jamie’s mum living in - solidly built terraced houses on car-free streets, inside the boundaries of an estate. Sometimes the estate in general contains both apartment blocks and rows of houses, with some green spaces built in too. That No Ball Games sign is a staple in any and all council estates across the UK and is ignored in council estates up and down the country by children just like the ones seen in this episode and it is lovely to think about Jamie once doing the same thing. I really liked getting to see the kind of estate he grew up on.

So, TL:DR - they would own that house now, even though it’s on an estate, otherwise they would not be eligible to still be living in it. And it’s not universally horrible to live on a council estate, or in a street of ex-estate houses.

But that “Jamie didn’t buy her a house” discourse is definitely brewing - I have seen people discussing this already as “wrong,” and I agree that it is wrong in the sense of they should have taken a line or two to clarify the way that situation might have worked, specifically to not accidentally paint Jamie in a bad light. What I don’t agree with is that it’s “wrong” for her to have stayed put - that living in that area, in that type of house, on that estate is somehow inherently bad and a situation she should have been rescued from by Jamie. And at this point, insisting that she should leave or have something better is swiftly bordering on classist.

There are a lot of stereotypes that exist about working class families and council estates. That they’re all shitty places to live, that everyone who lives in them is a benefits scrounger, or a druggie, or an alcoholic, or are involved in crime or gangs. Frankly it’s an awful stereotype that just furthers the classism and class divide in the UK. There are issues in some places, but it is not ubiquitous. Georgie clearly had Jamie pretty young and would have been granted a “family home” house by the council. Living in a little cul de sac like that, it’s very likely she had a strong community of neighbors, other families with kids who all would have supported one another. She would have been looked after, as a young single mum, and Jamie would have been safe to run about and be cared for by everyone in the street if Georgie was working. It would not have been perfect, but it may have felt safe and warm in its own way.

So once Jamie got rich - given that Georgie doesn’t seem to have any other kids who might benefit from a bigger house or anything - I can honestly see Jamie trying to buy her a fancy house somewhere else and her being like “What the fuck would I do in some fancy suburb in Chesire? This is my home, I’ll stay here thanks,” and so Jamie just bought her the council house they’d grown up in and paid to get it renovated and done up nicely so Simon could have his laboratory, and Georgie a nice place to live, with her friends still close by. Except for his childhood bedroom, which she clearly refused to let him touch and him being the biggest mummy’s boy ever he didn’t argue. 

Britain used to be incredibly proud of its strides in social welfare, and council housing was once very good quality building work. (If you ever want to watch a show that depicts the origins of, and pride in, social welfare for the working class communities in the UK in a beautiful, nuanced way that will make you sob every other episode please go and watch Call the Midwife from the beginning and come scream at me about it.) These are desirable homes - in fact, Right to Buy aside, a lot of older council housing, both houses and flats, are “de-counciled” and sold off privately to new home buyers who were never in the welfare system. I actually rent an ex-council flat in London, from a landlord who bought it privately. And I have a friend of a friend who privately bought and renovated an ex-council terrace almost exactly like Georgie’s. It’s not the greatest thing when council housing gets privatized, especially when the new replacements are of such terrible quality. But the original places are built to last, so Georgie’s house definitely could be done up to a high standard once they had the right to do improvements that were not the bare minimum of the overstretched housing organization. And between Right To Buy, private sales, and people who are still in the council housing system, an estate like Georgie’s these days may have any number of privately owned homes mixed in, and different incomes and circumstances within the same street or block of flats. Some are quite gentrified and even trendy.

I’m explaining this so people know the context when they talk about a council estate like the one we saw. I think there is a tendency to want to make Jamie’s background and childhood the most traumatic it could have possibly been, even more so than is on screen, and so it’s possible people who are less familiar with the UK and how council housing works or what council estates are like, could think that Jamie’s home growing up and the estate he lived on was awful and shitty and very very rough. And that could have been the case if he had lived on one of the rougher estates or in a flat in tower block that was falling apart and hard to do up not worth salvaging (a lot of them are being torn down) but that is not the kind of place the episode chose to show us. So now, having seen it, saying “How dare Ted Lasso not show him buying his mum a big house in order to help escape his traumatic upbringing and dirty poverty life” is honestly not a great take and is a pretty classist way to look at the millions of families in the UK that live in council housing. The episode absolutely should have stated that he bought that house rather than risk letting anyone think she’s still living within the welfare system because Jamie didn’t take care of her, but there’s a difference between that and removing her from the environment entirely if she was happy and at home there.

But speaking of adding extraneous trauma, there’s another element of Jamie having been brought up on an estate that I also want to talk about. 

As someone who has been, in my fic, flying the flag for Jamie’s mum being alive and lovely and for them to have been super close for what feels like an eternity, this episode was so so so good for me. I’ll be honest, I always found the fact that some people were certain Jamie’s mum was dead quite baffling, because in the show, the way he talks about his mum right as far back as Two Aces, using present tense means it always seemed clear she was alive and I really just took the “Don’t think she would be lately” part about not being proud to mean that she didn’t know how he had been acting at Richmond, in training, with Ted and Sam, because he didn’t tell her. Not that she’d died, or had become estranged or something.

And then even aside from like, grammar, I just never thought the show depicted Jamie as someone who had suffered the loss of a parent. Especially when you compare him with Ted - who we all know did. Jamie was just not written as a character who is carrying around grief, especially recent grief, and his apology to Roy in season 2 proves it - "I aint used to being around dead people. It just, it did something to me, emotionally." This is very different to Roy’s explanation of why he acted so weirdly towards Keeley at the funeral itself - namely that memories of his grandad’s death were messing with him. It would be a very weird choice by the writers to have Jamie lie and say he hadn’t been around death if he had lost his mum.

So yeah, I always thought she was alive, and I always assumed - based on the ages kids tend to get scouted and acknowledged as good by the academies - that James hadn’t been around much until Jamie’s mid to late teens, and as such that Jamie didn’t ever live with James, just saw him occasionally. He certainly would not have ever had custody rights, if he walked out when Jamie was a baby and showed back up when he was 14.

But while I found the “Jamie’s mum is dead '' takes surprising, I almost preferred them to the theories and fics (sorry, people have the right to write what they want in fic, but I just hate it) that his mum was probably an alcoholic or a drug addict, or absent, or complicit to the James abuse, or just generally a bit shit and anything less than fantastic. Because Jamie talks about her in nothing but the nicest, softest terms, and Jamie himself - when not in his prime prick era, which legitimately only lasts for about three episodes - is the nicest, softest boy with the strongest sense of self. Even if he’d never mentioned his mum, his whole personality felt like it was the product of an upbringing with a whole lot of love and kindness and nurturing and being made to feel special. 

The swiftness with which he reverted to sweetness and openness even in season 1, as well as his natural ego, the funny version of it, felt like his natural state of being, not a new development, and I always attributed this to his mum, which we now obviously know to be true. I’ve seen lots of people this week saying “As soon as we saw Jamie with his mum, EVERYTHING about him suddenly made sense,” and I am thrilled that people see this now, because this is what I always thought. I reverse engineered what his mum must be like based on his character so far, and it turned out just as I thought but even more so. I’ve also seen ideas that even if nothing was “wrong” with her, Jamie was somewhat estranged from her due to James and also sounding wistful when talking about her, or something, but I very much disagree. The two times he’s spoken about her, he has ALSO been talking about James, which was the thing he was sad about - they weren’t moments where he was being peppy and enthusiastic about how much he loved his mum. But also, now that we’ve met her and seen them together, I can kind of imagine him talking wistfully about her after not seeing her for like, a month, just because he is always missing her, LOL.

Anyway, how people interpreted their closeness or estrangement before this week is obviously something we did not know for a fact. The thing is, what we did know is that she was a single mum and that Jamie lived on a council estate in North Manchester, and that knowledge is what made me really side-eye some of the interpretations that framed her as either an addict or a kind of deadbeat figure that meant they had a bad relationship in some way. Because in the UK, there are a lot of stereotypes and stigmas around single mums in general, but in particular working class single mums who live on council estates. It’s really really awful and often revolves around them being unemployed, benefits scroungers, being neglectful or abusive, being drug addicts or sex workers, and it’s a really pervasive part of UK society and classism, and it felt like the details we knew about Jamie’s childhood on an estate is why people leant that way about his mum in a way they wouldn’t have if the council estate thing hadn’t been specified.

Where I work, we represent people across the UK and help get their stories shared to impact politicians. In one instance we got someone we represent onto the national news to talk about the cost of living crisis. She’s a single mum. When the clip got shared on social media she faced so much abuse and harassment and stigma because of these pervasive ideas people have about single mums and ended up having to delete her social media to get away from it. It was deeply upsetting to her, myself and my coworkers.

So I honestly always found fic or meta in which a character who, based on canon, is only ever mentioned as being attentive, loving and someone Jamie has a good relationship with, was portrayed along the above lines really hard to read. It just always felt rooted in the worst kind of stereotypes and classism, even if not intentionally. Anyway, point is…I am so fucking thrilled that we finally got to meet Jamie’s mum, that Georgie is lovely and kind and cuddly and supportive, that Jamie is an even bigger mummy’s boy than I ever could have dreamed, and that he even had a bonus soft baker stepdad father figure who had been around long enough to know that Roy Kent’s poster never left Jamie’s room. And the fact that his parents live in a house they now own, on a council estate where Georgie had a long-established community, is a perfectly fine choice. It isn’t something you need to retcon, you just need to know about the Right to Buy scheme.

[sassy1121]

oh man this means that (of course) we were right about the subjectify interview implications, he just couldn't talk about it yet because trent wasn't canonically gay yet 😭

[freakoutgirl]

In the mood to be subjectified