#advocate for media literacy and actually fucking reading things

[lilliths-httyd-blog]

one of my least favourite things about internet discourse nowadays is the "i'm not reading all that" precedent. like if you write paragraphs arguing for or against something, suddenly your point is deemed magically "invalid" merely because of its length. like bro could write the most nuanced take on a topic ever to be written only to be shot down because he dared delve into the depths and complexities of the topic, consequentially making his explanation ✨long✨. like you're literally not even giving bro a chance to explain his viewpoint by doing that, you're just being a little cunt. oh i can call this thing shitty with no explanation and be totally valid in my veiwpoints but bro over here writes four paragraphs on why he likes a thing, he must be reaching fr lol desperate. fucking hate that shit like where's the nuance? it's literally just a scummy shutdown technique at best and advocating for illiteracy at worst.

[rewrite-canon]

im going crazy with how people are starting to agree with snow that sejanus was really stupid and deserved what was coming to him. reading the books first should be a pre requisite to the movie idcccc if that takes away the wider audience, the wider audience all have smooth brains anyway.

“why was he colluding with rebels when he could’ve just thought about it pragmatically 🙄” i’m in your fucking walls. sejanus was never dumb, snow just kept pushing that perception of him through the book to deflect the fact that sejanus was an actual good person. snow thought himself the personification of good and benevolence, which was why everything he did had to have some half-assed excuse as to why he was justified in doing it. it was why he was actually tweaking in the woods when lucy gray left him, because he wanted to rid himself of her but he didn’t have an actual reason so he convinced himself of the most random scenario ever to justify trying to shoot at her. so we can establish that snow was an evil broke boy who clearly wasn’t good— then sejanus was a direct confrontation of snow’s own shortcomings towards that (i don’t think i have to detail how sejanus was genuine, it was obvious). coriolanus and sejanus are like the direct opposite characters of each other, and snow knew and took pride in this to an extent. which is why snow couldn’t admit that sejanus was good to himself, thus sejanus was deemed ‘stupid’ to protect his own deluded self actualisation (but this also includes other aspects like how the war made the plinths rich and the snows poor, leading to resentment and jealousy from snow).

“but that still didn’t mean he wasn’t doing dumb things throughout the book” was it really that dumb? a rebellion will always include some level of risk but i don’t hear anyone calling heavensbee stupid because it actually worked out for him. plus sejanus is district, so if we use our common sense of who he is as a character and emotional intelligence of his situation, it’s pretty easy to see why he would get in touch with rebels. he’s literally always yearned for the districts, he never once cared about his money or safety, which isn’t stupid, it’s sad. this was his way of dealing with the guilt of profiting from his people’s suffering— again, not stupid. you could argue he was reckless, especially when he went into the arena, but most people who simply cast him as a ‘dumb character’ ignore how troubled he is and fall into the very filtered lens of snow who was just concentrating on his stupidity.

sejanus’ growing radical actions had nothing to do with stupidity and everything to do with feeling helpless and like nothing was changing. he tried minor/low-risk things such as attempting to change the perception of the districts in the capitol, advocating against the hunger games etc etc. of course it didn’t work, so his options grew limited to more radical courses of action. its a natural line of thought— activists literally do it in real life when they feel as if their cause isn’t getting enough attention (eg. setting themselves on fire). sejanus is a desperate character who is so selfless in light of snow’s constant self-preservation. snow will always put himself first and be paranoid that he will be betrayed like he’s betrayed others, so he never understands sejanus’ disposition to help and trust people, so he labels him dumb. omg. like. sejanus is so not-stupid i’m actually gonna start freaking out!! this is defamatory leave my boo alone!! plz go read a book and work on media literacy i am begging!!!

[incarnateirony]

In what season and episode did you realised that Destiel went from subtext to actual text?

Difficult question really. I don’t exactly have a magic switch of some weird personal set goalpost I have, and frankly, wasn’t even really a shipper, just defended shippers, until... 13.5/6. I think I started slipping after 12.19 because I’m not a moron, I don’t live under a rock, I have eyes and know what the fuck a mixtape means to Gen X. But I kept it at arms reach because even Carver era was so totally subtextual-- atop all the stuff that got cut S10 after the S9 blowout, I didn’t exactly want to invest myself as much as point out shippers weren’t crazy for seeing what they saw, especially S8/9+ and even prior the resonance of the hero’s journey over our entire human civilization and historical othering of queerness made earlier readings or notices of it completely fair even if not really like, directional by the crew?

But to begin, Carver era was when I saw /intentful and meritful construction of the body of text, via subtext, to subtextually tell a story with classic queer coding./ Because a lot of what this fandom calls queer coding makes me want to hide my face behind a quantum hole of facepalms and is often like, pretty much the reverse of what should be advocated or considered. All those retro old “he’s been written as queer from S1″ make me want to kick puppies or something because oh my god it’s Not Good, most of the content there is Very Bad And Hugely Problematic, and it’s an attempt to retroactively prove what old canon was doing without any substance.

Carver era was the shift to substance, but silent substance. Subtext that’s genuinely thematically scaffolded into the storyline in a way that while the events themselves were largely cued on subtext, consideration of that subtext was critical to understanding the full body of text and people that refused to grow into and adapt with that text as the tone shifted are the ones that got more and more confused and angry.

Dabb era was the threshold crossing into (often low-visibility) text. Fandom intentionally arguing points that require complete removal from social structures (which is everything from regional meanings of major symbols, social codes, language, or why-letters-mean-things) doesn’t mean shit doesn’t mean what it means. A mixtape isn’t subtext any more than getting on one knee and popping open a box is subtext even if they don’t verbalize the words. We know what these fucking things mean and anyone who doesn’t is in DESPERATE need of going outside and experiencing the real world before making any kind of social commentary on a body of text.

When it comes to dialogue text, Last Call is where Bi Dean or at least Queer Umbrella Dean was textualized. Again, it doesn’t matter if people don’t understand the long argued history that was put to bed about repeat sexual encounters with men, it doesn’t matter what the gender of the other triplets were, literally none of that matters. It doesn’t matter if the person understands it. It doesn’t matter if they know their queer culture enough to know their arguments were already buried. It is what it is.

There’s this disillusionment that unspoken physicalized shit like kissing or sex, or verbalized ones like “I love you,” but “I love you, in a gay way, specifically and only you, and want to be romantic with you” because every other statement of the like so far has people crying or arguing about it as not enough either. 

These things are nice, but it is not the only way to deliver a textual romance. These are things we want and deserve, and people aren’t wrong for wanting them, the only wrong comes in deleting other text because it isn’t the style of text they want. 100% unhelpful.

Text in AV is complex. No matter how decontextualized people try to pretend this all is, throwing pasta at the wall and calling it an argument worth validating, AV media study doesn’t just incorporate social codes on shit like dialogue -- though anyone that applies those social codes wouldn’t be arguing anyway, as per my old post on that -- but visual language and TV literacy are a long studied topic and are just as relevant as understanding of textual/verbal language and having textual literacy. People trying to eschew these in the interest of favoring fanspaces to try to keep them equal within the canon, which is NOT what fandom space equality is supposed to be about, is just... lol. 

When that soap opera reporter that doesn’t even watch the show wandered in commenting on the full mise en scene of the 15.03 breakup being classical “Dark Point in the Romance” framing, that’s not subtext. In a book, characters aren’t running around on a blank canvas. Their environments are the text. 

What people may draw symbolically out of an environment varies, and if someone’s /interpretation/ holds up, that’s fine. But being able to digest the entire presentation of a work, that is to say, to read an entire scene in a book and understand their setting and the relevance of that setting is simply a form of text. And when literal fucking randos can spot classic cinematography, it’s time to consider what the full cinematic framework is telling you both in incremental minutiae of texts and in the full body of work.

So basically, I acknowledged lowkey text based on the most basic understanding of social codes, by 12.19, even if I was still kinda eyerolling about it. By 13.5/6, Castiel returned to Dean in something later echoed by Eileen for the zoom shot, but the rest of the arrangement was verbatim identical to the original ending of Swan Song with Lisa, with the only difference being “Never too late” wasn’t a verbal line, but an entire sound track they applied to highlight the scene.

Despite the Swan Song parallel ending reactives went up in arms about the fact that they weren’t having big romantic moments anymore and kinda failed to wrap braincases around the fact that the endgame reunion that was literally the ORIGINAL endgame shot, which ALSO didn’t include physicality (in fact, the text read, “this isn’t sexual at all. He’s a lost soul, and she’s his home” in the script for Lisa), and this dumbass fandom would go “SEE PROOF THAT MEANS THE TEXT MEANS IT WASNT SEXUAL AND HE JUST BECAME BEST FRIENDS THAT WAS HER BEDWARMER MAYBE SHE HAS COLD FEET AT NIGHT” and that’s not how this fucking WORKS. Common sense is NOT removed from fucking discussion and what sense is applied needs to be levelly-- again, social codes.

So at 13.5/6 I had considered it textually paramount to the original endgame arrangement. S14 was just... blatant ass domesticity. Dean got his happy ending. He had his family. He got his win, his everything. They spoke frequently in the kitchen -- only vaguely over cases, more slapping around idioms, eyerolling over barbarous eating, and occasionally discussing how to raise their son. In fact, if you look at non-research-non-casework S14 kitchen scenes I’m gonna let you sit there and map out what all those domestic moments in the heart of the kitchen was, minding 13.5/6. 

It was something gained. It was their life. And it was something to lose. 14.18 already advert framed it, we all saw it. Troubled family. People delete history of what is connected where to pretend “we” is vague or makes the romance any less of a canon piece and lmao guys 

And season 15 is their year long run where they’re spearheading a huge part of the plot and will be a critical final resolution.

Speaking of 13.5/6 and social codes, anyone remember that Jack hadn’t met Dave Mather and looked at one nonphysical picture of them and recognized “he’s her boyfriend”? SOCIAL CODES MEAN SHIT GUYS.

So there’s no magic moment. There’s S8/9 coding and subtext. There’s S12′s tape and other elements -- tape is just the easiest to nail down but several through the year tbh -- there’s S13′s Never Too Late, and all things that followed that in waterfall. There’s S14′s established domesticity with Castiel having essentially moved into the bunker, something that wasn’t even entirely established in S12 yet even if he was more frequent there than Carver era.

Without social codes, I could argue that “Dean loves pie” doesn’t actually mean he loves pie. In fact, I could argue those letters mean nothing, because basic social codes are what even give words meanings. Without them these are just squiggly lines on a screen. If I eschew social codes, I could take a “love me some pie” line from Dean and say it means he fornicates with children and make long convoluded excuses around it instead of the observable fucking fact that Dean fucking Winchester likes goddamn pie.

Waiting for your perfect personally dreamed magic moment for a landmark to call text generally disregards the full body of the text and merit of the work. The amount of time and effort this FUCKING shipping fandom has put into -- even Destiel shippers -- bashing down and calling blatant ass text subtext because it’s not the text they want -- just because they want to argue with people that threw the logic baby out with the destiel bathwater they thought was dirty -- it’s fucking embarrassing tbqh. Imagine if people’s competitive fandom BS was muted how anyone here would be addressing this body of text.

Like. “After Carver directed Misha to play Castiel as a jilted lover in season 9, Cain through S10 escalated it into Castiel as Colette, which was confirmed by both the author and actors, seating him as a lover, as Sam was Abel the brother; by season 11, pining and connected hearts becomes the driving theme of the show, repeatedly denounced both in text and showrunner commentary that it wasn’t Amara that was that romance, and instead, a different one rose; by season 12, domestic arguments were many, mixtapes were shared, coming into rooms and playing people for things secretly stashed under pillows were a hinging plot moment, by season 13 he was the Never Too Late Big Win as a far more powerful version of Lisa, by season 14 Castiel moved in, by season 15 their giant sacred marriage euchartist ceremonies on repeat are driving the entire body of the season while overtly making the straight pairing a secondary parallel to the primary Dean and Castiel pairing by 15.09 such as the AU scene, or the ending where they mimicked the same phrase, truncated by physicality. But anyone viewing this text is an adult not competing for their preferred fandom playbox to be considered in the text, and had eyeballs, saw Sam and Eileen were clearly courting, flirting, and/or romantically engaged for a long time before this.”

Can we hope for the equality in that, sure.  I want that, sure. That doesn’t erase all the other modes of text before that though. 

But there, I just addressed 4 consecutive seasons of storytelling as its stands in the critical themes, without breaking down the dozens of independent scenes themselves that have already been analyzed to death and yall have scorched in your eyeballs by now like angels have prophet names. 

I’ve seen people desperately, desperately try to reinterpret this text, or this story structure, in inconsistent ways that fall short. They’re never held accountable for their entire shit falling flat on their face, they just keep building new shit that falls on its face too and keep using it as a base. People can *interpret* ~text~ however they want. Anyone that tells you that “true text is inarguable” is either an idiot or selling you something for your subscription to their blog. Anyone CAN make any jackass interpretation of anything they want. 

So sure. You can make some nonsensical explanation around every core theme their relationship is shadowed by, removing all social codes and context from basic elements understood by adult human beings natively, whatever. You can take 200 pages writing around it and degaying it. Generally when I see this, I see unhinged, incomplete writings with no central thread, just a thousand disembodied excuses that don’t even make a story. They’re just that. Desperate excuses. Years of it at this point. And they’re free to /interpret the text like that/ if they want. But that’s their /interpretation/ of a /text/ and as-above generally in /intentional, willful, conscious denial and erasure of the basic social codes we all understand./

Just because they /can/ warp the most left field interpretation doesn’t make it not text. If I pulled an “I don’t know I can’t english suddenly” and threw those codes out the window that doesn’t mean that the shit doesn’t mean the shit it means just because it’s inconvenient to me lmao

And this isn’t necessarily at you, Nonnie, I just feel the need to expand on this because any single time I don’t nail down these conversational stakes, someone breezes through and intentionally hotboxes the conversation to go down these very predictable manipulations and extremizations of the conversation that I really am far too tired to repeat the arguments raging in my mentions again, so I head ‘em off before the shit ever reblogs.