#bad allies

[wirewitchviolet]

I just caught up on the past two seasons of The Boys, and wow do all the serious problems that made me drop it persist.

So a few years back, someone talked me into watching this show on Amazon about this nerdy loser getting swept up into this whole thing dealing with "superheroes" who are kind of just a bunch of violent if not worse creeps and a main storyline building in the background about this insecure Superman stand-in building towards a total breakdown. It was called The Tick and I'm still really upset that they cancelled that and started producing this other show called The Boys instead.

I'm assuming I am years late to the party when it comes to talking about this show, and I know the current discourse about it is that a lot of right wing creeps really got up in arms about it over the last couple years, because while it was ALWAYS very much allegorically going on about how much they suck, seasons 3 and 4 realized that fascists don't get allegory and started just straight up directly referencing 4chan and various Fox News hosts by name. Obviously it's pretty great that they're doing that. I approve, much like I approve of them having a character named Stormfront who played it off as a reference to having lightning powers and then later turns out no actually it's because the character is an outright card carrying nazi referencing the infamous neo-nazi website of the same name.

The problem I have with the show... well, really, there's three, let me get to the minor ones first. Like a dozen other shows that all started airng at the same time, in response to how well Watchmen did as a movie (and all based on comics that started in reaction to how well Watchmen did in its original graphic novel form), the big high concept question The Boys asks is, "what if Superman were a petty evil guy who still had all those powers?"

I think I've probably ranted about this in the past, but for real, that is the stupidest possible question to ever spend time pondering! The answer is pretty obvious, it'd suck and he'd probably kill you. More importantly though, Superman isn't real! We don't live in a world that has a good version of Superman! The regular version of Superman is already a big pontification on what it would be like if we took the at-the-time popular idea nazis were passing around of "a superman" as their nerdy power fantasy, and putting the twist on it of "OK, what if we had a guy like this, but part of him being better than everyone else was that he was like, MORALLY really good too? Just trying to help people out any way he can?" That one's a question worth pondering. What good could be done in the world if we weren't all just struggling to get by and didn't have so many logistics to worry about and all. Hey can we maybe collectively push towards some of these ideals we're spitballing? But all you can get out of pondering an evil superman is the effect he'd have on the coming book setting of the regular one. Who cares, besides comics nerds.

And the other minor gripe before my main point is that wow it is just distracting how absurdly squishy people are on this show. It's like the human body is just a blood filled balloon stored under pressure. It's not even like superheroes punching holes through people's torsos. I swear there's an episode where someone accidentally kicks a forklift and splits his leg in half. It's weird!

But anyway, yeah. The real huge problem I have with The Boys is this- This is a show that (aside from being about evil Superman) is all about hating Nazis, and if we want to draw a line here, Nazi adjacent far-right scumbags. And it comes from a genuine place of recognizing these people as terrible losers... but the writers don't actually seem to REALLY have a problem with their actual ideology.

This is, by the way, a huge problem with a ton of self-identified leftist activist types I have personally encountered, too. It is really, really easy to hate Nazis. They are innately loathesome pathetic losers who are just kind of embarrassing and sad to think about. They say really stupid things. They believe REALLY stupid things. They're just incredibly self-deluded and lonely and scared of the world, and that's all before you get into their absolutely hateful ideology. It's very easy to dunk on them. So much of The Boys is just the villains sitting around and trying to have meetings and making it clear that none of them really have coherent plans or goals, and they just keep doing horrible things during temper tantrums or having sex scandals and looking for ways to spin it. Much like a huge part of looking at social media sites is people taking screenshots of stupid things Nazis are posting and standing around gawking and laughing. And the logic goes that if someone is an evil monster, then anyone who thinks that person totally sucks and constantly makes fun of them must therefore be good, right? But... it doesn't work that way.

For instance, easily the biggest thematic point The Boys has beyond what the creators actively and consciously want you to take away from it is that any sex that isn't vanilla heterosexual man on top missionary between committed people is wrong and gross and evil. This comes up KIND OF A LOT too. I don't want to start listing examples here because I try to avoid getting this blog flagged for anything, but let me just double check here... yeah. You can just do a quick search for like, "The Boys evil sex" and get a good half dozen think pieces about many many many examples from the show's history. They are just downright obsessed with cutting to evil people with superpowers, sometimes in the core cast, sometimes one-offs, who are clearly in the writers' minds Doing Sex Wrong. Frequently just basic gay stuff, sometimes weird kinky stuff... bit of a spoiler but the show explicitly makes a point about even the sort it otherwise approves of being tainted by evil if the woman's fingers interact with the man's butt. You REALLY can't ignore it. I don't really know why everyone involved with the show thinks they're fixated on this, but there's pretty clear hang-ups on display and a clear disapproving message.

Meanwhile, particularly in the 4th season, as part of this thing the show is now doing with dropping all subtly about who they're criticizing, we have villains just directly quoting propagandists left and right, so out of the blue there's propagandists on TV ranting about... the one good pure nice woman on the show (she's blonde, she's a former beauty pageant winner, she's dating the POV character who has weird emasculation issues when she does things, again, this show is really bad like this). We get all this background shouting about the people she works with being godless trans pedophiles who hate America and love abortions and such. And I mean, yeah, this DOES match nicely with how these sort of things get shouted at various Democrats who, much like the cast of this show, never actually say a single word about trans people and don't seem to even know any of us.

But, the thing is, in real life, there very much are actual trans people out here, standing up to nazis, getting killed by them, doing the real investigative work to undermine them and dismantle the apparatus of CSA stuff that real life fascists have pretty significant ties to (oddly, something The Boys actually goes out of its way to clarify that the fascists in the show are NOT involved in, they just do like, "gay stuff"). It's really freaking weird to have this kind of scapegoating going on in a a setting where trans people don't seem to actually even exist (it's possible I'm forgetting one or more evil perverted shapeshifters, if you'd like to count such, but I sure wouldn't). The show definitely isn't quoting that sort of rhetoric to show support for trans people. It's just kind of a show of solidarity with Dems who they see as being unfairly slandered with this baseless association with trans people (who I suppose we have to conclude the writers see as gross weirdos you don't want to be around).

The worst of it though might be when the show introduces "the smartest person in the world." There's a bit where the big superhero organization is looking to get new members after a lot of gory explosions, and someone suggests this one woman whose superpower is being canonically recognized as the smartest person to ever exist, but they quickly dismiss her because she is also a black woman. Great joke! Good satire of fascists there! But then they go and make the mistake of trying to actually bring her in as an actual character on the show. The writers now have to actually portray a super-intelligent black woman, and they are just absolutely fundamentally unable to rise to the challenge, because again, the writers of this show consistently treat women like crap and only really know how to handle racism to the point of making fun of racists.

So... the "smartest person in the world" here ends up teaming up with Fascist Superman to try to set him up as God Emperor of America basically. Her stated motivation for doing this is "just to see if I could," and other than walking the villains through the same standard nazi playbook stuff they were honestly already doing for a bit, all she really does is spout some superpower supremacist garbage, eat cheap unhealthy takeout while watching TV, and give herself temporary brain damage so she doesn't feel too bad about herself having some of that Wrong Sex with the Aquaman stand-in.

And oh wow that's a whole other thing right there. Aside from just having this stuck-in-the-80s mindset of feeling compelled to pick on Aquaman (I think the big retooling the character got to kill the most-useless-Superfriends-character vibe and make him into this badass hook-handed Viking-inspired badass barbarian type happened before most of this show's cast was even born), the show basically opens with him as a stupid jock in the superhero club forcing that One Perfect Wholesome Woman to have sex with him, and then just kinda drifted around with him as this weird joke character dealing with his life being "ruined by #metoo" and sleeping around a lot, being extra stupid, and losing his girlfriend and generally getting bad press because he just cannot stop having sex with this octopus.

And you know, the octopus is a character of sorts. Talking with sea creatures and all. So she gets voiceovers, she seems really nice and sophisticated, all part of the gag here though. Because honestly, this octopus could do WAY better, and it's weird she'd even be into this incredibly stupid and misogynist loser... and ultimately that storyline just kinda leads into this scene where he smashes her tank and locks her in a closet in a temper tantrum, and we just linger on it hearing her beg and cry and gasp for breath for like... 5 straight minutes. Because... I guess we're not supposed to see her as an actual person, we're just laughing at the weird pervert dealing with the trauma of, from his perspective, murdering a screaming helpless woman?

I'd probably really enjoy a version of this show from like... actually compassionate people who understand why fascists are bad. As is though, I really cannot watch it without being acutely aware that I'm watching Nazi-bashing made by people who feel like they'd be totally on board with throwing queer people into camps and only letting white people vote, and forcing all women to be the dedicated wives and humble caretakers of men and all that. They just don't like how embarrassingly the people calling for it conduct themselves. I'm probably exaggerating the point to some degree, but I don't know how much of a degree, and that's a real problem.

Anyway, point is, try to be better in your opposition to fascism than The Boys. And the other point is bring back The Tick, damn it! It was just getting into some really interesting themes when they pulled the plug!

[nightmarelyra]

Its super frustrating to point out something you find mildly problematic regarding trans representation or language, and all the cis people around you HAVE to tell you how much it doesn’t offend them and they don’t think its “that bad”

If you do this, please fucking stop. Me mildly criticizing media you like doesn’t mean I think you’re a bad person, but trying to convince me I am wrong for having issues with it sure as hell makes me think you are a real piece of work

[boizdocry]

I hope the guy realizes the phrase "people viciously attacking the media because they don't find it relatable" is highly offensive since the battle for representation started exactly with people justly getting mad for not being able to relate to plastic characters.

In an effort to hit the "incels" you are hitting the misrepresented people that are justly bothered and in rage: anyone could use your post against the community!

You are feeding the propaganda you want to overwrite & we don't need allies like you.

As a creator it's important to remember that people viciously attacking media because they personally didn't find it relatable is almost exclusively the province of professional critics and ultra-niche weirdos on the Internet. They can seem omnipresent because they're so vocal, but in practice, when confronted with a piece of media so intensely personal that it vanishes up its own arse with self-referentiality, 90% of people will just shrug and assume the reason they don't get it is because it's too deep for them.

[williamsjakesd]

Cool shower

[unforth]

Y'all have got to stop virulently hating men. Like, I'm sorry, I fucking hate the patriarchy too, but the patriarchy isn't just men and saying it is just exculpates complicit women. I am the mother of a young boy, and I look at this precious, empathetic 8 year old boy I'm raising and I don't know where online is safe for him. Places like this will say he's evil just for his gender, and other places will say "we'll be your friend if you hate with us," and still others will radicalize him in other ways. Where is he supposed to go? Why are we saying the radicalization is the fault of the kids just trying to find a place to hang?

Like this is seriously getting urgent. You have got to fucking stop conflating the patriarchy and men. 53% percent of white women voted for Trump. Men aren't the problem. White supremacy and Christian patriarchal structures are two examples of patriarchy-reinforcing structures that aren't solely couched in maleness. Men aren't the problem, and pretending they are drives more men into more welcoming extremist spaces and also ignores all the parts of this that are forwarded by people who aren't men.

What I see happening all over is scared, depressed, lonely people looking for someone they're allowed to hate automatically, unquestioningly - someone they're allowed to place all the blame on. Fascism says people of color, non-Christian people, queer people, etc., are the ones they're allowed to hate.

And way too many of yall answer that no, it's leftist to hate men instead. You are doing *the exact same thing they are.*

Fucking knock it off.

The answer is we're not supposed to hate anyone automatically based on their immutable personal characteristics. Hate the specific people who've hurt you. Hate the self-reinforcing systems that let them get away with hurting you. Hate the strangers who prop up those systems. Hate the fascists. Hell knows I hate Donald Trump, but it's not because he's a man, it's because he's a piece of shit.

Hate the pieces of shit, not the gender.

But don't hate men just because they're men. That's unhelpful, stupid, insane, and entirely counterproductive. Fucking. Stop.

[emiko-matsui]

a world where kipperlilly isn't a villain but just running for president is so fucking funny. you're a pedantic perfect straight a student with anger management issues who does all the extra curriculars and wants to be student body president for her senior year and then the person you're running against is a sweaty lesbian who wears a yellow tracksuit every day to school and who eats her lunch out of a trashbag and she walks up to you wearing a cowboy hat filled with salsa that her friends are dipping chips in, to wish you luck in the election. she wins

[rebelsafoot]

dont you just love narrative parallels because i sure do

[macksting]

I've met him in person btw and he's a fucking sweetheart

[ID: Text-intensive Twitter thread from the Shapeshifters chest binders Twitter account in reply to a post by artist and author Ursula Vernon. Vernon says, A non-zero number of you apparently did not know that The Last Unicorn was a book before it was a movie. It is by Peter S. Beagle. It is made of spun glass and fairytales and iron knives and there are individual lines that I would give my lungs to have written. Shapechangers replies, I saw him every year at NYCC for several years straight, bought something at his table, asked him to sign it, and we spoke. He remembered me from year to year, no small feat at that con. He remembered which stories he'd told me. One year I came back with a different gender on. He squinted at me a bit and said thoughtfully, "I've seen you before in this place." All I had to say was, "last year you told me the story about the inoshishi." And his face cleared, and he leaned in with a grin and told me about a German guitarist who he traveled with, twice. Who transitioned between the first and second time, so he'd gotten to meet this person all over again on the second round. It was a wonderfully kind way to let me know that everything was fine. I was fresh out of the closet and I needed that, and maybe he could see it. The Last Unicorn is the best book in the world and I will defend it and its author til I die. the end. /end ID]

I don't usually talk about celebrities; artists, when I do, and I'm keenly aware that one needn't be a good person to be a hell of a heartwrenching artist. But Peter S. Beagle has written a few of my favorite things in the world, he's an excellent singer and filker, and this Twitter thread was dreadfully important to me. I don't want it going away as Twitter becomes Shitter, because it's so often bad news, isn't it? It's important to me to share trans joy.

[sasmeo-bisaster]

Do you think scar and lizzie brag about being the ones who managed to keep jimmy alive the longest?

The idea of them doing that meanwhile scott, grian, joel, tango and martyn being lowkey bitter about it makes me laugh so much

[halcyon-autumn]

The bad kids are insane this episode. It's crit city. It's tactical genius. They are blowing through the kinds of monsters that make most dnd parties shit themselves. They've come SO FAR from the scared kids who died to cream corn and I am LIVING for the sheer competency on display here. No one is doing it like the bad kids are doing it.

[sylvansleuth]

MY DARLING BOY!

[giantkillerjack]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

Plain-text version:

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

P.S. Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[scrumptiousfoxglitter]

Shout-out to all my sad gays.

Shout-out to every lesbian not from Lesbos.

Shout-out to all my bi's who are just one person.

Shout-out to all my pans who prefer to hit people with pots.

Shout-out to all my polys who are one sided.

Shout-out to all my average omnis.

Shout-out to all my aros who can barely use a nerf gun, let alone a bow.

Shout-out to all my aces who aren't athletic.

Shout-out to all my trans folk who need to get something off their chest (or don't, shout-out to y'all too).

Shout-out to all my grays who are multicolored.

Shout-out to all my demis that are whole.

Shout out to all my aspecs that are part of absolutely nothing.

Shout-out out to all my unlabeled folks who are limited by their lack of motivation.

Shout-out to all my apls with food allergies.

01010011 01101000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00101101 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100101 01101110 01100010 01111001 01110011 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101111 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00101110 00100000

Shout-out to all my heteros that are carbon copies of another hetero.

Shout-out to all my cats.

(edit) So, this ended up way more popular than I anticipated. So, here's a few more, and they're all equally bad, as you'd expect.

Shout-out to all my xenos that're native to their countries.

Shout-out to all my cis comrades that are a part of the opposition.

Shout-out to all the external Indigiqueers (this only makes sense if you know the etymology for indigenous that's my bad)

And of course,

[transformersweatpants]

Blacked out and found this on my iPad, must have been inspired by this post

[thepenguisalive7]

Digging his own grave because he’s too embarrassed to admit that it was a pathetic accident and not a cool assassination 🙄

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