#denise crosby deserved better

[autisticburnham]

For the ask game:

💕 tell us about one of your favorite characters and why you like them!

💎 are there any fun facts or trivia that you would like to share?

💕 Fave character and why you love them?

I talked about Michael in that other ask so I'm gonna talk about B'elanna my b'eloved. Ooh, the shit she got on that show for no fucking reason. She has such a strong sense of justice and is so steadfast in fighting for what she believes is right, but she's also willing to listen (if grumbly about it) and will change her mind and admit when she's wrong much faster than most stubborn characters. It feels like she's so dedicated to fighting for others because she doesn't quite know how to fight for herself after an entire lifetime of being told everything about her is too much and it's so tragic that even with the connections she forms on Voyager, none of them assuage that because many of them, Tom being the worst, reinforce it. I love her so much and she deserves so, so much better than she was given

💎 Any fun facts or trivia?

I know so many Trek fun facts and trivia and I cannot think of a single one right now. Uhhhhh, Beyond's makeup team created 50 unique aliens because it was coming out the year of the 50th anniversary and yet they still lost the Oscar to Suicide Squad. Not even The Suicide Squad. Nichelle Nichols' recruitment efforts lead to 8,000 new recruits for NASA, including Mae Jemisin, which is why she has a cameo in tng. When The Menagerie aired, "Ugly Laws," which prevented disabled or otherwise "unsightly" people from existing in public under threat of fine or arrest were still in affect in several states, so while there's obviously very many issues with the portrayl of disability in that episode, it was at least somewhat progressive for the time in that they have a heavily scarred character exist at all. Which is part of why the ableism in Pike's current portrayl hits so hard. Marina Sirtis (Troi) and Denise Crosby (Yar) originally auditioned for each other's roles. Enterprise's Stigma is very losely based off a script called Blood and Fire that was purchased for tng but never used, reportedly because of Berman's homophobia, and the only reason it was adapted into Enterprise at all is UPN was doing an awareness campaign and made all of their shows do an HIV/AIDS episode. A much more faithful adaptation though can be seen in the fan series Star Trek Phase II which rewrites it to be set in tos and gives us Kirk's gay nephew. That's all I can do off the top of my head

[dgcatanisiri]

I'm hopeful with the Section 31 movie giving us more TV Trek movies (Trek Culture on YouTube has taken to calling them Long Treks, and I'm gonna stick with that name too), we'll get more of these not-a-series ideas going. Like they really do open the field up and I think that offering them even more than just one every couple of years could happen if they get enough studio backing, so I'm just gonna theorize some things that could be done, spitball ideas because I'm like that.

A Data-Soji father-daughter adventure is just a must for me. All the Picard-original characters felt like they were under-utilized, but Soji is really the most egregious, because while Isa Briones was there for Season Two, Soji wasn't. After Season One used the organic-synth relations as a major storyline, it just went completely out of focus. So now that we have Data running around the galaxy again, let's get them together, maybe follow up on those ancient synths who got the call from their fellows only to have it abruptly shut off, which, y'know, might imply that they would want to come and check in on things regardless. Plus we could have Moriarty come back as well, considering Daniel Davis was disappointed that he didn't actually get to properly feature in Picard Season Three.

Now that we have Rios in the WW3 era, we could actually get something that genuinely features that as well. This is both because I want to explore that period in a way that we never have in canon before AND because dammit, I want more of Rios! He didn't say it on screen, but I like to believe that he also was remaining in 2024 to help protect Teresa and Roberto make it through the coming conflict, and I want to see that protective element of him as well.

Okay, I know there's a concern of being Picarded out at this point after the series, but Patrick Stewart has spoken of maybe having a movie still in him, and I'm willing to do that, under the right circumstances - let's return focus to the Romulan issue. This is the big thing for Picard that is still there to discuss for the character, because it created that massive rift between him and Starfleet for the better part of fifteen years. So I'd like to see him return to that issue in his twilight years. It'd also allow a more proper resolution to matters with Laris, since she was in Season Three basically to be written out and wasn't even addressed by the finale. Hell, throw in Elnor, the surrogate son who, if Soji was the most under-utilized of the Picard-originals, Elnor was a VERY close second, considering like half of his appearances in Season Two were blink and you'll miss it hallucinations for RAFFI. Could even bring Narek back as well, since his resolution wasn't shown except in a deleted scene. There's even room for Sela to appear, since Denise Crosby was (obviously) not able to return as Tasha in Picard. But let this focus on Picard as he looks to the legacy he's leaving behind and the circumstances that divided him and Starfleet, to say nothing of how Picard SHOULD feel a connection to the Romulans, not just because of Laris, but also his melds with Spock and Sarek, on the issue that divided father and son.

Give the Discovery cast a proper farewell movie. Appreciated the epilogue for Discovery proper and all, but let them have a true sign-off mission that lets all the gang get to be together for the big goodbye. Especially on the basis that Owo and Detmer weren't able to be there for the final episodes proper. They deserve a chance to be involved in the mission.

Speaking of, I know they gave Owo and Detmer the excuse of them flying the ISS Enterprise off as why they weren't there for the back half of the season, but I'm willing to call this a basis for an adventure! Give them the spotlight they didn't get in their absence and let the fly girls go to town. Also LET THEM LESBIAN MY GOD!

Now that we know that Georgiou's film will involve Rachel Garrett, seemingly placing it in roughly the 2320s or 2330s, let's step back a bit in the timeline and give Ash Tyler some further resolution - he's officially placed in command of Section 31 at the end of his debrief, and that's the last we've seen of him, but we also know that the 31 of DS9 does not jive with what he would have wanted, so something happens there. It'd even be something that could do some crossover with SNW, some setup or follow up to get the connective tissue going. Depending on events in Georgiou's story, there could even be some connection there, too.

While the passage of time rules out a proper Enterprise follow up, maybe we could get a "President Archer" story of some kind. I mean, look, we've GOT to do something to de-canonize Trip's death, after all, and Archer's supposed to be a Federation President at some point, so two birds with one stone, right?

I could keep going, but this is probably long enough as is. Look, Paramount, HIRE ME! I have many ideas that you could totally make money off of!

[shesquaredpodcast]

For the record, I’m still mad about this.

Every single time I watch Voyager and watch Tuvok work, I am upset at how Natasha Yar was treated on TNG.

It’s a damn shame that we never got to see Tasha Yar act as an actual Security Chief, you all. It’s a damn shame we never got to see her full fledge lock down the ship, lead a massively important investigation, or have heavier sway with the Captain in a situation than anyone else.

Instead, we got to see her essentially treated as Neelix’s position. She led delegates around. She babysat people on board. Imagine if Tuvok was merely given Neelix’s duties and Chakotay was given Tuvok’s.

That’s what happened to Natasha Yar - Chief of Security of Starfleet’s Flagship.

[farminglesbian]

r i p lieutenant and cinammon roll tasha yar, too good for this world [show], too pure

[sporkandpringles]

For the trek asks, 27 :)

27. Which character deserved better?

So, so many. But I’ve got TNG on the brain right now, so I gotta say Tasha Yar. 

I know the real-life reason they sentenced her to death by tar-monster was because Denise Crosby didn’t want to be a full-time participant on the show anymore because she felt like her character wasn’t being given enough to do. And then the writers had to come up with increasingly wacky reasons to keep bringing her back when she wanted to come back for an episode here or there. 

But as a fictional character I’m quite upset that she ended up dead not just once, but twice, and both of her canonical on-screen romances (if you can even call them that) were under really weird circumstances. Like... I understand that conflict makes for good storytelling, but seriously Tasha could use a break. Her whole life from tragic backstory to both tragic ends was one long, almost constant reel of misery. And I might just have to give her a happy ending in fanfic out of spite or something. 

Star Trek Asks

[calliecat93]

ST: The Next Generation S3 Watchthrough Episodes 14-17

A Matter of Perspective: So we have Riker being accused of murder and Picard and the others having to piece together the events to find the true story. We have a bit of a unique way of accomplishing this as they use the Holodeck to recreate the various accounts… which causes a problem. Not everyone’s accounts line up. They may feel like they’re telling the truth, but may be remembering things wrong, going off second-hand information, misunderstanding wich affects the testimony, and all that fun stuff. Now we know that while Riker can kill if he has to, he likely didn’t commit murder (or do anything like force himself on a woman like the one recreation protrayed), or if he did there would be a reason for it. It sucks to see Riker int his situaiton and Picard wanting to believe his First Officer but having to follow his duty as Captain and with the evidence mounting against Riker… yeah.. So it was fine. Nothing to really complasin about, but nothing to really praise eiher. I guess it shows how messy it can be to get to the truth with so many people believing different things which causes so many muddled up accounts. We never get the true story (though Riker’s is probably the closest to the truth), but we get enough to prove Riker innocent so yay~! Just a solid episode all in all. 3/5.

Yesterday’s Enterprise: YAR! OH MY GOD!!! So in this episode, we end up in an alternate timeline where I guess the Bad Ending of The Undiscovered Country occurred and Starfleet is at war with the Klingons. Only Guinan can tell that something’s out of place. Yar is alive, Troi and Worf are gone, Wesley’s an actual officer, and they have found the believed to be destroyed Enterprise-C. They even bring back the movie-era red uniforms for the Enterprise-C crew. Yar pretty much gets far, far more material to work with than she did in her one season which I guess is how they convinced Denise Crosby to come back for it since I think that’s why she quit in the first place. I still feel very conflicted about her death in Skin of Evil. The senselessness cetianly added to the cruel reality, but left me upset to see her character thrown away like that. Here she will die again no matter what, but this time she decides to let it be on her terms and do something that will at least matter. The whole episode is darker than usual due to the war, allowing them to get away with killing characters and the Enterprise-C’s lose-lose situation is just… it’s just depressing. All while Guinan is trying to convince Picard that this whole reality is wrong, and he’s understandably struggling with being told that what he knows is his reality and life is fake. Guinan watching Yar, knowing that her being alive is wrong, also added ott he unease and lets Yar piece together that she didn’t survive in the true timeline. Seriosuly, Whoppi Goldberg is always awesome, but she was amazing in this episode. The only real downside is because this is an alternate timeline that essentially gets wiped out of existence, the impact is minimal and while Yar got a much better sendoff … it doens’t change that the real Yar is dead and her death was empty (though Guinan asking Geordi about Yar to know more about her was an excellent end note). It holds me back from giving this a perfect score, but this was still an excellent episode and at least shows that even in death, even in another reality, Yar was very much a part of the Enterprise and that she mattered. Clearly the writers realized that they made a mistake and did what they could to make some form of ammends, and I can respect that. 4.5/5.

The Offspring: Data’s a daddy! I thought this sounded kind of silly when I read the description… but Dear Lord this broke my heart. I just wanted to hug Lal through this entire episode. She was just created and experiencing life and already has her own feelings and thoughts, like not liking the other children treating her as different. Data is trying his best and overall I think that he was as good of a parent as he could be. He genuinely wanted to raise Lal, he educated her and even enrolled her in school, went to Crusher for parenting advice, and I think that he truly loved her as any good parent would for their child. It makes the ending just utterly heartbreaking and how the admiral who comes to check things out being just feels so God awful. Hell the fact that they consider taking what is essentially a young child away from her parent without taking her feelings into account just because she’s an android already exceeding Data’s funcitons essentially because of prejudice and claiming to know better than the parent/father who is clealry not abusive or anything like that… yeah, the allegory hits hard. Data having to say goodbye to Lal as she died… yeah that hit me hard. I cried. That was just… God I don’t even know how to describe it, but it hurt. The episode has it’s issues. Like while I do like that Lal was allowed to choose her own gender, it’s a painful reminder that no one could even consider non-binary an option. I also felt like Picard was off in the first half since while he does ultimately defend Data against the admiral and I understand his concerns about Data not telling anyone and how Starfleet will react, him acting like Data even able to fathom wanting a child or if Lal even counts as a child just feels… horribly dickish. At least Troi was on Data’s side, and liek I said Picard did ultimateley defend Data and his and Lal’s rights so that’s good. And while I get that Data views himself as unable to feel… he clearly did love Lal and I need to keep reminding myself that we didn’t have the understanding of neurodivergence or the like back then, but I legit cannot tell what the show is triyng to say concerning Data’s ability to feel. Can he? Or can he not? They only allow one or the other. Still, the episode was sweet in a lot of ways and just brutal/sad in others and just a painful reminder of the prejudice against Data/androids that The Measure of a Man illustrated. Hopefully, happier things for Data are on the horizon. 4/5.

Sins of the Father: So after that heartbreaker, lets do more father-related stuff but time with the Klingons! This time we have a Klingon, Kurn, working on the Enterprise as an acting FIrst Officer and not only does it turn out that he’s Worf’s unknown brother… but that Worf’s father was accused of treason and thus he and his family are facing dishonor, hence why Kurn is there. Until that revelation it looked like we were getting the reverse of A Matter of Honor, but when that twist comes in? Ho boy… As the oldest son, Worf has to face the challenge that will either clear his family or end in his execution and of course Worf feels bound to do so. This certainly was something. We get to see the Klingon homeworld, we plunge straight into Klingon politics, and damn is it intense from the moment we warp to the planet to the very end. While we sort out that Worf's father wasn’t a traitor… unfortunately the one whose family was is in a high position of power who tries everything possible to keep the truth from coming out. It’s a whole conspiracy and Worf is forced to accept the dishonor just to prevent the planet from plunging into Civil War. It’s clear that no one, not even the other Klingons like this and knows that it’s wrong… but they turn their backs on him anyways. Worf even forces Kurn to do so so that he won’t have to suffer the same fate when the truth about his identity becomes known. It reflects on Worf’s character, his honor and devotion to his family despite them being either dead or only just finding out that he had a brother at all. Not to mention to the Klingon Empire since he’s also allowing it to save them from war. But it’s also just so cruel that he and his family got scapegoated all because of one asshole to cover his own family’s dishonor, especially since we’d watched Worf trying so hard to uphold the Klingon ideals and beliefs despite having grown up among humans. Now he’s been shamed by his people and viewed as a non-entity, which may be even worst than mere dishonor. IDK if this plot will continue in TNG or when he joins DS9, but I hope it does because Worf didn’t at all deserve this. It makes me respect his character so much more though and Picard was freakin’ badass as well. At least in the meantime, he has the Enterprise crew standing by him. 4/5.

[pyro-peony]

Thoughts on 9x08 of Suits

ALRIGHT KIDS LETS MOTHERFUCKING GOOOOOOOOO (this is a long one sorry y’all)

Harvey not wanting Donna to worry is cute and all but like....you’ve always looped her in dude and this has got to be no different.

Honestly Sean Cahill is one of my favorite hero-villains of Suits so I’m glad he’s back. And Donna better bitch slap Malik, at least with her words.

Jumping right into a court room scene feels rushed let’s see how this goes. Edit: it was fine. And fuck you Malik, Harvey totally cares!!!

Okay so I like that they are going to try and do something Me Too related with Esther and Louis, so I hope this lands right.

So like...Faye representing Cahill would be a choice and I’m not entirely sure why Harvey is saying no other than he hates Faye, which valid honestly. Ekkk idk y’all should she represent him??

This supplier situation is a metaphor and please Louis don’t fuck this up!!!!!!

Sean, Alex, and Harvey working together is fun and I want more of it.

Guys I’m LOVING this plot line so far!! So much intrigue!! All the super Darvey stans are mad but this is the fucking Suits I signed up for INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS!!!!!!

Lol pat me on the back later Harvey. They are SO CUTE AND MARRIED.

Esther and Louis both have points, but Esther is right. Amy Acker is a true gift. This fight was so good.

“The side that I’m on is always gonna be the side that’s against you.” Forstman is honestly so fucking scary and so good. Like Harvey knows Forstman could murder him. This is SO INTENSE.

Darvey stans are mad lol. But Harvey truly is too busy kicking Andrew Malik’s ass, and couples who don’t live together can’t spend every night together it’s just not realistic. Donna is letting him off the hook for neglect while he’s trying to work and that’s honestly couple goals

Getting Samantha to take Esther’s case is A+++++ and Katherine Heigl is so hottttt 😩😩😩

Can I just say I wanted Jealous Donna with Esther and I’m not gonna get it and I’m sad about it.

Good apology Louis.

THREE PIECE SUIT HARVEY LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOO

Wow. Malik is a fucking dick and Harvey’s gonna beat the shit out of him. But also Harvey leaves the firm at the end so like WHAT IS HAPPENING?? Is Faye gonna fire Harvey??

In this house we DO NOT QUESTION Donna’s instincts!!!!

Harvey’s shooketh face honestly????? I’m like scared, sad, and turned on all at the same time what is this wizardery Gabriel???

WOWOWOWOWOW Sean I kind of hate you? Everyone is being so mean to Harvey and it’s not fair he’s a good guy!!!!!!! “Rules aren’t right and wrong and every line I’ve ever crossed is so it again cause I’m fine with what’s in my soul” damn. I got chills y’all.

Ugh Faye just sucks. Love Denise Crosby though she’s a gem. But Faye needs to die. Also Malik recommending Faye is suspect imo.

I love my blonde suits women teaming up. This is gold. And Katrina convincing Esther to come forward is a lot but ultimately good. And Esther got to say fuck that was awesome.

They have a plan but I’ve got a bad feeling about this y’all. I don’t think Harvey survives the night. This is going to be devastating isn’t it?

Lol all three lawyers getting arrested during this case has got to be a record like this should be in the papers. but see this is why I love Sean and Harvey, it’s a good pairing. But yes y’all this was way to easy. I’m so fucking stressed.

Harvey sinking that pool ball in the corner was SUPER HOT.

Sheila and Louis are gonna get married before the series ends and it’s very sweet!!!!!!! I’m guessing the last episode. And Darvey stans are mad lololololol. Am I a Darvey stan? Yes but I’m a Suits stan first and Louis deserves this.

Damn. They really killed lily? They really did that. Wow. It’s. A choice. And not a bad one but it’s certainly putting this story in a certain path. I think they’re really making this about Harvey’s feelings and make it a personal decision to leave the firm and not because the law forced him out and honestly? I might be here for it? And Donna telling him both his parents have died is kinda poetic.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?????????

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek Canon Wants Justice For Tasha Yar

https://ift.tt/2VOTXFA

This Star Trek article contains minor spoilers for Lower Decks Season 2, Episode 6.

Tasha Yar deserved better. When the oil slick creature known as Armus killed off Tasha in The Next Generation episode “Skin of Evil,” the fandom let out a collective groan. As its first season wrapped up, TNG was already down one fantastic character and the franchise wouldn’t get another female head-of-security on a regular basis until Nhan appeared in Star Trek: Discovery, 31 years later. But, like some kind of self-aware rogue A.I., the canon of Star Trek itself seems to want justice for Tasha Yar. The latest example comes from the coda of the Lower Decks episode, “The Spy Humongous,” further proving that, decades later, Trek canon is still looking to avenge Tasha Yar. Here’s how the hilarious Lower Decks Easter egg went down…

At the very end of “The Spy Humongous,” after wrapping their duties cleaning up random alien artifacts on the Cerritos, Mariner reveals to the other Lower Deckers that she snagged a “submanifold casting stone,” which they can use to “broadcast our voices to other planets.” Rutherford asks “What’s that good for?” and Tendi jokes, “Yeah, like what are we going to do — prank call Armus?” Cut to Varga II, the planet from The Next Generation episode, “Skin of Evil,” and Armus is just hanging out. The gang taunts Armus and when he refers to himself as a “skin of evil,” Tendi says, “More like a puddle of sh*t!” If you forgot who Armus was, that’s okay. Let’s talk some Armus…

Who Is Armus In Star Trek canon?

Armus is a puddle of sh*t alien lifeform that existed as the personification of all the terrible aspects of an unknown alien species only referred to as “a race of Titans.” Armus only appeared in one episode of The Next Generation, the aforementioned Season 1 episode “Skin of Evil,” in which Troi’s shuttlecraft crashed on the planet Varga II, and was enveloped by Armus. In a rescue attempt, Armus killed Tasha Yar simply to demonstrate his power. For the audience, Tasha’s death was abrupt and more similar to the way “redshirt” characters had died on The Original Series. This episode of Lower Decks references this (without mentioning Tasha) when Boimler briefly joins a group of cocky ensigns who call themselves “the Redshirts.” 

Read more

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Believe it or not, this is actually the third time Lower Decks has referenced Armus. In Season 1, while delirious in the episode “Veritas,” Billips screamed “Tasha no! The garbage bag’s behind you!” And in the Season 1 finale, “No Small Parts,” Mariner says she is going to feed Boimler “to an Armus,” as revenge for ditching her. In real life, Armus was named after one of TNG’s early producers, Burton Armus.

The Legacy of Tasha Yar

Denise Crosby’s reasons for leaving TNG have been well-documented elsewhere, but suffice to say, at the time, she felt like the writing wasn’t supporting the promise of who Tasha was supposed to be. In most accounts,  Crosby claims it was an amicable parting, and pretty much right after she left TNG, she starred in the 1989 version of Pet Sematary. Crosby later returned to TNG in the Season 3 episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” in which Tasha is alive in an alternate timeline and serving on the Enterprise. Because of some timey-wimey shenanigans, this version of Tasha went back in time with the Enterprise-C and eventually had a baby with a Romulan. This resulted in the Romulan character of Sela (also played by Denise Crosby) who appeared in the episodes “Redemption,” and “Unification.” Crosby later returned as Tasha in the TNG finale “All Good Things…” in which Picard literally finds himself back before the very first episode, “Encounter at Farpoint.”

Crosby has also produced two documentaries about Star Trek fans: Trekkies and Trekkies 2. She is the granddaughter of Bing Crosby, which is only odd when you consider that the Bing Crosby version of “Blue Skies” was used in the very first scenes of the very first episode of Star Trek: Picard, a series that deals both with the Romulans (Sela!) and Data (Tasha’s one-time lover!) Presumably, Sela is alive  during the time frame of both Lower Decks and Picard, since she was last seen passed out after Data used the Vulcan nerve pinch on her in “Unification II.” 

Could Tasha Yar Return Again? What About Sela?

Okay, so let’s not get too excited. Lower Decks was just making a fun joke about Amurs. And yet. The Lower Deckers pranking Armus is roundabout revenge for the sake of Tasha. So could Denise Crosby ever appear again as Tasha in new Star Trek shows? The short answer is yes. Presuming that the Romulan Supernova didn’t get her, Sela is alive in the Picard Season 2 timeframe. Then again, we know that Picard Season 2 is dealing with some alternate realities seemingly caused by Q. (Someone else who knew Tasha!) The point is, Tasha could easily return in an alternate timeline in Picard, or Sela could return in the regular one! 

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And if none of these things happen, it’s safe to say that some kind of reference to Tasha Yar (or Armus) will crop up in a new Star Trek episode within the year. The flame for Tasha Yar still burns bright, and so, the Star Trek canon will never forget her — even if her memory lives on in weird interstellar prank calls. Star Trek: Lower Decks streams on Paramount+.

The post Star Trek Canon Wants Justice For Tasha Yar appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3tKcpLW

[fancy-a-dance-brigadier]

2 and 27 for Star Trek!

Thank you for the ask!!

2. Favourite first officer?

Major Kira hands down. I think she’s one of the best, most interesting, layered characters Star Trek has ever produced, and Nana Visitor plays her incredibly well. I loved watching her grow and develop over the course of the show, but you could tell she was brilliant from the very first episode alone - she’s a proper character, and you never get the sense that the writers were figuring her out as they go, which you sadly see with a lot of characters in Berman-era Trek. Also she’s a complete badass, which helps.

27. Which character deserved better?

The entire cast of DS9 in season 7

No, in all seriousness, I’m going to go with two of my favourite non-ds9 characters, Tasha from TNG and Kes from Voyager.

I think everyone and their mothers knows that the TNG writers did Tasha so dirty. First of all, they underwrote her so badly that it made Denise Crosby want to quit, which is disappointing in itself (especially since she had the most interesting/detailed backstory when they were first planning the show). And then they killed her off by having her get bopped on the nose by a puddle of printer ink. Now, don’t get me wrong, I actually really liked Skin of Evil, and they kind of made up for Tasha’s pathetic death with her funeral speech at the end, but overall it was a very disappointing end to what could have been a fascinating character.

As for Kes, I just think she’s the epitome of a missed opportunity. I’ve seen so many people write her off as boring and characterless, but I don’t think that’s right - she’s kind, compassionate, empathetic, naïve. Just because those traits don’t read as particularly bombastic doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Her friendship with the EMH was actually the first thing I really connected to when watching Voyager, and she was the first person to treat the EMH like a person rather than just a hologram. And I’m watching season 3 of Voyager for the first time at the moment, and the episodes where she’s been the focus have been some of my favourites of the series so far (I’m thinking of Warlord and Darkling). I know that Jennifer Lien had to leave due to mental health complications, so it couldn’t be helped that she had to be written out of the show, but I still think it’s a shame. Kes deserves so much more love and recognition as a whole.

[acupofsaltea]

Movie: Pet Sematary (1989)

⭐⭐⭐☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ | 3 / 10

Have you seen Pet Sematary movie? The one that produced in 1989 or in 2019? I’ve seen both movies but in different timeline. So I watched Pet Sematary in 2019 played by Jason Clarke at a cinema first then decided to watch the older version not long ago. For an introduction, both movies were adapted from novel of the same name by Stephen King back in 1983. It tells a story of a family who move from Chicago to Ludlow, Maine, after Louis (played by Dale Midkiff) accepts a job as a physician in University of Maine. He has a wife named Rachel (played by Denise Crosby), two children named Ellie (played by Blaze Berdhal) and younger one Cage (played by Miko Hughes), with the additional cat named Church. The mystery starts when they found out a pet cemetery lays behind their home.

I don’t want to explain the detail of the story here, I’ll jump right into my review. In the older version, Cage is the one who dies while in the remake version is Ellie. I haven’t read the real version which is the novel by Stephen King but I have done some research and it’s actually Cage who dies. But if I think about it, in later scenes where the dead Cage has already been resurrected, he reminds me of Chucky.

That damn Chucky, with a cute little knife.

Well, Cage’s two-year-old when he dies. Kinda cute if I have to say. Don’t be fool, he probably cute and small but he can sure enough kill two people. Realistic and Stephen King aren’t always in the same sentence, his ideas are just extremely creative--beyond my thinking--and so I try to put aside my skepticism for a while as to how that little boy can kill two adults then fight his father. A possessed body, yes! obviously. lol.

I think that shits look ridiculous, I prefer the newer version where Ellie became the evil child, she definitely make it less ridiculous.

Next!

Are those actually same trucks that go over and over again on the main roads?

Next!

So here’s what I get from the movie; there’s something about death that makes Louis and Rachel protective of their children, as if they didn’t want them to know of that bad/dark term. Even their parenting have caused Ellie to grow up as someone who believes that a person could go back to life because they don't deserve to die. The parents have had their own experiences in facing death in front of their eyes. They aren't just some deaths, but the deaths that related to Louis and Rachel in a way. Louis have to see his own patient dies in his hands and Rachel's sister dies because Rachel thinks she couldn't taken care of her sister well enough. They seem vulnerable with the idea. When Ellie asks Louis about death, he gives her the wrong impression instead as if he can't even understand the reality of death himself.

Because of that, Louis makes a really stupid idea to bring Cage back to life and test if he would awake as a different person or not. Like what? He goes with this ridiculous notion and then trying to make excuses by thinking that he could just kill Cage again with an injection if it turns out bad?

Hold up! It's not done yet.

Cage DOES turn out bad and, yes, he and his father had a fight as I mention before. Louis shot Cage to "sleep" and burn down the house. But that is after Cage has successfully kills his mother and his neighbor, Jud (played by Fred Gywnne) with Cage's cute little knife. Louis ends up with a dead wife, a dead-again-son, and a dead neighbor, plus the undead cat. It has different ending than the remake version thus I think probably the story might have a better ending after Louis finishes his bussines with the undead. But it turns out that Louis still believe the supernatural power to bring his wife now back to life. It's a twist, but it was wrapped up so bad that I feel so dissapointed. But I get it, I get it why he does that.

It just lacks of scenes I called as the build-up moment where they usually show how a person's decision changes due to some factors. That kind of scenes can make us understand the transformation of a someone's characteristic or behaviour. For example when you watch movie like Hereditary or Midsommar you would feel the terror, that feeling inside you as if you're scared on the inside. That's because they bring the viewers inside the story lines and into the character's mood. But Pet Sematary doesn't give us enough scene or screenplay like that to actually makes us understand the feeling of Louis at end of the story.

Next!

The only thing scary from this horror movie is the story of Zelda (played by Andrew Hubastek) which is Rachel's dead sister from long time ago. Every single scene of her is disturbing to me, in a horror way, which is good. But I like Zelda in 2019 better than in the 1989 version, she's scarier and has a much more disturbing fate than the original one where she dies because she falls from the dumbwaiter lift.

Over all, I like the idea of the movie eventhough some parts are just little bit off. It could get better, if only someone dare enough to make the third version. The story's not mainstream and has a unique theme, maybe reading the original book is the better option after all. Might be worth the effort.

[dgcatanisiri]

Tasha Yar and Denise Crosby deserved better.

[thegreaterlink]

Reviewing Star Trek TNG - S1E22 “Skin of Evil”

I'm all up to date again!

I'll admit that I was slacking off a bit on writing these reviews, but then I watched this episode and I needed to talk about it so badly that I churned out the reviews for the past few episodes in a day or two. Is this how it feels to be productive?

Anyway, I have a whole backlog of reviews which I have scheduled to release one per day at random times. Hell, at the time this was posted I was on the third episode of season 2.

Also, this review is going to be a lot more bitter and sarcastic than usual. Just a heads-up if reading someone being salty over a TV show episode isn’t your thing.

On the other hand, if you just want to see me suffer through another episode of this aggressively mediocre first season, welcome back and enjoy! And buckle up; this is going to be a long one.

Spoiler alert I guess.

THE PREMISE

The Enterprise receives a distress call from a shuttlecraft transporting Counsellor Troi back from a conference. They find that a shuttle has crashed on the desolate planet Vagra II, and while Troi and the shuttle's pilot are still alive, the crew are unable to beam them up.

An away team consisting of Riker, Data, Yar and Dr Crusher beam down to the planet within metres of the crashed shuttle, they are encountered by an animated pool of a tar-like substance which calls itself Armus and refuses to let them pass.

MY REVIEW

Tasha Yar is dead. Yep. She’s dead. How did she die? She was psychically backhanded by some sentient pile of shit like a common redshirt because it refused to let them pass.

Dr Crusher rushes to Yar’s side, scans her with some medical gizmo, then says “She’s dead.”

My actual verbal response when she said that was “you’re fucking kidding.”

But she isn’t. They rush Yar to sickbay, try everything they can, but to no avail. And just like that, one of the main cast is dead for good. Not since Deep Space Nine has a major character death felt so cheap. And at least that character had several seasons of development and was actually killed by one of the main villains. They even give Yar a nice scene with Worf at the start to trick us into caring about a character with next to no focus.

My research shows that Denise Crosby asked to be released from her contract due to unhappiness with her character’s development, or rather the lack thereof. And I don’t blame her in the slightest. But Crosby has said that if she had just had some more scenes like her interaction with Worf here to endear her to the audience and develop her as a character, then she wouldn’t have left.

Gene Roddenberry himself argued in favour of her sudden death, as he felt it was suitable for a security officer. That may be true, but as evidenced by the reaction of yours truly, killing off a main character out of the blue with zero buildup probably won't go over that well with the viewers.

At the end of the episode, the crew holds a memorial for her on the holodeck, which looks like a Windows XP background, where the crew watch a holographic message of Yar telling them how much they each meant to her.

Yet at the end of it… I felt nothing. And do you know why? Because the whole scene is Yar telling us her relationship with each of the crew members, relationships which - and as someone who’s been binge-watching this season you can take my word for it - have sadly barely received any development onscreen. The writers were telling me why I should care about a character who they clearly didn’t give two shits about.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Tasha Yar and Denise Crosby made her memorable even if the character usually took a back seat, but something like this is just cheap and manipulative. They’re trying to have a Wrath of Khan moment without any proper buildup or character development! Spock died after sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise, but Yar died after getting bitch-slapped by a sentient tar pit!

Yar hints at a troubled past before she joined Starfleet, a troubled past which was never explored and now probably never will be. At least Ron Jones’ music is great.

Okay, I’m done ranting. Time to review the rest of this episode.

The villain, Armus, is a complete joke. His design is basically “what if tar, but bad?” He displays some nebulous abilities such as taking control of the crew and placing an energy field around Troi’s shuttle, but there is never any feeling of threat or danger because he utterly fails as a villain. He kills a main character with a single blow, and yet he isn’t threatening in the slightest!

And yet the writers have the fucking audacity to try to make him somewhat sympathetic by giving him a backstory of being a physical manifestation of evil from an ancient race, left to rot on the planet. Even the greatness of Sir Patrick Stewart can't escape this utter black hole of charisma.

Gene Roddenberry strikes again, as he argued against the crew just killing Armus, saying that it's not our decision to pass moral judgement on any creature that we encounter. But if I were to encounter a creature as whiny and bland as Armus, I might just make an exception.

Anyway, the main conflict of the episode is that the crew needs to get to Troi’s shuttle to help her, since they can’t beam her up because there’s an energy field around it. Even though it’s only on the other side of the soundstage - I mean the clearing, Armus is blocking their path and is immune to phaser fire. And yet it never occurs to the crew to have the transport crew just beam them down about a dozen or so meters to the right.

It also never occurs to them to simply tell Armus that they have a Galaxy-class starship in orbit which is armed to the balls and more than capable of wiping him off the map at a moment’s notice. Sure, he can withstand a standard-issue phaser, but how would he fare against a couple of photon torpedoes? Picard may be bluffing, but Armus wouldn’t know that.

And so the actors are left to stand about on a soundstage arguing with a sentient pile of tar which refuses to let them pass. To sum up most of their scenes:

Crew: We need to get to that shuttle to help our friend. Let us pass.

Armus: No.

Crew: She needs our help!

Armus: I could kill you.

Crew: No you won’t.

Armus: ...But I could if I wanted to.

Crew: …So can we pass?

Armus: No.

Repeat for half an hour, occasionally insert some angst from Armus.

A good chunk of this episode is just a one-woman show for Marina Sirtis as Troi, as she acts off of some PA reading off Armus’ lines before they were dubbed over the scene. Her acting is good (especially her shedding actual tears during Yar's memorial), but not enough to carry scenes which are thoroughly uninteresting.

Speaking of Troi, I honestly feel bad for not noticing that she was completely absent from the past few episodes, since this episode explains that she was at some conference. Maybe Marina Sirtis just wasn't available for those episodes and they had to write this to explain it?

Also, I pity Jonathan Frakes for having to be covered from head-to-toe in black goo. I hope he got paid extra for that.

3/10 - Not the worst episode in this season, but far from anything I'd call good.

One final insult to the thoroughly wasted character of Lieutenant Tasha Yar. Denise Crosby has my full support.

Side note: It occurred to me while writing this that they never specified what they did with Yar's body, but by now I'm too pissed off to care. Fuck this episode and the horse it rode in on.

Previous Episode | TNG Masterpost | Next Episode

[shesquaredpodcast]

@pass-the-salt SAME. They didn’t just kill her once either, and that infuriates me to this day, as well. Tasha Yar and Denise Crosby deserved WAY better.

Well, this may be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t mind that. I’ve watched Star Trek since I was a child (I’m 40, so that’s a while). The treatment that Tasha Yar’s character received on Next Generation has always pissed me off. She was the Security Chief and thus should have been the individual performing all of the tasks that Riker was given (see Tuvok in Voyager for those back-ups). But she wasn’t.

Instead, she was given babysitting duties and nonsense storylines. The only thread connecting the two Security Chiefs between Voyager and Next Gen was head of Tactical.

Here’s the thing - Riker and Yar should have been sent in to situations by Picard side by side. He should have relied on her heavily, yet he was always shown as the hero with way more expertise. YAR should have been the one to identify threats and handle unknown entities on a planet’s surface. YAR should have been orchestrating first contact with an unknown species. She should have been more than a throw-way character and TBH, that is why Denise Crosby left the show. She’s stated that many times.

But I am angered to this day - 30+ years later, that she was dismissed so blatantly. And I think a lot of us fans are.

Star Trek has always stated they were the beacon of progression on tv, and in a very few instances they have been, but overwhelmingly they have upheld misogynistic ideals about women in positions of power. That is one of the things that made Kathryn Janeway SO important.

When they brought on a sex symbol (and do not misunderstand me, I LOVE Seven’s character then and now on Picard) to help “boost” the ratings, it’s entirely understandable that Mulgrew was furious. She has accepted and stated that her treatment of Ryan was unacceptable because she wasn’t to blame - the WRITERS and the PRODUCTION were. (Even Ryan has stated that her very costume essentially put her in danger and distress daily all so she could be “sexier” to the male viewers.) You see, they didn’t focus on her character - they focused on her “sexiness”. And that’s not progressiveness. Same thing they did to Crosby - just on a different scale.

All of this was true during Next Gen and a huge reason why I believe Denise Crosby has remained one of the most powerful voices in Star Trek even though she was only a main character for one season. Her return in Yesterday’s Enterprise is still heralded as one of the top ten episodes of Star Trek because it is amazing writing in some ways - (though, the forced heterosexuality of Yar falling for a male officer is out of left field, but hey - that’s Next Gen, right? No homo!)- and vindication for a character that was treated horrifically.

They then fuck that up when Sela was introduced and make Yar a rape slave essentially who tried to protect her daughter and was murdered for it. - Yeah, Trek isn’t great, you guys.

I would love to see Crosby reprise her role on Picard as Yar because Janeway destroyed the timeline that all of this happened (Y.E. withstanding) to save Seven. I’d LOVE to see her be an expert of the Romulan involvement in Picard. Because holy hell - talk about power in attempted redemption of a franchise.

Natasha Yar was a GROUNDBREAKING character who truthfully paved the way for Kathryn Janeway and the fact that she was treated so poorly behind and in front of the camera showcases just how poorly Trek has always been conceived and delivered. The misogynistic behavior of both shows was present, just in different ways. Next Gen was blatant and Voyager was hidden.

The truth is - I adore rewatching Voyager, but every time I watch, I angered by Tuvok’s duties because I am reminded that Natasha Yar should have been doing those exact things.

And she wasn’t.

Riker was.

And that was and still is unacceptable. 30+ years later. She also was 100% coded as a lesbian and that was forcefully negated later, a blatant tactic of Trek, but THAT is another conversation for another time.

[daleisgreat]

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season Four

-Welcome back to my semi-annual Star Trek: The Next Generation coverage! I need to get better at watching only one episode a week so I can make better progress than only two seasons a year. Today I am covering season four (trailer) of the BluRay collection I am gradually marching through. To catch up on my entries on the first three seasons, click here! Yes, all these photos for this entry were taken via outdated smartphone, so apologies for the lack of quality, but I felt it was worth it for some of the captions! -Continuing the trend in past entries let us kick off with notable cast changes for season four. The most noteworthy one is Mr. Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) finally landing that spot in Starfleet Academy and departing the show a third of the way into the season. He had a great sendoff episode where Wesley and Picard (Patrick Stewart) go on one last adventure and he winds up saving Picard and the two have a couple emotional final exchanges I could not help but get wrapped up in. I thought Wesley was finally coming into his own the last dozen or so episodes he was on, but in the extra feature interviews he stated he was displeased by how we was treated by the producers in his final year on the show and did not want to pass up other acting opportunities for being the two main reasons he departed. I believe we get a couple more guest appearances from him in the remaining seasons, and for the rest of season four there is a rotating non-essential crew member every couple episodes filling in at the helm.

-If you recall the previous entry, season three wrapped with the critically acclaimed Best of Both Worlds cliffhanger where Picard became assimilated by the Borg. The season four opener wraps up that arc in a gratifying manner in how the crew rescues Picard from the Borg threat and restore him back to his original form. I want to emphasize again how important this episode was in terms of gripping narrative, near theatrical quality special effects and CG and how it was the catalyst for TNG finally being accepted by ardent fans of The Original Series and managing to overcome that show’s huge shadow. It was so groundbreaking that the two-part special eventually got its own special home video release. -The follow-up second episode of the season proved to be the quintessential ‘calm-down’ episode after the intense season opener. Picard takes some much deserved shore leave and visits his family back on Earth and we get to see them reconcile their differences when Picard’s brother gets him to break down his emotions from his Borg assimilation in a moving scene that will always stay with me. The secondary plot of that episode focuses on being introduced to the adoptive human parents of Worf (Michael Dorn) and how Worf overcomes the embarrassment of his loving family and they all wind up embracing each other. Normally, getting all wrapped up in an overly ‘lovey-dubby’ episode can be overkill for me, but I cannot think of a series that captured the perfect moment for it any better after the thrill-ride of the season opener.

-Speaking of Worf, season four proves to be a showcase season for everyone’s favorite Klingon. Aside from meeting his human step-parents, he later on becomes a sudden grieving widow in the same episode he meets the son he never knew he had. Season four finale is another two-part cliffhanger called Redemption and the first part that ends this season is all about Worf finally acting on Picard’s pleas to win back his family’s honor from the Klingon race after the big episode in season three where he covered up a Klingon controversy by taking a fall for a crime his family did not commit and being ex-communicated from the Klingons. The aftermath from that over the next year and a half was constantly referenced every couple episodes as a reminder from the consequences Worf had to live with so it felt like a justifiably big deal when Worf finally stepped up to overcome the shame cast upon his family name. Season four felt like a breakthrough season for Worf where his episodes no longer felt like ‘another Klingon episode’ to tolerate and I am now on board with all the way. -The holo-deck use seemed more dialed back this season. There is a fun mini-Dixon Hill excursion with Picard and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) which regrettably gets put to a halt early on. Picard shows off some funky laser racquetball skills, and Worf duels with Guinan in a laser-target shootout I never caught the name of. Also dialed back this season was the poker games which I only think appeared in one or two episodes this season and one poker scene wound up on the cutting room floor in the deleted scenes. I hope to see both of these fun distractions become more featured in the proceeding seasons. The Ten-Forward tavern scenes continue to impress however as much needed breather scenes where Guinan offers her sage bartender wisdom like only she can and she even gets to put a badass halt to a stereotypical barfight that erupts!

-For the rest of crew, Data (Brent Spiner) has a memorable episode where he plays three characters at once that sees the return of Lore and after a few teases finally seeing the on-screen debut of his creator, Dr. Soong. I usually am a fan of Geordi (LeVar Burton) centric episodes, but his season four episodes where he is brainwashed by Romulans and infected by an alien race were more headscratchers that did not have me quite invested. The same can be said for Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) with her big episode where she is romantically involved with a symbiote who needs to constantly change hosts that proves to be too much for her. I will recognize however season four for her emerging as a competent doctor for a change and finally saving some lives! Transporter Chief O’Brien (Colm Meaney) gets a first name this season, and more importantly gets married too! Like last season, the use of telepathy from Troi (Marina Sirtis) is sparingly used, but whenever implemented it is noteworthy and actually helpful. The use of Ryker (Jonathan Frakes) as a key crew member also seemed a little more toned down this season, with him only having larger roles in a couple episodes. -Season four I will chalk up as a win for recurring once-annual recurring characters for TNG. I was delighted to see Picard’s treasure hunter partner Vash (Jennifer Hetrick) return in the Q (John DeLancie) episode this season that has Q whisk away the Enterprise crew for a memorable mission in the Robin Hood universe where Patrick Stewart shines as the ‘Prince of Thieves.’ I will also mark season four as the first time the annual episode with Troi’s mother, Lwaxana (Majel Barrett) as a legitimate entertaining episode. I previously could not stand her, but in season four she stood out in imploring an ambassador she fell for to go against his culture’s protocol of mandated suicide at age 60. I liked the ways to get Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) involved in the show again via estranged family members and more alternate dimension cliffhangers to wrap up this season. Props to them bringing back Reginald Barclay (Dwight Shultz) as a recurring crew member and his episode this season cracked me up where a cosmic blast leads to him overcoming his SAD to becoming overwhelmingly brilliant.

-Like previous seasons, I could not help but take notice of a couple episodes of TNG in season four I saw Seth McFarlane pay homage to in his current sci-fi show, The Orville. First Contact (yes a TV episode shares the same name as the eighth Star Trek film) establishes the rules for when the Federation of Planets recognizes the right time to well, establish official first contact with a new race, but only to see it be too much for the race to take in. Orville puts a twist on its first contact rules, but sees their own entertaining dilemma pan out when their cultures clash. In Theory has Data attempt to get involved in a romantic relationship with a crew member and that was replicated on McFarlane’s show when Isaac tries to maintain a relationship with that vessel’s doctor. Click or press here to see how the two shows contrast from each other with their respective androids trying to get romantically involved. -Like the previous seasons, Paramount does not disappoint on the extra features. Besides recycling past DVD extras, there are all new HD bonuses for the BluRay. Excluding a handful of commentaries, according to my notes I tallied up about four and a half hours of behind-the-scenes interviews. Yes, I watched them all for you dear readers! I will once again try to highlight the standout extras. Being a fan of Wesley and Picard’s father/son relationship I like how that is dissected in Selected Crew Analysis. Chronicles of Final Frontier and Homecoming provide valuable insight at the injection of new life a stable writing staff brought onto the show this season. Departmental Briefing indicate how Frakes and Stewart made the move to directing episodes starting this season, with Frakes especially getting more out of it and how it lead to him eventually directing a couple Trek films.

The showcase new HD extra is In Conversation: Star Trek’s Art Department which gathers several of TNG’s CG and special effect artists as they talk shop on how they were brought onto the show and share some of their favorite anecdotes for a little over an hour. I will admit some of it goes over my head, but it was mostly fun being a fly on the wall seeing these colleagues reunite and celebrate their favorite war stories. Random factoid I will forever remember from this was the artist’s disappointing writers for forcing them to tone down amount of phaser blasts they requested because they cost approximately $2000 to produce per individual blast at the time. -Damn, I babbled on for incredibly longer than I wanted to once again, but season four was a damn good season that warranted it. As breakthrough of a great year season three was for The Next Generation, I have to give credit where it is due for season four somehow surpassing it with a better overall quality of episodes. There are landmark moments for most of the crew throughout the season, and once again there is another two-part cliffhanger that has me anxiously awaiting to dive into the following season. Hopefully I will be back sooner than later this time…..no promises!

Past TV/Web Series Blogs 2013-14 TV Season Recap 2014-15 TV Season Recap 2015-16 TV Season Recap 2016-17 TV Season Recap 2017-18 TV Season Recap 2018-19 TV Season Recap Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series Baseball: A Ken Burns series Angry Videogame Nerd Home Video Collections Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1 | Season 2 OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30 RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13 Roseanne – Seasons 1-9 Seinfeld Final Season Star Trek: Next Generation – Seasons 1-7 Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle Superheroes: Pioneers of Television The Vietnam War: A Ken Burns series X-Men – The Animated Series: Volumes 4-5

[sueboohscorner]

#Suits - Season 9, Episode 3 “Windmills”, Review/Recap/Spoilers

#Suits - Season 9, Episode 3 “Windmills”, Review/Recap/Spoilers

Rating:  10/10

(Air date 7/31/2019)

Note: I apologize for not having a recap for episode 2 (it’s been a rough week with my hubby in the hospital and me with foot problems.  Hopefully we’re on the mend).

So…last episode Faye Richardson (Denise Crosby), the Special Master, demoted Louis (Rick Hoffman) and became the acting Managing Partner of Specter Litt Wheeler Williams!

Gretchen (Aloma Wright) walks in on Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and Donna Paulsen (Sarah Rafferty) making eyes at each other and tells them that Louis had been demoted; Harvey angrily stomps into Faye’s office and tells her he won’t be taking orders from her.

Samantha Wheeler (Katherine Heigl) and Alex Williams (Dule Hill) decide to join forces and see if they can find a legit way to get rid of Faye.  Seriously, everyone wants Faye gone!

Unbeknownst to Louis, Sheila Saz (Rachael Harris) pulls some strings and gets Louis’ friend Saul to offer a judgeship to Louis!  Louis comes home and tells Sheila about it and tells her that he turned it down.  Sheila confesses that it was her idea and asks Louis to at least think about it.  Louis says he will.  And boy did he ever!  The funniest scene I’ve seen on Suits comes when Louis dreams of himself as a judge. In the dream Faye is “on trial”.  Louis plays the judge (in a white wig) and he also is the opposing counsel (since Faye is representing herself).  Donna, Alex and Samantha are in the gallery.  Donna keeps saying, “Oh he’s better than Harvey.”  Gretchen is the bailiff, and the best part is a jury of 12 Harveys! It was hilarious to see Harvey cuddling a cat and making a heart with his hands at Louis.  And Judge Louis announces the verdict when Foreman Harvey declares Faye “guilty”, that Faye is sentenced to “death”!  Faye yells, “Death?  I don’t even know what I’m on trial for!”

Back to “reality”, Louis goes to see Dr. Lipschitz (Ray Proscia) and tells him the dream he had.  The good doctor tells him it was all just fantasy.  Louis admits, “This whole time I was worried about what they would do without me.  I didn’t even think about what I would do without them.”

Faye goes to see Donna and tells her she needs some secretarial work and she heard that Donna was the best secretary the firm ever had.  Donna tries to suggest she’ll find someone suitable to help Faye and Faye threatens to demote Donna if she doesn’t do what Faye asked.  Donna swallows her pride and takes on the clerical duties.  Harvey finds her and wants to go to Faye to give him a piece of his mind but Donna asks him not to.  She doesn’t want Harvey fighting her battles with Faye.  They make plans to have dinner and it’ll be dinner with no talk of the firm.  Later Gretchen finds Donna getting ready for her dinner date with Harvey and tells Donna she’ll finish what Faye gave Donna to do and Donna should go have fun.  Faye is not pleased that Donna didn’t finish the secretarial duties she was given; however, she’s impressed with Gretchen and decides to keep Gretchen, which sends Louis into a fit.

Meanwhile Katrina Bennett (Amanda Schull) works on a case when Susan (from the bull pen; played by Alison Louder) who wants to be an associate (Katrina’s associate now that Brian is out of the picture) comes to help.  Susan suggests that she contact a family friend who is on the oppoising side.  Katrina adamantly tells Susan not to do it.  Susan does it anyway and when Katrina reprimands her, Susan tries to use the knowledge she thinks she has of Katrina and Brian to her advantage by blackmailing Katrina.  Telling her to make her Katrina’s associate by the end of the week or she’ll go to Faye about Brian and Katrina.  Badass Katrina instead turns the tables on Susan. Katrina goes to Susan and tells her that they’ll need an office for Susan if she is going to be her associate but they’ll need approval first.  So they go to see Faye.  In Faye’s office Katrina has Susan admit to her own wrong doings while they worked on the case.  Faye doesn’t fire either of them; she asks if there was anything else.  Katrina looks at Susan and asks if there was anything else.  Susan shakes her head.  At that moment she understood that Katrina cannot be intimidated or blackmailed!

Harvey tries to take Faye down however he can, including suing her old firm.  Unfortunately, it backfires on Harvey.  Harvey’s client, Dan Foley, gets fired anyway!  Harvey works his magic and gets another client to buy the firm and hire Dan.  He tells Faye and adds that Gretchen goes back to Louis.  But of course Faye has the last word letting Harvey know that she is not pleased and he could be fired next.

Highlights:

Darvey on a date!  Of course they talk about the office but when they agree not to talk about the office, there is an awkward (very awkward) silence.  But then they tell stories from their past and all is well with the lovebirds.

Louis’ dream!  The funniest scene I’ve seen on Suits!

Gabriel Macht, in my opinion deserves awards for his acting and directing!  Yes, he directed this episode.  He does amazing work!

Disappointments:

This is the final season and there are only 7 more episodes.

Thoughts?

What are your thoughts about this episode?

Next Week:

Suits 9x04, "Cairo":  Faye decides to take action against Harvey and Donna's relationship; Harvey looks to impress Donna's father.

Thanks for reading Suitors!!

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Great Social And Political Import

by Viorica

Wednesday, 02 December 2009

Viorica does the time warp~

There's a very insightful Supernatural fanvideo called Women's Work, about the way the show handles female characters, set to Courtney Love's song "Violet" I mention this not because this article has anything to do with Supernatural or female characters, but because the vid very accurately sums up my current state of mind: I watched this, and now that I've seen it, I don't want it anymore.

For some background on what it is I'm about to rant about, I should probably explain Phase II Created in 2003 by a group of self-avowed Trekkies, the series is based on Star Trek: The Original Series, and picks up where TOS left off. The series is notable for the high production value, and the fact that they have several ST alum helping them out, including Eugene Roddenberry, Denise Crosby, and David Gerrold. The latter contributed an episode that he'd originally written for TNG, but was rejected due to the fact that it contained an openly gay couple and an allegory for the AIDS epidemic. Gerrold retooled his script to fit the TOS characters, and "Blood and Fire" was finally released to the public. So far, so good. I mean, I have to wonder how well-characterized the original script was if he could just adjust things to have it fit TOS, but the dialogue is well-written, and the characters well-realized. The gay couple in question (Kirk's nephew Peter and his boyfriend Alex) are genuinely sweet together, and their relationship doesn't feel forced or cliched. There aren't any stereotypes present- neither of them are especially effeminate or hysterical (well, in the first half anyway) and the other characters never lift an eyebrow at the idea of a gay couple. But then in the second part of the episode, it all comes crashing down.

The episode's main plot circles around the discovery of an abandoned ship, and the horrifying realization that it's infested with "bloodworms-" parasites that feed on human flesh, and are capable of destroying entire civilizations. Peter and Alex are on the away team sent to find out what happened to the ship's crew, and after the discovery that the ship is infested, Starfleet orders that it be blown up, along with everyone who's potentially been exposed. "Okay," I think, "this could be interesting. Kirk wrestles with obeying orders versus his concern for his nephew (and Spock, who's also on the away team) and has to decide whether the potential risk posed by saving the away team outweights the slaughter of anyone unfortunate enough to be on the ship . . ."

. . . or they could just blow over that, and save everyone, except for Alex, who is forced to committ suicide rather than be munched on by bloodworms. Three guesses as to which option the writer took, and the first two don't count.

So after Alex dies, Peter volunteers to go and blow the ship up himself, because he wants to die (because you know how HYSTERICAL them gays are!) only then they find out that the infested ship's original crew was carrying bloodworms because they wanted to committ genocide against the Klingons. Captain Kirk lectures everyone on the dangers of hatred, and they steer the ship into a solar flare, roasting the bloodworms. Oh, and a bunch of sparkly space butterflies symbolize Alex passing into the afterlife or some shit like that. The end!

There is so much wrong with this, I don't even know where to start.

The Times, They Are A-Changing

Back when this script was originally written, the socio-political climate was light years away from what it is now. For one thing, there were virtually no gay characters on television, let alone ones in committed relationships. To show such a couple tragically ripped apart by AIDS- excuse me, bloodworms- would have made a huge difference in the way TNG's viewers would have looked at the AIDS epedemic. Instead of filthy perverts who brought their deaths on themsevles by being mindlessly promiscuous, they'd see two young men (who are so sweet and wholesome, it

hurts

- they bonded over being study partners, for Christ's sake) being ripped apart by something that neither of them could control. Sure it's a flawed allegory, but it was a message that needed to be sent. And even if they did kill one of the gay characters, there was still one left to remind the audience that gays were, in fact, people.

But that was then, and this is 2009. The climate is vastly different then it was in 1989, with different issues that need to be addressed. While AIDS still exists, it doesn't loom as large as it did in the eighties, and most people don't need to be told how awful it is. The problem now isn't a dearth of gay characters, it's the fact that they're rarely allowed to have successful happy relationships. We all know it's hard to be gay, but could someone

please

give us at least one happy couple? Please? I'm running out of hope here.

And although I'm sure the writers/producers would be shocked! shocked, I tell you! at my casting aspersions on their motives for getting rid of Alex, I'm going to do it anyway. With him gone, they never ever have to address Peter's sexuality again. Think about it: giving him another love interest would look callous right after his fiancee died, and if they aren't going to give him another love interest, they never have to mention his gayness again! He'll become functionally asexual, just like

Dumbledore

. [

Edit:

As a reader pointed out, "invisible" would be a better term.] They get all the kudos for having a gay character, but they'll never have to address his affection for men. Or they could retcon it entirely by having him fall for a woman and say "Oh, he was bi! Didn't we mention that?" which would just make me want to break things. I'm just as desperate for bi characters as I am for gay characters, but for fuck's sake, stop using my orientation as an excuse to erase queer characters. We deserve better than that.

But that's just the worst-case scenario. The best is Peter having other relationships with men (which I just don't see being possible/plausible in the near future) or just not having any relationships at all. The latter option would certainly please the fanboys who howled in protest about the icky gay kissing in their bastion of heterosexuality and testosterone, but it wouldn't especially please me.

The Dead Gay Problem

Back when gay characters were first starting to emerge in the media, they could rarely expect a happy ending.

The Well of Loneliness

ends with Stephen begging God for the mere right to exist, while

Maurice

's main character and his lover are forced to shun society and live in the woods. This is presumably due to the fact that the books were written at a time when being publically gay was social (if not literal) suicide. The problem is, it hasn't gone away as things have progressed. At the end of

Lost and Delerious

, Paulie jumps off a roof;

RENT

has Angel dying of AIDS. Even when the writers can't tie the characters' deaths to their sexuality, they still manage to get rid of them.

Buffy

had Tara get shot;

Torchwood

booted Ianto in the third season by having him drop dead of an alien virus. It's like there's some sort of mass delusion that being gay/bi will immediately result in violent, unpleasant death. Is Jan Moir secretly running a media empire or something?

So with the Dead Gay Epidemic going on on network television, it's disappointing to see web-based media falling to the trend as well- especially when there's no reason for it. Alex's death does absolutely nothing to serve the plot. You could remove it, and the episode would make just as much sense,

and

be rid of a bunch of extraneous angst. Now it's entirely possible, even probable that Alex's death was in the original script, but massive edits have been done since. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility for someone to say "Hey, this is great, but killing Alex doesn't really carry the same meaning as it would have back in '89- how about letting him live?" Moreover, I have a hard time buying that no one realized that it was outright offensive. Unless of course, they were deliberately making sure that they wouldn't have a gay couple on the series by killing half of it off. Not only did they avoid having a recurring gay couple, but they dodged having to show them getting married (the horror, the horror.) See, Peter and Alex spend the first half of the episode planning to get married, and Peter asks his uncle to marry them right before they leave on the away mission. Now this feels a bit like pointing out the obvious, but if you want to stay politically relevant, wouldn's showing a gay couple get married accomplish that goal? I mean, it's not like people

all over America

are fighting for the right to have their union legally recognized. Nothing of the sort. Prop what?

Good fuckity god.

In conclusion, the people running

Phase II

fucked up. Badly. They had the opportunity to remain politically relevant and adhere to Gene Roddenberry's vision of a more equal future. Instead, they sent their show hurtling back to the eighties, when I wasn't even born. Which I suppose is a good thing, because I am never watching this show again.Themes:

TV & Movies

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Minority Warrior

~

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Wardog

at 10:07 on 2009-12-02I am so intensely clueless about fandom. As we know, I'm a big Trek nerd, but I hadn't even heard of Phase II - heh, not that I'll be watching it now! Also thanks for the link to the *AMAZING* Women's Work. I've heard people talk about how political, illuminating and fascinating fanvids can be but I've always kind of just gone "whatever." This is officially my conversion. My tiny mind is blown!

The few times homosexuality has come up in Star Trek that I can recall, except for the fact the show itself doesn't *really* want to deal with it, it's been semi-well handled. I seem to remember there's a nice episode of DS9 when Jadzia meets and old Trill lover who is currently in the body of a female. They grapple with their love for most of the episode, but the main issue is always very much the fact that Trill aren't allow to resurrect relationships rather than the fact that they're both girlz now. Which I liked :)

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http://bitterlittleman.livejournal.com/

at 11:22 on 2009-12-02In regards to Women's Work - I get the point it's making, and I see the problem, and recognise the video isn't just talking about supernatural etc etc.

But.

Ugh. I don't even know how to put this. One link summarises it as demonstrating the portrayal of women as "Evil, slutty or helpless" but this is true of almost every bit part character that the main characters meet. Why? Either they are the big bad - ie evil, or they are the victims - ie helpless. Slutty is a different problem (to do with target audiences etc), but temptation is part of the whole demon thing, right?

Plus, to make it's point, it ignores a lot of actual characters. (

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Supernatural)

There are women who are not evil, slutty, or helpless. There are guys who are...

Here I stop before I dig too deep a hole.

Basically, I think the video is extremely well put together, hits all the right buttons to get you worked up about certain issues. But in doing so it leaves out all evidence that doesn't agree, and that bugs the hell out of me.

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Dan H

at 11:31 on 2009-12-02It's genuinely fascinating, I think, how something can go from "awesome message of tolerance" to "actually kinda skeevy" purely by putting it in a different cultural context.

Back when Star Trek TNG was big, just having openly gay characters on television was a Big Deal, which means the episode described would actually have been remarkably progressive for its time. Put it ten years later and suddenly it's yet another episode in which the token gay character gets killed off early.

On a side note, bisexuality on TV is always really tricky. There's this horrible trap that both writers and audiences seem to fall into off assuming that bisexuals "don't count". It always used to mildly annoy me that Buffy made such a big thing about Willow being Definitely Gay and Not Bisexual At All. There's this nasty perception out there that being bisexual is somehow cheating - which I rather expect is exascerbated by the fact that, as you observe, it very often *is* used as a way to retcon out previously gay characters.

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Arthur B

at 13:30 on 2009-12-02It's insanely depressing how many people just

don't get

bisexuality. I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a character on TV identified as bisexual who wasn't either a) genuinely confused, and settled on a "permanent" orientation once they met their Twue Wuv, or b) slutty slut slut sluts. Usually they are both.

I can't believe people are

still

buying into the idea that "monogamous bisexual" is a contradiction in terms.

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Wardog

at 13:38 on 2009-12-02

Basically, I think the video is extremely well put together, hits all the right buttons to get you worked up about certain issues. But in doing so it leaves out all evidence that doesn't agree, and that bugs the hell out of me.

Well, it's very self-consciously a piece rhetoric - that is rather the nature of rhetoric, isn't it? To concentrate on the evidence that supports your central point.

Also I don't want to derail Viorica's very excellent article into a discussion of the portrayal of women in Supernatural BUT I think the issue is one of generalities not specifics in that the two central characters of Supernatural are men, so you're *always* going to have a very strong portrayal in the foregound to counter-balance all the slutty, helpess, evil men who show up as secondary characters. Equally you always have a very positive depiction of male-male bonding, again, to act as a counterweight to any unfortunate or destructive male relationships, like Dean's short-term friendship with the crazy rogue demon hunter guy.

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Jamie Johnston

at 15:51 on 2009-12-02'Jamie speculates wildly about reasons why things might be the case', part one:

It's like there's some sort of mass delusion that being gay/bi will immediately result in violent, unpleasant death. Is Jan Moir secretly running a media empire or something?

One can think of no end of possible reasons for this: conscious or unconscious desire to feature gay characters but not for so long that they have to be treated like, you know, real characters; the fact that a lot of media people are probably of such an age that the first time male homosexuality really obtruded on their picture of the world was when it was very strongly associated with AIDS; the conscious or unconscious belief that gay people are normally or necessarily deeply troubled (a belief no doubt

reinforced by the fact that a few of them are

- thanks to Sonia for reminding me of that comic). But it occurs to me that another contributing factor to the high death-rate among gay characters may be the persistently low visibility of middle-aged and older gay people in society. In other words, not only do writers have in their minds an association between homosexuality and early death (partly based on out-dated reality - AIDS in the '80s - and partly based on distortion by the news media - Jan Moir and such), but they also lack a counter-balancing store of real-life examples associating homosexuality with long life.

Of course it's all a bit of a vicious, er, whatever geometric form is more complicated and less symmetrical than a circle, because the low visibility of older gay people is largely caused by media distortion and by the habits they themselves have picked up from growing up and growing old in times (even) less tolerant than today. But it does underline why Ian McKellen is right to nag his contemporaries and fellow public figures to come out.

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Jamie Johnston

at 15:54 on 2009-12-02'Jamie speculates wildly about reasons why things might be the case', part two:

I can't believe people are still buying into the idea that "monogamous bisexual" is a contradiction in terms.

Now this one I think may be partly structural. The only ways for a work of fiction to dramatize the bisexuality of a character are (1) to put him or her through a series of monogamous relationships with people of both sexes; (2) to put him or her through a number of simultaneous or overlapping relationships with people of both sexes; (3) to have him or her demonstrate the desire or temptation to have sex with other specific people of both sexes; (4) to have him or her express attraction to other specific people of both sexes; (5) to have him or her (or another character or omniscient narrator) state his or her attraction to both sexes in general.

Perhaps you already see where I'm going with this. Options 5 and 4 are weak and smell of tokenism (it used to be, for example, one of my major difficulties with the generally charming

Questionable content

that although there was a respectable number of bisexual and gay characters they never actually did anything beyond mentioning their off-stage partners and hook-ups and occasionally claiming in a rather hypothetical way to be attracted to other characters of the same sex; I'm glad to say the last few months have remedied this to a great extent). Also option 4, if the character is already in a monogamous relationship, risks making him or her look like he or she has a roving eye and is therefore within sight, if not within spitting distance, of 'slutty slut slut' territory. Option 3, if the character is already in a monogamous relationship, can, unless handled very well, end up with the character looking confused about his or her sexuality and / or fickle and tending toward the slutty. Option 2 has to be handled very very very well to avoid landing in confused / slutty territory. And the trouble with option 1 is that, to make it clear that we aren't dealing with a case of confusion or conversion, you really need to give the character a series of at least three monogamous relationships with partners of alternating sex, and that means either making the relationships very short (which again risks ambling down the road to slutty) or dealing with an unusually long time-span for the average work of fiction (excluding soap operas that run forever).

None of which is to say that it can't be done or that it shouldn't be tried or that writers couldn't be doing a lot more than they are. But it's worth noting the pitfalls.

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Melissa G.

at 16:23 on 2009-12-02

It always used to mildly annoy me that Buffy made such a big thing about Willow being Definitely Gay and Not Bisexual At All.

Again, not to shift off the topic, but yes! Fifty times yes. This annoyed me so much. Here was an opportunity for a truly bisexual character (rather than retconning a previously gay/straight character), and they totally ignored it. I felt like poor Oz got so gyped. It was obvious that Willow was in love with and (key word) sexually attracted to Oz. She was the aggressor for the most part in their sexual relationship. Every time Willow had a line equivalent to "Eww, I don't like penises, remember?!" I always got majorly pissed off.

/rant

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Arthur B

at 16:30 on 2009-12-02

Also option 4, if the character is already in a monogamous relationship, risks making him or her look like he or she has a roving eye and is therefore within sight, if not within spitting distance, of 'slutty slut slut' territory.

This surely depends whether you're defining "expressing attraction" as the person in question saying to themselves "hey, this person of a gender not of my partner's is making me doubt my commitment to my current relationship", or whether it's just them casually saying something along the lines of "I'd hit that" without any serious intent behind it to go out and, you know, hit that. There are plenty of relationships in which both partners are just fine with their other halves idly expressing attraction to others in a purely hypothetical way.

And what about option 6, depict them in a committed relationship during the course of the story but make references to a previous romantic history which, while in the past, is not denounced or regarded by the character as an aberration?

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Viorica

at 16:50 on 2009-12-02

It always used to mildly annoy me that Buffy made such a big thing about Willow being Definitely Gay and Not Bisexual At All.

At one point, Amber Benson commented that she was glad that Willow didn't "flip-flop" about her attraction to men versus women. I don't even know what to say to that.

Most shows featuring bisexual characters seem to take either option two or three, if they don't just retconn the character's sexuality altogether (Buffy, The L Word) The problem is, the audience will automatically assume that when a character is dating someone of one sex, they are only attracted to that sex- i.e. they've "settled down-" when when that's never stated in the show itself.

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Arthur B

at 17:02 on 2009-12-02

The problem is, the audience will automatically assume that when a character is dating someone of one sex, they are only attracted to that sex- i.e. they've "settled down-" when when that's never stated in the show itself.

Yes, but there's only a certain extent to which you can blame the audience for the depictions an author chooses to put forward. Surely, in fact, in this case there's a certain responsibility for writers to challenge the audience's assumptions?

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Viorica

at 17:04 on 2009-12-02

but I hadn't even heard of Phase II - heh, not that I'll be watching it now!

In fairness, I should say that the first part of the episode is really well done- part of my irritation stems from thinking "Yay, a well-done gay couple! I'm so happy!" and then getting smacked in the face with SURPRISE DEAD GAY! But I'd say that Part 1 is worth a look, if you ignore part two. (Both parts are on YouTube

here

and

here

if anyone wants to take a look.)

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Sister Magpie

at 17:35 on 2009-12-02This conversation is making me think about bisexual characters on TV...and wonder you think of Angela on Bones? She's been shown in relationships with men, but also had a past significant girlfriend with whom she almost got together with again. She seems to me like an actual bisexual.

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Arthur B

at 18:20 on 2009-12-02A point that seems to have gone amiss:

I mean, I have to wonder how well-characterized the original script was if he could just adjust things to have it fit TOS, but the dialogue is well-written, and the characters well-realized.

I'm sure the original version was much different - Picard would have tried to negotiate with the bloodworms rather than shoving them into the Sun...

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Melissa G.

at 18:44 on 2009-12-02

This conversation is making me think about bisexual characters on TV...and wonder you think of Angela on Bones?

For me personally (though this may be just because I was not hugely into Bones), Angela kind of read like a straight women who had a sexy, wild side that included sometimes making out with girls. Granted, I never saw her when she was with this woman (maybe I missed that ep), but from what I remember, she primarily dates men. Having one girlfriend does not really say much for her being bisexual (to me, anyway). Others may disagree.

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Viorica

at 18:49 on 2009-12-02Part of the problem with bisexuals on TV is that it's hard to explain the Kinsey scale to audiences. Some bisexual people tilt more to one gender than the other, but not many people realize that. It sounds (though I haven't watched Bones) that Angela would fall about a two on the scale- romantically inclined more towards men, but still attracted to women. Of course, I could be missing in-show context.

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Melissa G.

at 19:05 on 2009-12-02I agree. I just feel with such a stigma attached to bisexuality, a show has to work harder to make it come off as actual bisexuality.

I guess as far as Angela goes, I just never really saw her be interested in women as fully as she was in men. Which, yeah, bisexuals can lean to one side or the other. But it didn't come off that way to me when I watched it. Even my mom thought it was reconning when she got engaged to (blanking on his name) Dirt Guy. For example, when the two guys were fighting over the delivery girl, and it turned out that she was actually into Angela, she didn't actually ask her out or anything as far as I remember. It was like, "oh, haha, she likes me not you". Angela seemed more surprised and flattered than actively interested.

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Viorica

at 19:22 on 2009-12-02But why

would

she be interested? Are straight/gay people interested in everyone who hits on them?

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Arthur B

at 19:54 on 2009-12-02

Part of the problem with bisexuals on TV is that it's hard to explain the Kinsey scale to audiences.

Especially when the labels we use tend to make people think of discrete little boxes, like sexuality works along the same lines as D&D alignment.

Although now I think of that, I do get a sort of juvenile amusement from the idea of Paladins being obliged to be Lawful Gay.

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Wardog

at 20:43 on 2009-12-02

Part of the problem with bisexuals on TV is that it's hard to explain the Kinsey scale to audiences.

To say nothing of the fact that this it's an incredibly reductionist and unhelpful way of looking at bisexuality. Obviously I can't speak for every other bisexual in the world but I think most of us experience regular fluctations in our attraction to members of either sex, dependent on who knows what. How on earth do you put that on TV? I can barely explain it anybody who isn't an actual bisexual. Main character is feeling moderately more straight today than she was yesterday!

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Sister Magpie

at 20:55 on 2009-12-02Yes, that's the way it seems to be with Angela. 13 on House seemed to be shown having lots of anonymous sex with women, but then wound up in a relationship with a man.

Angela is basically a wild child who was mostly shown dating men--though I don't think she dated so many men, exactly. I thought of her because it seemed like when her ex-girlfriend was introduced she was introduced as an ex-girlfriend, meaning a serious relationship, rather than an experiment, for instance. She does seem to mostly be into guys, but I got the impression that this character was introduced as an important past relationship not particularly different because it was with a woman. She was more important than her first husband, for instance.

I still consider her as mostly leaning towards the het side, but it didn't really feel like a retcon when we were told she'd had a girlfriend.

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Viorica

at 21:00 on 2009-12-02

How on earth do you put that on TV?

Not easily, which is a shame, because it would probably be a great help to teenagers who are freaking out over "what the hell is going on with me?" without any real examples that say "yes, this is normal." I know it would have been a huge help when I was fifteen.

. . . what was the original article about, again?

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Melissa G.

at 22:17 on 2009-12-02

But why would she be interested? Are straight/gay people interested in everyone who hits on them?

Fair point. And it's annoying when shows/media act like anyone who is gay is attracted to anyone else who is gay because, yeah, they're not. So I understand that Angela might not be attracted to every girl she sees.

But I was just trying to pull an example out of the many examples. From the beginning, they indicated that she was interested in woman, but I don't remember her EVER really hitting on a woman in the seasons I watched. She commented that a girl was hot or cute or something once, but more as a recollection of what this woman looked like.

I didn't see her with her ex-gf - I couldn't put up with the show enough to watch that far. But when I think about her relationships, I remember Hodgens, her first husband/fling thing, and the guy she was involved with in New Mexico who died.

I guess it just felt to me like a bit of cop-out. It seemed like they wanted to have a hot, artsy bisexual woman without having to actually deal with it past her talking about having a past relationship with a woman or saying a woman is hot/pretty/sexy. This ex-girlfriend (I’ve just looked up) doesn’t show up until season 4 though she was referenced in season 3. It just seems like the writers were more inclined to write her in relationships with men despite having made it clear that she was bi. Why did they wait so long to actively show this part of her sexuality? Maybe other people read her character differently, but that's how I saw her.

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 04:10 on 2009-12-03Having personal interest in the portrayal of the LGBT community, there are a couple points I would like to add.

I think bisexuality is, in some ways, more frightening than homosexuality to straight culture. An informed understanding of bisexuality denies the black-and-white, gay-and-straight mentality that can be easy for straight people to fall into. Being attracted to both sexes opens up the myriad possibilities of human sexuality in a way that neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality do. Because of that, it can be more threatening than homosexuality to the traditional straight mindset.

Because of this cultural context, like it or not, people need to be very careful portraying bisexuals in the media. I'm even going to make the claim that bisexuals in media should not be considered the same way as bisexuals in real life. In real life, bisexuals can be anywhere on the Kinsey scale. For example, I have a female friend who has never had a girlfriend and recently married a man, but considers herself bisexual because she is attracted to women as well as men. In real life, this is fine.

In media portrayals of bisexuals, however, this is not acceptable. In the media, a bisexual who only has experiences with the opposite sex might as well be straight. Similarly, a bisexual who only has experiences with the same sex might as well be gay.

The thing to remember is that media characters are not real people. Real people need no justification for their identities; characters do. If a character does not behave in accordance with their supposed identity, either the character's behavior or identity should change. Bisexual characters, therefore, should be portrayed as being attracted to both men and women, preferably in roughly equal proportions. That is not to say that bisexual characters need to be attracted to every person they encounter, or that they can't have long-term relationships. But bisexual characters should be just about as likely to have relationships with women as with men, and when they are flirting or looking for dates, they should look to both sexes.

Media people (directors, producers, authors, etc.) need to stop presenting characters that have mostly/entirely heterosexual experiences as bisexual. Bisexuality means being attracted to both sexes, and that needs to be better portrayed in the media.

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Wardog

at 11:41 on 2009-12-03I think, as Baihehua says, we have to recognitise a distinction between real people and fictional people. I mean, in 'real life' we can self-define as anything we can damn please, and it underscores no issues of representation or portrayal.

Ultimately, it's all very well to stand here going "the media doesn't portray bisexuality" very well, which is self-evidently true and nets you immediate Minority Warrior points ... it doesn't actually *mean* anything. I mean, I think most people find the sexuality of other people somewhat alien, regardless of the genders involved.

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Arthur B

at 14:30 on 2009-12-03I think at the end of the day you have to make a distinction between fictional tropes which are simplifications of something broadly but not universally true, and tropes which perpetuate ideas which are actually harmful to people, and accept that you're going to get a lot of the former because writers

have

to simplify; you can't expect authors or scriptwriters to concoct perfect simulacra of real life - and also, human beings appear to

need

to come up with this sort of simplification in their heads to actually process real life in the first place, let alone fiction.

Which is probably why it probably isn't helpful to bring up the Kinsey scale in this context. Putting aside the fact that is itself an oversimplification based on dubious 1950s logic, the fact is that you just don't get people marching for Equal Rights For Four Point Twos.

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Viorica

at 03:02 on 2009-12-04

most people find the sexuality of other people somewhat alien

I don't really care about what other people think. I want to be represented because I'm sick of not having any characters to relate to. Which is why statements like this-

If a character does not behave in accordance with their supposed identity, either the character's behavior or identity should change. Bisexual characters, therefore, should be portrayed as being attracted to both men and women, preferably in roughly equal proportions.

Are

really fucking offensive

. If I read your statement right, you're implying that a bisexual character is not behaving like a bisexual unless they date both genders in equal measures, which as I've already mentioned is fallacious. Either that, or you're saying that bisexual characters should act in a way that doesn't challenge the paradigms of monosexual audiences. Either way, what the hell?

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Wardog

at 10:01 on 2009-12-04

I don't really care about what other people think. I want to be represented because I'm sick of not having any characters to relate to.

I agree with you that bisexuals are under-represented, I just merely meant to point out that it's very easy to lock yourself in "woe is me, I am so misunderstood and special" thinking, when sexuality, in itself, is a hellishly complex business. Quite frankly there's a part of me that cannot compute when someone is attracted to someone I am not, regardless of gender, and as far people who are only attracted to one sex ... yikes, how do they function within such limitations? =P

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Dan H

at 10:47 on 2009-12-04

If I read your statement right, you're implying that a bisexual character is not behaving like a bisexual unless they date both genders in equal measures, which as I've already mentioned is fallacious.

Not to put words into anybody's mouth, but I think what Baihehua was saying was that while in real life it's perfectly possible for somebody to be bisexual but still wind up having exclusively heterosexual (or homosexual) relationships, in fiction such a character would wind up looking extremely tokenistic.

To pick an example I think we're all comfortable with, in real life it's entirely possible to have an elderly gay man who had one tragic affair in his youth and hasn't been in a relationship since. It's entirely possible that you could spend seven years at school and never realise that your beloved headmaster was actually a homosexual. In a work of fiction, however, a "gay" character who never has a homosexual relationship is a major problem because it contributes to the idea that gay people are okay, so long as they don't actually act on their sexuality.

With bisexuality it gets a whole lot more complicated, because you've got a veritable minefield of stereotypes to dance around. It's particularly a problem with bisexual women, because it's extremely easy for their bisexuality to come across as something they put on for the benefit of men (a misconception not helped by the huge number of media outlets in which women are encouraged to do exactly that - Katy Perry has never kissed a girl in her life and probably wouldn't like it if she did).

I don't think numbers games are what matters here, so much as attraction to men and women being shown as equally *valid*. This ties back to Mellissa's comments about Angela in the first couple of series of Bones. The problem isn't that she doesn't routinely chase girls, the problem is that when she's attracted to men it's presented as something natural, sensible and meaningful, while when she's attracted to girls it's presented as something delightfully naughty and risque. Of course the fact that I didn't like Bones might be prejudicing me here.

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Melissa G.

at 13:41 on 2009-12-04

in real life it's entirely possible to have an elderly gay man who had one tragic affair in his youth and hasn't been in a relationship since.

You mean

Tim Gunn?

:-) Sorry, couldn't resist.

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Sister Magpie

at 15:54 on 2009-12-04

I don't think numbers games are what matters here, so much as attraction to men and women being shown as equally *valid*. This ties back to Mellissa's comments about Angela in the first couple of series of Bones. The problem isn't that she doesn't routinely chase girls, the problem is that when she's attracted to men it's presented as something natural, sensible and meaningful, while when she's attracted to girls it's presented as something delightfully naughty and risque. Of course the fact that I didn't like Bones might be prejudicing me here.

Since I brought up Angela, I just wanted to say I agree with this--particular since she seems to be a character who has a lot of sex and they also continue to bring in male character with whom she has a relationship or an attraction but not characters who are women.

It was just that this one relationship that they introduced for her as something from her past that was briefly revived, it seemed like it actually was addressing the idea that it wasn't naughty or risque, but was an actual long-term relationship. I don't remember it well enough to defend how well it was done or not, but it did seem like it was introduced as an important relationship, someone she'd lived with iirc, that was presented as less naughty and more thoughtful than some of her male relationships for instance.

Another problem I'd say is that there tend to just be more male characters, period, and of the female ones the writers probably want to put them with male characters. For instance, I haven't watched House in a while, but I remember being told 13 was bisexual, and seeing her have a lot of anonymous sex with women when she was self-destructively dealing with being diagnosed with Huntington's. But then she got into a relationship with a male character on the show. So it's probably all too easy to read her relationships with women as having different value.

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Viorica

at 20:23 on 2009-12-04

Not to put words into anybody's mouth, but I think what Baihehua was saying was that while in real life it's perfectly possible for somebody to be bisexual but still wind up having exclusively heterosexual (or homosexual) relationships, in fiction such a character would wind up looking extremely tokenistic.

Not denying that there's a minefield of potential stereotypes that well-meaning writers can fall into (especially since that's part of why "Blood and Fire" fails) but as long as it's well-established, it dosn't have to be tokenistic. Alice on "The L Word" establishes very specfically that she's more romantically inclined towards women, but enjoys sex with both genders. It only took two lines to explain that. Now, The L Word gets a bit more leeway because it's populated entirely with lesbians, so Alice doesn't look as tokenistic as she would on a show populated largely with straight characters. But still she was a well-written bi character for a few seasons.

And (to get somewhat back on-topic) I don't have any problems with the idea of Peter or Alex being bi, since it's mentioned that they only ever dated each other ("There's never been anyone else for either of us") so it's entirely plausible. Or- considering that the show takes place hundreds on years into the future- it could be that people no longer label sexuality, so dating both genders requires no explanation. What worries me is the very real possibility that "bi, lol" will be used as an excuse to duck out of ever showing a gay relationship with an HEA.

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 22:50 on 2009-12-04Sorry it's taken me so long to get back here. And thank you, Dan; that is basically what I was saying.

My point is that, no matter how much we may like and identify with fictional characters, they are not real people. Real people can identify and behave however they want and there's no problem. Fictional characters' identities, however, need to be justified. I think this is true for a lot of things, not just sexuality. For example, a character in the US who claims to be Democrat, yet always votes for Republican presidents and congressmen, exclusively watches Fox News, and who adores Newt Gingrich-- that's a problem. In real life, I don't think anyone can tell this person that he or she can't be Democrat (weird as that might seem). As a character's identity, however, there is no reason for this person to be Democrat. As evidenced by behavior, being Democrat is obviously not very important to the character. Therefore, there is no reason not to have this character be Republican (or at least moderate). Or, if the director or author wants to insist that the character is a Democrat, either revise the character's behavior or at least point out how incredibly hypocritical it is. The same goes for sexual orientation and a whole lot of other identity issues. If there is no basis from the character's behavior to make a claim about that character's identity, then the claim should not be made.

Now, I do grant that things are even more confusing with bisexuality because it is considered to be between hetero- and homosexuality. And I don't really care about exact numbers. Also, I grant that there is less of a problem if a bi character is generally more attracted to the same sex than if he/she is generally more attracted to the opposite sex. But if a bi character only exhibits attraction to one sex (note: that's "exhibits", not "claims"), I think the director or author should rethink his/her decision to make this character bi. Or revise the character's behavior.

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Viorica

at 00:13 on 2009-12-05. . . you lost me. A character's sexuality = their political affiliation? What?

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 00:35 on 2009-12-05No, a character's political affiliation does not equal his/her sexual orientation. Not at all.

But they are both elements of a character's (or a real-life person's) identity. Identity is made up of many facets, including race, sex, nationality, sexual orientation, political affiliation, religion, etc. I was simply using an analogous example to (hopefully) make my point more clearly.

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Sister Magpie

at 00:37 on 2009-12-05I think she was more making the point that a fictional character identified as something is slightly different than a real world person who is that something.

So for instance, in real life bisexuals can be any number of different ways, but when a character is identified as bisexual on TV we're going to judge how well s/he lives up to that idea, or what the fiction seems to be saying about bisexuals through how they show this character.

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Jamie Johnston

at 00:54 on 2009-12-05Crikey, this thread's a fair bit longer than when I last saw it! Jolly interesting, too, but I'm only going to reply to Arthur's comments on what I said:

This surely depends whether you're defining "expressing attraction" as the person in question saying to themselves "hey, this person of a gender not of my partner's is making me doubt my commitment to my current relationship", or whether it's just them casually saying something along the lines of "I'd hit that" without any serious intent behind it to go out and, you know, hit that. There are plenty of relationships in which both partners are just fine with their other halves idly expressing attraction to others in a purely hypothetical way.

I was hoping someone would pick me up on that because it's something I sort of wanted to cover in the original comment but left out to avoid wandering too far from the point. You're of course absolutely right, and I think the trouble here comes from a separate bias that's prevalent in fiction but isn't specifically to do with sexual orientation, though it has this disproportionate effect we've encountered here: it's very rare in fiction to get (and I quote because I can't say it better myself) 'relationships in which both partners are just fine with their other halves idly expressing attraction to others in a purely hypothetical way'. I suppose in origin this has something to do with the general assumption that every fairly unimportant that happens in a work of fiction should point towards something more important going on beneath or likely to go on in the future or possibly having gone on in the past: thus writers perhaps fear that

an idle expression of attraction in act one necessitates some sort of infidelity in act two

. Which is wrong because it assumes a far too straightforward connexion between finding someone attractive and actually having sex with that person, but one can sort of see why the idea might arise. So that's another thing for writers to work on, separately from (but related to) writing convincing bisexual characters.

And what about option 6, depict them in a committed relationship during the course of the story but make references to a previous romantic history which, while in the past, is not denounced or regarded by the character as an aberration?

That's a very good option that I hadn't thought of at all, which is probably why I shouldn't write stuff. :) Of course it's still a little bit at the less powerful end of the show / tell spectrum, but still it would be a dashed good start.

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Viorica

at 02:15 on 2009-12-05

but when a character is identified as bisexual on TV we're going to judge how well s/he lives up to that idea

And unless we adjust portrayals of bisexuality to reflect the real-life variations, that idea is going to remain flawed. Which is why saying "bisexuals characters must date both genders in equal measures" is only allowing the misconceptions to be reinforced.

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Melissa G.

at 03:11 on 2009-12-05I think the issue boils down more to validity than numbers, as Dan mentioned.

I don't think numbers games are what matters here, so much as attraction to men and women being shown as equally *valid*.

It's not that the bisexual characters can't slide to one side or the other of the Kinsey scale (to use a phrase we're all familiar with), but when bisexual characters are shown on televisions, there's a tendency to portray how they interact sexually with each gender in a different way. And this also leads in to the issue of how we interpret the behavior of characters on TV differently than we would in real life.

Just to give an example, in real life, it would be perfectly fine for a bisexual woman to follow a trend of having flings with women and serious relationships with men. But if this was a character on a TV show, people would infer from this behavior that the writers feel that relationships between men and women are more valid than relationships between two women. I think this is where it gets tricky.

And (please correct me if I'm wrong) I think that's why Baihehua suggested they show them being attracted to both sexes in equal proportions. Not because she feels that we need to cater to the mainstream monosexual audience, but because if there is a somewhat 50/50 ratio, we have more relationships with each sex to judge and would be better able to see how this character treats her relationships with both men and women entirely in the same light. It would be more obvious that this person falls for/is attracted to people regardless of gender (in the sense of not being limited to attraction by gender). Which I think would really help to battle certain stereotypes surrounding the bisexual community.

If I'm completely misunderstanding something, please let me know.

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 04:41 on 2009-12-05Viorica,

I'm not trying to discredit what you're saying, and I think that adjusting portrayals of bisexuality to reflect real-life variations is a wonderful ideal.

However, I don't think it's manageable in a media setting. The media relies on simplifications all the time. If the media is not able to say "bisexual", "Jewish", "Democrat", etc. and have its audience understand what it means by these labels, then the media will never have the time to tell its stories--it will be too busy defining what these terms mean for each individual character. So, while these simplifications can be harmful in real life, they are often helpful in the media, if simply so the media can perform its function (to tell stories/to entertain).

From what I know of bisexuality, the basic concept is being sexually attracted to members of both sexes. Since the media is unable to present the entire spectrum of human sexuality (because it varies with every single person), it is this basic concept that should be consistently portrayed.

I understand it can be frustrating how the media interprets or presents your identity, but I don't think we can expect it to fully encompass all variations of humanity.

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 05:05 on 2009-12-05Oh, and Melissa, you're not wrong. That is essentially why I was advocating for equal representation of relationships with men and with women (though you did extrapolate my original statements slightly). Thanks for the comment!

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Andrew Currall

at 16:21 on 2009-12-06I don't think I agree at all that it is unreasonable for a work of fiction to establish that a character is bisexual and never actually "confirm" that (i.e. by showing the character in a relationship with, or at least attracted to, individuals of both sexes). Would anyone, for example, object to it being established (through dialogue) that a character, say, disliked potatoes, and this never being referred to or made important again? The only real difference between this and, say, bisexuality, as character traits, is that bisexuality is somehow considered "important", whereas a dislike of potatoes wouldn't be. But I think a situation in which sexuality is considered an unimportant and largely incidental trait is precisely the situation one should aim for.

I would concede that if a work stated that a character was bisexual but never showed them in any relationships with their own sex, one could reasonably say that it couldn't really claim brownie points for featuring non-heterosexual characters, but provided the revealing of their sexuality is natural (i.e. not clearly there for the sole purpose of creating a bisexual character), I'd have no problem with it.

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Wardog

at 09:37 on 2009-12-07

But I think a situation in which sexuality is considered an unimportant and largely incidental trait is precisely the situation one should aim for.

Well, I suppose this leads to a larger, even messier can of worms regarding whether you consider sexuality as connected to who you are or what you do... I think the problem with portraying minority groups (Minority Warrior!) is that as soon as you start arguing that it *shouldn't* matter if someone is gay, or a woman, or black, and that ideally it's equivalent to disliking potatoes, then you're merely giving excuses for it to be badly handled or ignored.

I had a tangential thought about this whole business actually - and I wonder if the difficulty might not lie so much with the depiction of bisexuality but with the depiction of relationships. The problem is that characters, like people, may have more than one relationship over the course of a text, especially if it's a long running series. And unless you're specifically going for "this is an unhealthy relationship", then it's very difficult to give both (or however many relationships they have) equal validity.

And truthfully I don't think we do that in real life either - we look back over our past relationships and go "oh, it wasn't love, it didn't count" (at least we do once we get over them) and our current relationship and think "yes, this is it, this is the real thing."

In fiction it's even worse - in order to make a romantic relationship convicing you have to pretty jettison everything that went before it. Which means that if you do have a bisexuality character, I reckon you can't win. Because if you set them up with a person of the same sex and then with a person of the opposite sex, the implicit (although *unintended* message) will be "lol, they were really straight all along" (because this is their twu wuv) and if you do it the other way round you'll be stuck with "lol, they were really gay all along (because this is their twu wuv).

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Andrew Currall

at 18:20 on 2009-12-07

as you start arguing that it *shouldn't* matter if someone is gay, or a woman, or black, and that ideally it's equivalent to disliking potatoes, then you're merely giving excuses for it to be badly handled or ignored.

Mmm, yes, I can see that. It's all rather difficult.

I think perhaps part of the problem is that it's difficult to judge whether a work of fiction is representing any group in an unreasonable way (or simply underrepresenting it), because a work of fiction will have relatively few characters and situations in it and one could easily argue each as in themselves reasonable. Women are vastly under-represented in fiction as a whole (i.e. the majority of characters, perhaps around 70%, are male), but it's difficult to accuse most specific works of under-representing women (Tolkein is an exception, being an extreme example), because it'll have only 5-10 major characters and you could put it down to random chance or come up with a plausible reason why the majority of characters in this particular work are male.

And this is far worse with sexuality, both because it isn't a 50/50 split in the first place (so one wouldn't want to argue that half of all characters should be homo- or bi-sexual), and because a character's sexuality isn't necessarily evident (whereas their sex generally is).

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Viorica

at 19:55 on 2009-12-07The problem with "it shouldn't matter" arguments is that it skates dangerously close to "I don't see you as black/gay/female" which is basically a way for people who aren't minorities to avoid thinking about their own prejudices.

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 02:15 on 2009-12-08

In fiction it's even worse - in order to make a romantic relationship convicing you have to pretty jettison everything that went before it. Which means that if you do have a bisexuality character, I reckon you can't win. Because if you set them up with a person of the same sex and then with a person of the opposite sex, the implicit (although *unintended* message) will be "lol, they were really straight all along" (because this is their twu wuv) and if you do it the other way round you'll be stuck with "lol, they were really gay all along (because this is their twu wuv).

I automatically agreed with this statement, but I wonder if this is just because its what we're used to seeing. For example, in Friends, (apologies to anyone who doesn't watch this, I'm sure a better example will come to mind) Monica has a longstanding relationship with Richard, then they break up because she wants kids and he doesn't. Later on, she gets together with, and eventually marries, Chandler. There is never any "oh, he wasn't that great" about Richard, its just accepted that there was too big of a problem to work around, and Monica does occasionally have to reassure Chandler that she loves him and is over Richard, etc.

I think if either of the men was made a female character, you could quite conceivably play it that way and have the same kind of break up and moving on without invalidating the previous relationship. I really think the biggest problem with trying to portray bisexuality in fiction is usually that people will go "Wait, so she's straight now?" instead of "oh my god they are such a cute couple/so annoying/etc," as you normally do to a new couple on a soap or sitcom.

That and, of course, things like the *wonderful* reaction of the Sex and the City girls when one of Carrie's boyfriends tells her he has had a boyfriend or two in the past. She freaks out and can't understand why he doesn't "just make up his mind". It was a horrible response to a character who is, very maturely, saying "look, this is my sexual history, I've been tested x months ago, I want you to know so you don't have to worry." That was so frigging offensive it shocked me. (Though why I don't know. It's not as if they put any real thought into how they depict women or gay men.)

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Jamie Johnston

at 01:07 on 2009-12-09

Well, I suppose this leads to a larger, even messier can of worms...

Mmm, worms.

Just out of interest, and possibly for the sake of looking at it from a new angle, can anyone think of any bisexual characters / relationships in fiction that have been well handled?

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 20:31 on 2009-12-09Unless a relationship involves at least three people, I don't see how the relationship *itself* can be bisexual. ;-)

Characters... I think everyone has a different definition of "well handled". Among characters I think are reasonably well handled, I can name a couple that, while they are not explicitly stated to be bisexual, can easily be seen as bisexual or gender-blind.

*Rachel, from Imagine Me & You. She never names her sexuality and even explicitly refuses to label herself. She has had a long-term sexual and romantic relationship with a man before meeting the woman she falls for. Also, the reason given for her leaving her husband is not because she is not attracted to him, but because she "went crazy. [She] went crazy for someone and it wasn't [her husband]".

*Sita and Radha, from Fire (by Deepa Mehta). Again, these women do not label themselves. They are attracted to each other and begin a physical, as well as emotional, relationship, but there is nothing to indicate that either woman would be adverse to a relationship with a man. While they have not found what they need in their heterosexual marriages, this is portrayed as due to the unique circumstances they have with their husbands, not as a dislike of men in general.

I'm sure there are other examples out there, but I can't think of any right now.

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Rami

at 22:54 on 2009-12-09

Sita and Radha, from Fire (by Deepa Mehta)

That's an interesting pair of character names, especially if they're in a relationship. I'm going to have to read that book...

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 02:40 on 2009-12-10It's a movie, actually (1996). I included the director because it's not a movie most people are familiar with. It's set in India (so those are Indian names), but they speak in English. Deepa Mehta has said in interviews that she chose to film in English because it is such a common language in India that she felt it would be more true to life to film in English than to film in Hindi or another language.

You should definitely look into it, though. I think it's a great movie. If you're interested, Deepa Mehta also has two later films out, "Earth" and "Water", that address different social problems in India. They're all excellent.

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 13:19 on 2009-12-10

can anyone think of any bisexual characters / relationships in fiction that have been well handled?

I haven't watched

Torchwood

, but from what I've heard, Captain Jack Harkness is a rather well-done bisexual character.

(Very interesting discussion, by the way!)

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Melissa G.

at 14:22 on 2009-12-10

I haven't watched Torchwood, but from what I've heard, Captain Jack Harkness is a rather well-done bisexual character.

I have watched Torchwood, and Captain Jack was one of the first people who came to my head when I thought about bisexual characters. I really do read him as someone who just hits on anything that moves. I suppose people could argue about whether this is a positive or negative portrayal of a bisexual. But he definitely doesn't discriminate based on gender, and that's pretty clear.

In fact, I'm pretty sure the creator of the new Doctor Who and Torchwood is of the impression that by the time we get to Jack's time period (51st century), everyone will be "omnisexual" (his term, not mine) meaning that we won't discriminate on gender, race, or even species. And that idea is evident in both Jack and John, an ex-beau of Jack's who comes in the second season of Torchwood.

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Jamie Johnston

at 14:47 on 2009-12-10I wondered about Captain Jack too, but I've only seen him a few times in

Doctor Who

and never watched

Torchwood

(which hasn't been on the iPlayer since I discovered, to my surprise, that

Doctor Who

was rather fun). From what I've seen he came across pretty well. The Doctor's reactions give the impression that Jack's extreme flirtiness is just a thing about him as an individual rather than something related to his sexuality, and it's so light-hearted and superficial that it doesn't seem to imply any tendency toward being unfaithful if he were actually in a relationship.

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Melissa G.

at 18:37 on 2009-12-10

The Doctor's reactions give the impression that Jack's extreme flirtiness is just a thing about him as an individual rather than something related to his sexuality,

Yes, that's how I viewed it too. It wasn't Jack is a bisexual SO he's flirty. It was just that Jack, as a person, is flirty.

it doesn't seem to imply any tendency toward being unfaithful if he were actually in a relationship.

It got a bit trickier in Torchwood b/c it was a more adult show. But while he was in a relationship with Ianto, he never cheated on him despite having sexually charged moments with other characters. But you were left wondering how serious he was about Ianto, but I chalked it up to Jack being a bit of a commit-a-phobe rather than anything to do with his sexuality.

Torchwood is interesting because every character on the show has had a bisexual moment. Owen had a "devil's threesome", Tosh despite being straight had a relationship with an alien chick for an episode, Gwen had a french kiss with a girl (albeit a super pheromone induced thing out of Gwen's control), and Ianto had a girlfriend before shacking up with Jack.

Oh...uh, spoilers? Sorry.

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Viorica

at 18:57 on 2009-12-10I'm iffy on Jack as a bisexual character. On the one hand, he obviously doesn't discriminate in regards to gender. On the other, he hits on everything that moves, and even when he was in a relationship, he wasn't exactly emotionally faithful.

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Melissa G.

at 22:11 on 2009-12-10

I'm iffy on Jack as a bisexual character.

Personally, I'm with you on that. That's why I wasn't going to bring him up, but I wanted to respond to miss-morland.

I guess it comes down to if you can separate Jack from his sexuality to the point where you know that his flaws as far as relationships go are not due to his sexuality, but due to him as a person. But obviously not everyone is going to be able to make that distinction, which leaves you with a rather, as you said, emotionally unfaithful bisexual character, which is not a great example.

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Rami

at 22:13 on 2009-12-10

It's a movie, actually (1996). I included the director because it's not a movie most people are familiar with. It's set in India

Thanks for pointing it out -- I'll have to watch it (especially after reading about

the controversy

)! What actually interested me about the names Sita and Radha is the

mythological

, er,

connection

. Is Mehta preaching narcisissm ;-)?

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 19:15 on 2009-12-11

Ianto had a girlfriend before shacking up with Jack.

Well, now you've made me curious as to the portrayal of

Ianto's

bisexuality... (I really should watch that show!)

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Viorica

at 19:50 on 2009-12-11It's mentioned (shortly before they kill him off . . .) that Jack's the only guy he's ever been attracted to/dated. So it's less a matter of bisexuality as it is one of an ostensibly straight guy falling for a man once (and then dying.)

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Viorica

at 06:17 on 2009-12-12Also,

Biphobia: It's What's For Dinner

is a good breakdown of being bisexual erasure and the impact it has.

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Robinson L

at 22:30 on 2009-12-15You know, I glanced through a collection of David Gerrold's works at my local library several months back, and one of items published was the original

Next Generation

script for “Blood and Fire.” I didn't read it, which I'm kind of regretting now, because I think it would be interesting to compare the original script to the

Phase II

episode.

Not that it would in any way detract from the epic fail. Gah.

Oh, and thanks for the "Biphobia" link, Viorica.

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Viorica

at 03:53 on 2009-12-16If it's still possible to get ahold of it, could you? I'm curious as well.

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Robinson L

at 20:00 on 2009-12-18Sure thing, Viorica! The book in question is

Involuntary Human

. I warn you, however, that it may take me a while both to read the script, and watch the episode (my sound system still being KIA), so don't worry if I don't report back right away, I'm still working on it.

Interestingly enough, while I was browsing for “Involuntary Human” I discovered that David Gerrold published a book entitled

Blood and Fire

in either 2003 or 2004 (sources are conflicted on this point). According to the website linked above, it's the concluding volume of his “Star Wolf” trilogy, which I've never heard of before. I wonder how it may or may not fit in.

Kyra: Quite frankly there's a part of me that cannot compute when someone is attracted to someone I am not, regardless of gender, and as far people who are only attracted to one sex ... yikes, how do they function within such limitations? =P

Ha-ha, that reminds me of a story my philosophy professor once told me. Once, when questioned on his sexual orientation, James Dean reputedly quipped: “Let's just say I don't believe in going through life with one hand tied behind my back.”

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Robinson L

at 15:00 on 2010-04-24As usual, it's taken me a hell of a lot longer than I expected to churn this sucker out, but here it is

my epic comparison of the Phase II episode versus Gerrold's original script

. Share and enjoy.

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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/

at 18:22 on 2013-11-16

can anyone think of any bisexual characters / relationships in fiction that have been well handled?

Just necroing this thread after arriving here via Robinson's B5 comment to mention Bo from [i]Lost Girl[/i], who is definitely helped by the fact that the show is almost structured to support it.

Basically, for those of you who haven't watched (and you should because this is an awesome show) there are four main characters: Bo, a bisexual succubus, Dyson, a burly wolf-man cop, Lauren, a hot blonde doctor and Kenzi, the perky goth girl. There's also Trick, Bo's grandfather, but for obvious reasons he plays no role in the romance plotlines.

Bo sleeps with both Dyson and Lauren at different points in the first three seasons (while I wouldn't describe it as a YA show, there is a YA sensibility to its treatment of romance and none of the three participants in the love triangle stray outside of it for very long), depending on the various upheavals and betrayals of the plot, her emotional commitment to each of them is equally valid and equally strong even when their commitment to her is somewhat more doubtful. She also at least attempts to be monogamous with each of them during their periods together, even when maintaining her fidelity to Lauren causes her to almost die of internal bleeding. Meanwhile Bo's relationship with Kenzi is kept strictly platonic, despite being the most emotionally committed and faithful of all the show's inter-personal relationships, specifically to avoid the 'everything that moves' stereotype.

I'd be amazed if someone here didn't watch it considering it has a very strong female fanbase (I went to meet some of the stars at London Comic-con last month and I was astonished to see fourth fifths of the audience were women) but no one ever brings it up during discussions of shows with feminist-friendly sensibilities.

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Robinson L

at 18:06 on 2013-11-18I watched the first two episodes of

Lost Girl

on Viorica's recommendation, but didn't watch any further because I found those two, well, mediocre and kind of dull. Certainly not bad, and I appreciate all the feminist/queer-friendly stuff, it just didn't suck me in on a narrative level.

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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/

at 18:23 on 2013-11-18I've never actually watched the first episode, so I can't comment there, but I agree that it takes a few episodes to work up a head of steam. The first season steadily improves peaking at either episode six or eight, and subsequent seasons improve on the first in their own way (in particular the Nadia arc in season 2 is a very necessary corrective to Lauren's rather silly 'I sold my freedom for the chance to study the Fae' motivation in season one).

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Cheriola

at 22:37 on 2013-11-20I was uncomfortable with "Lost Girl" because there was so little reflection about the fact that the main character's superpower was essentially date rape. She forces people who do not want to have sex with her for various reasons (at one point, it was a security guard who was trying to stop her, IIRC) to be irrestibly attracted to her through magic / special body chemistry, and then she sexually assaults them. I mean, you can make a story about that if you want, about how she has to do this to survive, but I would expect an non-villain character to be at least as conflicted about this as your standard woobie vampire. But no, as long as she doesn't kill her victims, it's apparently fair game.

I waited and waited for the show to do some character development in this regard, but then I rage-quit at the end of season 1, because when the main character's boyfriend was assaulted in the same way by her mother (also a succubus; and the boyfriend clearly didn't want to have sex with her), everyone on the show treated this as if he had been cheating. It was all about how horrible this was for the main character and how big it was of her to forgive him. At that point I realised that the writers of this show genuinely don't think it's rape as long as the rapist is a pretty woman.

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Cheriola

at 01:46 on 2013-11-21Also, I know this is necro-ing and probably pointless, but it's a pet-peeve, so please forgive me:

I'm iffy on Jack as a bisexual character. On the one hand, he obviously doesn't discriminate in regards to gender. On the other, he hits on everything that moves, and even when he was in a relationship, he wasn't exactly emotionally faithful.

Wow, slut- and poly-shaming much? First off, the only time Jack was in anything approaching a committed relationship onscreen was during Torchwood season 2 and 3. Do we know he and Ianto had even made any promises of exclusiveness? It's not unusual for an unmarried gay couple to have an open relationship, you know. And even John Barrowman's real-life husband seems perfectly okay with his verbal flirting and chaste kissing. (Apparently they draw the line at french kissing, which Barrowman won't even do for the camera. At least that's what he told Matt Rippy (the 'real' Jack Harkness))

Now, I've given up on Torchwood after the first couple of episodes in the 2. season, so I don't know if Ianto was the jealous type once they got around to talking about their feelings and started having an actual relationship instead of casual office sex. But even if he was: You do realise that you're prioritising one partner's selfishness and possessiveness over the other partner's right to self-determination and you're judging Jack for emotions he can't help feeling, because he's not naturally monogamous and therefore being in love with one person doesn't automatically make him incapable of having romantic and/or sexual feelings for other people.

Yes, I said selfishness - jealousy means not wanting the person you supposedly love to be happy if it's with other people, and not wanting them to spend time and attention on other people, and acting like you have a right to make decisions over their body. It's a controlling impulse born of emotional insecurity (having so little self-worth that you can't trust your partner to enjoy someone else's company and still come back to you) and cultural entitlement. Patriarchal values meant for most of human civilisation that the man owned his wife's sexuality, reproductive capacity and time/attention (love was very much optional until about 200 years ago). And the wife was economically dependent on her husband, so she suffered when he left her or fathered a child with someone else. Though the wife having any moral right to expect her husband to be sexually exclusive is actually a fairly recent cultural development. And since our culture's romantic scripts are still overwhelmingly heteronormative, LGB people sometimes have the same entitlement issues even though it makes little rational sense for them. Plus, lots of people are very insecure and selfish like little kids when it comes to romance, because everything about the way our society teaches teenagers how romance works encourages this kind of behaviour. Just look at YA literature and the ubiquious love triangle. It's all about "You MUST decide between them" and no-one ever asks "Why? Why do I have to suffer losing one positive relationship in my life just because you two can't play nice together?" And almost every show and movie out there acts like jealousy is a cute 'proof of love' and a natural reaction for everyone, and that it's always justified and not at all immature or emotionally abusive, even if it leads the jealous partner to spy on their lover or try to sabotage their opposite gender friendships, good relationships with ex-spouses, or work partnerships. (I was really surprised when the main character of "Defiance" was perfectly willing to accept that his sort-of girlfriend was a sex worker and wasn't going to stop working just because she started a relationship with him. The show even briefly featured a poly married triad in one episode, as a socially accepted option in this fictional world. Though one of the main characters still got rather judgemental about it and the whole thing turned out to be a marriage of convenience situation between one evil woman and two young pretty 'trophy husbands' in need of a meal ticket and possibly more into each other than into her.)

Obviously, cheating by going behind the primary partner's back is extremely unethical, because it endagers your partner's health and life through possible disease transmission. It should be their decision whether or not they consider the outside partner too much of a health risk to continue the primary relationship. And partners who are economically linked (for example through children) have a right to say "I'm not cool with you sleeping with that other person if there's any possibility of another mouth to feed resulting from it."

But no-one, ever, has the right to forbid their partner to have feelings for or spend time with other people - and the attempt to repress these feelings doesn't work anyway, it just leads to resentment.

In this case, if Ianto is insecure enough to require Jack to be exclusive in the later seasons, Jack is clearly indulging him and refraining from having sexual relationships with other people, just like he presumably bowed to poly-phobic social norms when he agreed to say marriage vows sometime during the early 20th century. But you can't expect him to supress who he is - somebody who communicates through flirting due to having been raised in a different culture, and somebody who falls in love / lust easily or just enjoys the banter very much.

Besides, why would you want to burden Ianto with having to fulfil ALL of Jack's physical and emotional needs? In season 1, it certainly seemed like Jack had a much easier time emotionally opening up to and trusting women (Gwen and Tosh) - no wonder, given the masculinity requirements in our culture (i.e. men having trouble offering or responding to emotional intimacy because it's seen as 'girly'); and the fact that Ianto had kept his entire identity a secret and betrayed Jack twice, before they even started officially dating.

If you're naturally monogamous and lose all interest in other people once you fall in love - great! Go for your 'one and done' relationship (hopefully with another monogamous person)! But don't try to force your perspective on life on those who are naturally polyamorous. And do not presume to judge and shame them just because the dominant culture privileges your kind.

And by the way, Jack does not hit on "everything that moves". He seems pretty limited to young and pretty cis men and women and a few, mostly humanoid aliens. He did not appreciate Donna hitting on him, IIRC. In fact, on Torchwood, he's probably the character who sees the least actual action, and he's had remarkably few mentioned lovers for someone with such a long life. (Compared to, say, the "Highlander" immortals. Or the "New Amsterdam" guy and his 609 girlfriends/wives and 63 kids in 400 years.) And just because he happily flirts with a lot of people doesn't mean he actually wants to take them to bed, as well. The show even makes the point that for Jack, flirting is like small-talk.

Yes, I know bisexual people consider the 'promiscuous' bisexual character a negative stereotype. Honestly, that seems like slut-shaming to me. There's nothing inherently negative about promiscuity if it's done ethically, and Jack is the embodiment of the Ethical Slut trope. He never cheats, and his flirting, at least as far as I've seen, is usually refreshingly easy-going, non-harassing and doesn't ping as creepy. (As long as he's not being written by Moffat, though Barrowman did his best to save Jack from character assassination even then.)

Also, I can think of over a dozen bisexual characters of varying degrees of monogamousness on just my favourite 5 or 6 shows, even if most of them are just token bisexual and really lean more gay or hetero in the depicted relationships. But I can think of no positive (i.e. not evil) polyamourous characters in mainstream fiction besides Jack Harkness (and maybe the Doctor). So can you give the more marginalised group this one, please?

(... This got to be a rather longer rant than I initially expected. Sorry. I'm insomniac again.)

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Arthur B

at 09:18 on 2013-11-21I agree with a lot of your points, Cheriola, but I think it is a slight oversimplification to ascribe the idea that the "promiscuous bisexual" stereotype is negative exclusively to slut-shaming. I mean, the concept does relate to slut-shaming of bisexuals, that's definitely a factor, but I think it is also born in the bizarrely common misconception that bisexuals *can't* be monogamous - that because they can potentially sleep with both men and women, they can't ever be satisfied with just one.

Of course, there's room to discuss whether or not Torchwood makes room for monogamous bisexuals or whether it falls into the "bisexuality is a type of poly" trap, having not seen it I don't know whether it also features happily monogamous bisexual characters. But I don't think objecting to a well-established stereotype of promiscuity means that those who are objecting to that stereotype are themselves engaged in slut-shaming.

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Janne Kirjasniemi

at 15:15 on 2013-11-21Also, it might be worthwhile to point out, that while polyamorous people no doubt suffer from prejudice, saying that someone refusing to engage in a polyamorous relationship can surely be something else than jealousy or just selfishness, or maybe such jealousness is not purely a result of prejudice. If polyamorousness is a matter of how a person is, then monoamorousness is too and if such people seek a relationship together, the matter needs to be resolved by the people in question, without either of them having the option to just condemn the others feelings on the matter as selfishness(since a person's needs are selfish anyways, no matter their sexual preferences) and demand them to submit to the others wants. I mean, isn't that the whole problem with shaming, just from another point of view? People seek different things from relationships and if either party has to deny themselves something they want to appease the other then surely that is a problem in itself? Of course compromises need to be made and people will no doubt keep making them, but if polyamorous people have a right to their feelings, then surely so do those with different feelings on the matter. And while systematic abuses or restrictions to people need to be stopped(or removed), regular people will need to come to terms with each other and their various needs and wants.

It is strange though that polyamorousness as such is seen as a binary matter. Like most forms of human sexuality wouldn't it be more like a fluctuating scale? But in any case, perhaps the situation is not improved by just turning the tables but rather more acceptance of our own and other's feelings.

This whole thing about whether bi is poly and whatnot does illuminate the problem of trying to categorize human sexuality into neat categories, when actually the names we use are always just vague groupings of similar seeming behaviour. Which is not really surprising when most of the terms used in the discussion were originally popularized as medicalized terms for sexual deviancy and the neologisms always try their best to sound like the old terms, implicitly validating the existence of these clear distinctions even if the discussion itself seeks to be different. But that is a different matter altogether.

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Daniel F

at 02:17 on 2013-11-22Feel free to call me out here, but I can't help but understand it as inherently problematic to set about categorising people into those who are 'naturally polyamorous' and those who are 'naturally monogamous'. Not only am I pretty sure that people are more complicated than that, part of my understanding of what it is to be in a relationship is to have to make some effort.

That is, to me, there is a difference between affirming that it is natural and healthy to have any number of sexual instincts, and affirming that it is equally healthy to give expression to any or all of them. It seems intuitive, to me, that a person in a monogamous relationship, who consciously wishes to be monogamous, might occasionally feel a desire to sleep with a third party; but that this person also has some moral obligation to refuse that desire. I don't think it's shaming, necessarily, to say that sometimes people have sexual desires that they should not express.

I can't help but be suspicious of a line of argument that starts by distinguishing between 'them' and 'your kind'. Whatever tendencies exist are surely - as Janne points out - much vaguer than that?

I'd also dispute the idea of monogamy as selfish. The problem there seems like mismatched expectations, rather. Surely it is also - in a sense - selfish for a person to engage in multiple concurrent relationships despite knowing that this will cause their partner(s) pain. The distinction drawn seems to be about whether a person can have a right over someone else's body, but - to me, personally - I can't help but think that giving someone else a claim on your body is, um, part of

what it means

to be in a relationship. When it comes down to it, if one person feels that monogamy and some sort of mutual possession of each other's bodies is essential to a relationship, and if another person feels that it is morally wrong to ever make a claim on someone else's body... those two people probably should not be in a relationship.

And as far as bisexuality and stereotypes go, it seems to me that it is a legitimate complaint if bisexuality is universally associated with promiscuity. If I were bisexual, I can imagine being very irritated by it.

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Dan H

at 16:24 on 2013-11-24

I'd also dispute the idea of monogamy as selfish. The problem there seems like mismatched expectations, rather. Surely it is also - in a sense - selfish for a person to engage in multiple concurrent relationships despite knowing that this will cause their partner(s) pain.

I very much agree with this. The idea that expecting your partner to respect the parameters of your relationship is somehow "selfish" is one I find more than a little offensive.

My former (and in fact late) housemate spent some time in a polyamorous relationship that she did not want to be in, because her partner didn't want to stop having sex with other women. As far as I know this wasn't a particularly central part of his sexuality or sexual identity.

The whole situation caused her *immense* emotional distress (at a time in her life when she was also dealing with clinical depression and suicidal tendencies). Do you really want to tell me that *she* was the one who was behaving selfishly in that relationship?

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Arthur B

at 16:49 on 2013-11-24I would also point out that you can frame monogamy so that it's not so much about claiming rights over someone else's body so much as asserting rights over your own. "I'm only going to give you access to my soft bits in the context of a monogamous relationship" is a perfectly reasonable stance to take, and saying that people who genuinely feel that way are misguided and should reconsider their preferences in favour of something more acceptable to you opens a whole

world

of ugly doors. If you're saying it's OK to challenge people for being monogamous, it becomes more difficult to turn around and say that it isn't OK to challenge other aspects of people's preferences.

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Dan H

at 17:08 on 2013-11-24Sorry to double-reply, but I'm actually a little bit angry here. I'm also rather bothered by this:

Also, I can think of over a dozen bisexual characters of varying degrees of monogamousness on just my favourite 5 or 6 shows, even if most of them are just token bisexual and really lean more gay or hetero in the depicted relationships. But I can think of no positive (i.e. not evil) polyamourous characters in mainstream fiction besides Jack Harkness (and maybe the Doctor). So can you give the more marginalised group this one, please?

Firstly, I am not really sure that categorising groups as "more" or "less" marginalised is really appropriate. It seems perilously close to oppression olympics.

Secondly, even if it were appropriate to rank the marginalisation of different marginalised groups (and as I say, I am really not convinced it is) I really don't think "number of portrayals on TV shows" is a good way to do it. I'm pretty sure I can think of ten times as many positive portrayals of black people in mainstream TV shows as I can positive portrayals of people who play MMORPGs. Does this mean that MMO players are more marginalised than black people?

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Dan H

at 22:15 on 2013-11-24Sorry for the now triple post, but there were a couple more things I wanted to come back to.

If you're naturally monogamous and lose all interest in other people once you fall in love - great! Go for your 'one and done' relationship (hopefully with another monogamous person)! But don't try to force your perspective on life on those who are naturally polyamorous. And do not presume to judge and shame them just because the dominant culture privileges your kind.

I'm ... really confused by this one. I know a fair few people who are in monogamous relationships, I know a fair few people who are in open or polyamorous relationships (and a fair few on both sides who get really annoyed when one gets confused with the other) and I don't know anybody who stops being attracted to other people just because they're in a relationship no matter how in love or otherwise they are. I'm honestly not sure where you could have got the impression that they did because I don't even think it's a notion that is particularly reinforced by popular culture.

Your whole post seems to suggest that you believe that "monogamous people" are literally rendered incapable of having romantic or sexual feelings for other people once they fall in love with somebody (you state this fairly explicitly). Either I and everybody else I know in a monogamous relationship is actually "naturally polyamorous" or ... well ... that is't true.

You can, of course, argue that the cultural institution of monogamy is grounded in some outdated, offensive, patriarchal assumptions, but polyamory (or for that matter polygamy) is hardly a bastion of sexual equality. Hell, polyamorous relationships which involve a single man and a large number of women are so common that the community has a slang term for it (I believe the call it "one penis poly").

I think what upset me most about your post was the fact that I'm very used to a lot of these arguments being used by asshole men to emotionally blackmail their girlfriends into relationships which they are not comfortable being in - "it's not my fault, I'm naturally polyamorous", "if you really loved me, you'd want me to be happy." And that makes me a little bit nauseous.

Yes, I know bisexual people consider the 'promiscuous' bisexual character a negative stereotype. Honestly, that seems like slut-shaming to me.

I can only speak for myself here, but I really don't think it's the place of somebody who isn't bisexual to tell a bisexual person what they can and can not consider to be a negative stereotype of their own sexuality. I might also add that under most circumstances saying "I know that members of this marginalised group consider this portrayal to be a negative stereotype, but I think they're wrong" when you are not yourself a member of that group would be seen as derailing.

Having said that, I do see the point you are making, but I think you're failing to distinguish between two important but distinct definitions of "negative stereotype."

Some stereotypes are negative in that the stereotypical quality is itself inherently negative (criminality being a good example - and possibly the *only* good example, since to call most other qualities inherently negative would be ablist or classist).

Most stereotypes, however, are negative in that the sense that the existence of the stereotype leads to people treating the stereotyped group in a way that members of that group find damaging.

There are several clear, concrete ways in which the "promiscuous bisexual" stereotype is actively harmful to bisexual people. Just off the top of my head, the assumption that bisexual people are necessarily promiscuous means that if you are openly bisexual:

- People will take your romantic relationships less seriously, no matter how sincerely you are committed to them.

- People will more likely to make inappropriate sexual advances towards you.

- People will, in various ways, fetishize your sexuality, and expect you to like it. Particularly if you're a woman.

- People will assume you are up for threesomes, always.

- People will expect you to want to be in an open or polyamorous relationship, even if you don't...

- ... and they quite possibly won't believe you when you say you don't ...

- ... and if you're a woman, and you're dating a guy, when he says "open relationship" he will quite likely mean "I can have sex with other women, and so can you" ...

- ... which will often mean "I can have sex with other women, and will in practice get really upset if you do the same."

- People will assume that you are sexually attracted to them, and be offended and possibly aggressive if you aren't.

At this point it might be worth remembering that the original comment here was about a fictional character. Nobody was saying that Jack's behaviour would be morally wrong in real life. They were saying that his behaviour reinforced harmful stereotypes about bisexual people which, *as a bisexual person* they were fully entitled to do.

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Melanie

at 23:41 on 2013-11-24

Most stereotypes, however, are negative in that the sense that the existence of the stereotype leads to people treating the stereotyped group in a way that members of that group find damaging.

Yes, precisely. This is true even of allegedly "positive"[1] stereotypes, so I don't see that it's automatically denigrating the thing the stereotype is

about

to object to it.

Plus, even if you haven't been harmed in any concrete way by a stereotype, it's still highly obnoxious when people believe stupid lies about you.

[1]"Allegedly" because--let's face it--even when the assumed trait is supposedly a good/cool thing, there's probably some deeply nasty accompanying baggage--unspoken implications or associations behind it.

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Arthur B

at 13:27 on 2013-11-25Sorry for continuing to pile on, but I needed to get this out there:

Your whole post seems to suggest that you believe that "monogamous people" are literally rendered incapable of having romantic or sexual feelings for other people once they fall in love with somebody (you state this fairly explicitly). Either I and everybody else I know in a monogamous relationship is actually "naturally polyamorous" or ... well ... that is't true.

Adding a data point that this is my experience as well, and to note that "finds someone attractive" doesn't amount to "specifically wants to have sex and/or a relationship with them".

I have spent most of my life single and haven't followed up on the vast majority of attractions I have felt (even if you only count people who are real and who I have interacted with socially in real life). That doesn't mean I get to claim to be going through an asexual phase when I happen to be single and not looking, it just means that criteria like "This person is in a monogamous relationship and I'm not enough of a cad to mess with that" or "I'd rather not spend time with someone whose personality I find repellent, regardless of how sexually attractive I find them" or "I want a relationship of equals and there just aren't many people up here on the God Tier" tend to outweigh the attraction most of the time.

Likewise, it's entirely possible when you are in a relationship for both parties to experience attraction to other people but elect for going monogamous anyway for mutually agreed reasons which have nothing to do with jealousy, sexual health or money - for instance, given that maintaining a relationship with one person already requires a degree of work and compromise, I find myself reluctant to agree to the extra work, compromise, and complication which would result from bringing additional people into the mix on a practical level.

Also, I think there are compelling reasons why cheating behind your partner's back is wrong that have nothing to do with sexual health. If you and your partner(s) freely and without compulsion agreed that the relationship was going to be monogamous (or, indeed, polyamorous or open but with particular rules or requirements to keep partners informed about stuff), and you go ahead and break that agreement, then regardless of whether or not there's a sexual health dimension involved you've straight-up lied to and broken a promise to a partner, which is an ethical breach I find it hard to sympathise with.

(Obviously you're going to have situations where people feel compelled to agree to stuff they wouldn't have otherwise agreed to - hey presto, Dan provided a example of precisely such a thing upthread - but the solution to a dysfunctional relationship isn't to make the relationship even more dysfunctional, it's to end either the dysfunction or the relationship.)

Lastly, I think you can actually legitimately say you have a claim on a partner's time or attention if the two of you have actually mutually agreed to be there for each other. One of the most hurtful incidents I've lived through in a relationship was when I was dealing with the death of a friend and my partner at the time (they are, needless to say, long gone) simply

was not there

on an emotional level to give me the support I desperately needed. Respecting a partner's right to have their own friendships and interests is important and I wouldn't do a single thing differently if I had my time over in that respect, but equally if they exercise that right in such a way that it ends up hurting you then that's on them. If asking your partner to give the same priority to your emotional well-being as you give to theirs is selfish, then I'm comfortable being selfish.