#god joss whedon i hate you so much

[mortalandstupid]

we didn’t ever get enough angel and connor being father and son…BUT angel had to have shown connor barry manilow at some point because he knew the lyrics to mandy without seeing them when he was singing the jasmine version

[lovebvffys]

Cordelia Chase + Pink Pony Club - Chappell Roan

[raisedbythetv89]

I just started watching White Collar for the first time and a realization about most male written and directed media smacked me DIRECTLY in the face which is that SO MUCH media written by a for men is genuinely just male nerd self insert, non-canon compliant, AU fan fiction??????

Like them writing and creating stories is just “ok so these guys are soooo smooth and well dressed and women just flock to them at every turn and they can get away with anything and everyone believes and supports them when they do mess up and everyone thinks they’re sooooo brilliant”

This media isn’t just portraying women “for the male gaze” it’s EVERYTHING. Everything in these stories is supporting and uplifting mens’ delusions about who they are, how they’re perceived, and how they should expect to be treated. Which is incredibly ironic because anytime media portrays women or the world in the female gaze in a more “in my ideal world things would be like this” instead of portraying us as nothing but weak, broken, unloved, traumatized, victims OR one dimensional sex symbols with no needs or emotions they’re screaming, crying, throwing up about how stupid and unrealistic the story is….

This explains SO MUCH about how male characters are handled in shows like Veronica Mars and Buffy. Even though they’re shows staring women all the “good guys” get the delusional self insert, y/n, AU fan fic treatment (Buffy still wants Angel in season 3 and Riley in season 6 even after everything they did and Xander is CONSTANTLY forgiven for all the atrocious shit he says and does and is wanted by all women besides Buffy. Veronica forgiving Duncan and getting back together with him and even CONSIDERING Piz could truly only be born from men being delusional AS FUCK. Writing how they want men to be treated by women rather than being based in reality and the woman having even an ounce of self respect.)

Which is why the “bad boys”, Logan and Spike are such better characters. They’re so much more realistic, they get held accountable by the women in their lives, have better growth and are just way more appealing and attractive because they’re not the walking embodiment of what MEN want men to be treated and act like.

Oh god this feels like such cursed knowledge to have like it’s important to see this media for what it really is but now watching it feels that much yuckier like finding the porn of someone you DO NOT LIKE but like their emotional porn “this is what life would be like in my fantasies” and they’re the fantasies of the grossest men alive 😭😭😭😭😭

Also it shows their emotional maturity like all of these things are what 13 year old boys fantasize about not actual mature, grown men….

Also just realized this is why the Star Wars sequels were so hated. It wasn’t just Rey being powerful and loved by her found family and Kylo. It was that the movies showed the reality of men like Kylo. They destroyed the male fantasy Darth Vader created. They aren’t super cool, powerful badasses. They’re extremely sad, broken, temper tantrum throwing lost little boys who just want love and acceptance but have lost the ability to accept it because of the dark side (aka the patriarchy) which is the reality and that made me SOOOOO ANGRY lololololololol and this is why Joss Whedon THOUGHT making Spike into a sad pathetic mama’s boy of a poet would make the audience not like him because that DOES work on misogynistic men who enjoy the male gaze but does NOT work and only humanizes and makes Spike even more complex and lovable to the female gaze 💀💀💀💀 oh good lord

[lelliefant]

If you want to know why the Loki fandom has drifted away, just look at what Disney/Marvel did to him.

He was incredibly powerful—they made him weak and helpless.

He was smarter than everyone else—they made him a fool.

He was a prince—they made him a corporate office drone. They literally put him in a cubicle.

Loki was an alien—they made him an ordinary guy.

He was flamboyant and colorful—they put him in beige. They actually made him act as if he was excited to wear a beige uniform.

The real Loki would never have tolerated a uniform of any sort, much less something so bland. He was never a soldier or a cog in the wheel. Loki is the piston.

Loki was a deeply wounded, angst-driven son with complex motivations—Disney made him an uncaring narcissist who suddenly sees the error of his ways (in one episode) and has a total personality swipe.

Loki was iconoclastic—they made him ordinary.

They took the most interesting and volatile character in the MCU and warped him into an Everyman role, and somehow everyone bought it. Apparently because they used the same actor with the same face—?

Really think about it. If another actor had started playing Loki for the series, they couldn’t have pulled it off. Series Loki is not the same character as Loki from Thor 1, Avengers 1, and Thor 2. He’s as different as the moviemakers in charge of the productions are. (The directors of Avengers 1 and Thor 2, Joss Whedon and Alan Taylor, simply had the grace and humility to take their cue from the original vision of Kenneth Branagh.)

If you don’t actually pay attention to Loki’s character, motivations, logical action, or his history, and you’re only interested in being entertained, I guess it doesn’t matter. This is just a superhero movie character, so who cares if they turned him inside out to conform with a simpler, less challenging archetype?

He’s their property, after all. They can use him however they want to. If they want to chew him up and spit him out as a naive, lovelorn mensch because that’s the Disney protagonist formula, they can and will. If they want to put him into a buddy-cop procedural, as if he were an ordinary human person whose shtick is a magic kit, they can.

A lot of you who are constantly defending the Loki Series are not really thinking about it. Maybe you’re just happy he has a show to his name. Maybe you don’t care; you just want more “content.” Maybe you don’t want someone spoiling your fun.

Maybe you think you’re being the loyal crowd by “defending” Loki. You’re not seeing that Disney did worse than kill him off—they unmade him. They put the God of Mischief into a blender with the Disney formula, audience response data, standard storytelling tropes, a limited range of plot lines, and a great deal of money, and out came this golem with Loki’s face on it.

You might revile me for saying all this because that’s easier than facing the truth or questioning the Powers That Be. There will always be people who can’t tolerate having their beliefs challenged.

I have seen nastiness on this hellsite toward people who question and protest what the majority accepts—but that’s just a reflection of the real world. It’s never going to work out well for those of us who see things differently and who don’t shut up about it. So, why do we keep annoying everyone with our dissenting opinions?

In my case it’s because I actually do care about Loki. I care enough to tell the unpopular truth, as I see it. Because, to me, Loki isn’t just an MCU character. He is representation.

He was a survivor of abuse and scapegoating by his own family. He was an outsider who defied convention and took on great challenges, despite everyone in his world trying to push him down. He shirked the role he was forced to play and chose to define himself instead. He saw the hate and scorn directed at him from all sides and laughed.

He struck out on his own into the unknown—which is incredibly hard to do, even if you had been given the support to believe in yourself.

The Loki Series did get one thing right: Loki is a survivor. He’s survived misinterpretations before, and he will survive Disneyfication. Maybe the public will tolerate a warped mischaracterization of him for a while before they lose interest, but the God of Mischief prevails. Thor1 Loki will always be there, smirking triumphantly from the shadows.

[yellowocaballero]

hi! i've been reading some of your older fics and was wondering if there's any merit in watching buffy for the first time in the year 2024

This may not be obvious, but this is actually an extremely complicated and highly subjective question. I'll try to go on for too long.

As background: my mother loved Buffy and its spin-off Angel growing up. It was our Bible (besides the actual Bible). Not kidding, she was on the forums and fan groups and wrote fanfiction for it and everything (These days, she's really into kdramas and Asian dramas, and calls me about how the Thai seem like big fans of gay people). So I'm quite biased.

BTVS is both a product of its times and ahead of its times. It was a show about feminism and the struggle of living in this world as a woman, when very few shows were doing that. It was the first show to have a long-lasting lesbian couple, and the first show to depict a kiss between them. For better or for worse, it was one of the codifiers of broody vampire boyfriend. It was pretty unafraid to be experimental in a lot of what it did. It had incredibly complex and nuanced character work and growth that I still aspire to. Spike's arc is still matched in quality only by Avatar's Zuko. Angel's long term arc, from Buffy to his spin-off series, still makes him one of the most complex characters on TV. It had the most complex depiction of depression on TV at the time and I still think it's one of the best. I think the show had very high highs.

It also had very low lows. Some of the feminism is problematic in retrospect. The sapphic couple has a rather famous element that was severely problematic. There are, overall, some deeply atrocious arcs that I can appreciate objectively but not in practice. Xander: a whole-ass character aged awfully. On a meta level, the workplace conditions were bad (thanks, Whedon.) There are no people of color. The spoiler's sake I won't go into detail on this, but in general the good stuff was so influential and the bad stuff was just awful.

I think these days people tend to brush off the entire thing because it's Whedon. That is more than fair. But I'd also say that Whedon & Buffy is extremely similar to Brian Michael Bendis & Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis was fantastic at writing sassy, bouncy, permanently stressed-out teens - issue was, he wrote entirely different serious adult characters the way he wrote these sassy teens. Same with Whedon: the annoyingly constant quips are perfect for Buffy, because that's who the characters are. They're awful in Marvel, because Steve Rogers is not Xander. Kinda similarly, Buffy was genuinely feminist for 90s TV - issue is, Whedon has not grown or developed his views, and now his works feel so sexist (oh my fucking god why did you treat Natasha like that). After a certain point it's egotistical: you're writing like that because you're Joss Whedon and it's how you write, not because it's what's best for the characters and story. But it was really important to me to get the character voices right, and it's freaking difficult to endlessly write dialogue that distinct, full of voice, witty, and clever.

I think BTVS & Angel TV's greatest influence on my writing is how intensely character-driven both of those shows were, and how intricate the characters were. What every character did was something they would do, if that made sense. Even the stuff I hated to watch, that made me uncomfortable, was the culmination of so much (usually). I think I also picked up the constant wit and humor lol. On a personal level, the conversations I would have with my mother where she broke down the character motivations and composition of the story was my first exposure to looking at storytelling from an analytical perspective and a framework of critical analysis, which was an approach I carried into the rest of the media I consumed and that was the primary reason I was able to become a decent writer. Thanks, Mom. Have fun with your kdramas.

TL:DR: There is merit, especially if you care about good character work. There are things about it that may make you want to drop it, which is extremely valid. Season 1 is rough but interesting, Season 2 and 5 are the best, Season 3 is pretty good, Season 4 and 7 skippable, and Season 6 is........epic highs, epic lows......

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

Now that submissions are closed, we can talk stats. There were 881 valid, unique submissions for 474 characters! Woof, women have it rough out there!

The most submitted characters, with a relevant propaganda snippet included, are:

1. Sakura Haruno (Naruto): 28 [where do i even fucking begin]

2. Cordelia Chase (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel): 21 [OH SO MANY THINGS]

3. Misa Amane (Death Note): 20 [The author of Death Note invented new forms of misogyny just to apply them to Misa.]

4. Kaede Akamatsu (Danganronpa V3): 15 [Oh, you thought we would have a female main character in one of our mainline games? With a cool defining talent, no less? That's stupid of you]

5. TIE: Kairi (Kingdom Hearts): 14 [I'm so mad. I think she deserves a gun.]

5. TIE: Stephanie Brown (DC Comics): 14 [She does eventually get retconned as surviving the event and hiding out in Africa (don't ask, it does not make more sense in context)]

The canons with the most submissions, with a relevant propaganda snippet included, are:

1. DC Comics: 61 [DC has SO MUCH sexism it's laughable]

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: 35 [Fuck Joss Whedon, man.]

3. Naruto: 33 [because Kishimoto hates women]

4. Warrior Cats: 26 [Warriors is one of the most misogynistic children's series I've ever seen]

5. Danganronpa: 25 [I honestly had to think about it just to decide which woman is treated the worst because this series hates them so much]

The canons with the most characters submitted, with a relevant propaganda snippet for a specific character included, are:

1. DC Comics: 21 [Free her from the huge tits back breaking pose.]

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: 12 [Anyways she was so hot and for what. 10/10 my lesbian awakening.]

3. Supernatural: 11 [Yeah, she got randomly killed off-screen for shock value and manpain, but she sent an email right before she died so at least her death wasn't in vain, right?]

4. TIE: Star Trek: 9 [She literally gets teleported out of her clothes in one episode.]

4. TIE: Yu-Gi-Oh!: 9 [One loss is particularly brutal as she falls from a large height directly onto her head and goes into a coma (again. yes this was the second time).]

5. TIE: Warrior Cats: 8 [I'm sure she'll get submitted again just ask any reasonable fan they'll tell you about her and her sister]

5. TIE: Attack on Titan: 8 [As a child soldier, she does commit some war crimes]

And here are some charts to show how some of these entries fucked the scale on my charts:

Look at Sakura, fucking up my chart with her numbers.

On a similar note...

Good god, DC, I know what you did, but add fucking up my charts to your list of crimes.

And now, enjoy some rankings of my favorite things:

My favorite universal sentiment quotes from propaganda are:

She lived she served cunt and then she got killed off super early so that the male characters could experience man pain and also because I guess she would have been too powerful if left alive. [Wen Qing (Mo Dao Zu Shi)]

That design. Dear god. I don't want to live on this planet anymore. [Mitzi (The Queen's Corgi)]

In the end she may have girlbossed too close to the sun, but I support her anger. [Ling Wen (Heaven Official's Blessing)]

the victim of “writer doesn’t understand women and also hates them” disease. [Naomi Misora (Death Note)]

She could 100% kill somebody but nobody ever effing lets her. Rip queen. [Kairi (Kingdom Hearts)]

My favorite raging at a writer quotes from propaganda are:

1. You took every single protagonist to weird lion heaven, Clive, but suddenly Susan isn't good enough. [Susan Pevensie (The Chronicles of Narnia)]

2. Being a woman written by Joss Whedon should automatically entitle her to financial compensation tbh. [River Tam (Firefly)]

3. A lot can be summed up in a couple words, namely, "Furman, why?" [Arcee (Transformers)]

4. Can you tell respect women juice ran in Tolstoy's veins. [Lise Bolkonskaya (War and Peace)]

5. TIE: (specifically a guy called Dan Didio, who we all hate) [Stephanie Brown (DC Comics)]

5. TIE: until Geoff motherfucking Johns comes into the picture [Pantha (DC Comics)]

My favorite quotes from propaganda that have nothing to do with misogyny, y'all are just funny:

I wish I could use bold here, because there's no such thing as uppercase numbers. [Arcee (Transformers)]

the most convoluted and lore dense piece of media this side of the afton criticality. [Jane Crocker (Homestuck)]

ended up starting a gang war by accident [Stephanie Brown (DC Comics)]

Ashfur, who later turns out to be a murderous incel [Squirrelflight (Warrior Cats)]

Hawkfrost is actively seeing Brambleclaw and his evil father in cat hell. [Squirrelflight (Warrior Cats)]

[moistvonlipwig]

you know what i keep circling back to with the xander=whed@n thing? most of the time that idea is brought up, it's just used to shut down conversation about xander or shame the idea of liking his character. just a catchall used to dismiss him as evil outright bc his awful creator sometimes identified with him. i truly genuinely don't care that most of fandom hates him now, but i AM sick of the pervasive idea that liking him is indicative of your own values. he's hardly the only annoying problematic white boy around, and tbh i don't see what's so much worse about him than a pile of other ones. esp in a landscape of morally complex characters like the buffyverse. of all genres, shouldn't this be one where you stop judging ppl for the characters they love bc half these characters have committed horrifying crimes? can't you just say wow i personally find that character super annoying but you do you?

literally like. i've talked about this a little bit before but it is so fucking annoying the way people use joss's grossness to brand certain characters or relationships or storylines as Tainted By Joss and thus shut down positive or constructive conversations about them. even when joss had nothing to do with them or not as much to do with them as everyone seems to think. xander is not joss. he is not joss's self-insert. he is a character in a show that joss created & showran for five seasons just like every other character in buffy. it's FINE to think he's annoying, he often is, it's fine to hate him even, but can we all just go back to saying "Hey I don't like Xander because I find him unfunny and annoying" as opposed to "Xander is literally Joss and Joss is the only writer who ever wrote him and everything Xander does is something Joss wanted to do [nevermind that Xander never got with Buffy and Joss wanted to kill Xander in S7 and Joss hired Steven S. DeKnight off a spec script of why giving Xander Slayer powers would end terribly]." please. i beg. and also can we stop pretending xander is morally the worst person on the show. willow, giles, angel, spike, faith, and anya are all way worse people than he is. i'm not saying you have to like characters in order of how moral they are, that's obviously nonsense, you can like characters based on how much they entertain or interest you, god knows i do!!! but don't pretend to like characters based on moral worth if that's not actually how you judge them. and as you said, let's especially stop pretending someone liking xander is an indication of their own moral worth or their opinion on joss whedon. he's literally a fake little guy and everyone is free to love or hate him as they so choose

[glittering-snowfall]

At the time even the film's creators seemed nervous about what they had created. Like, when Diablo Cody in defending the film's same-sex kiss talked about her intense female friendships, how she "wanted to sleep at my friend's house every night, I wanted to wear her clothes, we would talk on the phone until our ears ached." Yeah Diablo, I had that with some of my guy friends as a teenager too, it was called being gay. The article that quote is from still finds the time to chide Cody for not doing good feminist representation, though, and I guess that makes me somewhat sympathetic to Cody here. Did she know that culture was in fact going to be too dumb to get the way Jennifer is both a predator and victim, the way her love for Needy is at turns beautiful and toxic, the way expressions of queer desire get warped into complicated, problematic forms by a diseased culture?

The film is full of uncomfortable joke/horror ambiguities, which were at least grasped by some critics (the film did have a number of favorable reviews, though they couldn't compete with the horrible marketing). As far as I can tell, the developing blogosphere, on the other hand, understood none of this from the moment they got their grubby cheeto dust covered fingers on the script before the film's release. Diablo Cody had amassed a considerable loud hatedom at that point, of both the aforementioned cheeto boys and their female counterparts,  going apoplectic over the "fantasy" that "Diablo Cody is a magical snowflake who can spray her unique pixie dust on an otherwise conventional script and give it indie cred". Perhaps the film's obsession with female relationships characterized by violence, jealousy, and crab bucket behavior cut too close to home for such critics?

Or maybe they just genuinely hate Diablo Cody's "twee dialogue". You hear about this? Yeah, Diablo Cody writes twee dialogue. This mantra seems completely unassailable now, basically accepted by even her defenders. What's so god damn twee about it though? To be sure, I remember mentally grouping Juno in with Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine. Jennifer's Body reveals just how much "twee" is a function of the film in its totality, though. I mean, I feel like this should be obvious but the exaggerated quippy dialogue comes across a little differently in the context of a film featuring sexual assault, people being burned to death, ritual murder, demonic possession, and teenagers being sadistically eaten alive.

In that context her dialogue comes across more like a nightmare funhouse mirror version of Joss Whedon's now eye-rollingly ubiquitous quips. Whedon and his bazillion interchangeable hack studio vat clones never aspired for much actual wit beyond the "umm well THAT just happened". Cody's dialogue on the other hand is baroque, in love with weird wordplay and uncouth associations. Needy refers to Jennifer affectionately as "Vagisil". Jennifer, in a line that caught me totally off guard midway through taking a big sip of water, jeers that Needy needs to "Move-on dot org". Yeah, no man, you're right. This isn't how "real" teenagers talk. Also, Jennifer's not "really" possessed by a demon, it's a thing we call "Movie Magic".

Though, actually, it's not totally unreal. This baroque, warping dialogue feels now like how teens trash talk under ideal conditions: on the internet. This movie's dialogue is posting. Like Homestuck, the point is not to capture a literal representation but instead a vibe of the kind of unrestrained, often vulgar and offensive dialogue of teens shit talking each other over America Online Instant Messanger or replies to their friends' Xanga posts. It makes perfect sense that both Jennifer and the various Homestuck teens would call each other retards, for example. There's a real sense in the film of characters pushing boundaries, testing the limits of their ability to perform adulthood. It's not just an act in the sense that it's a movie you plodding dullards, but in the sense that these characters are performing their idea of maturity.

There's nothing of that performance when Jennifer, in the back of a van going who knows where, sobering up and getting a grip on her real situation, asks the members of the band Low Shoulder, "Are you guys rapists?"

The climactic flashback, late in the film, when we witness the band's brutal murder of Jennifer, still has plenty of quips, of course. It's just that now Jennifer's ability to perform any kind of mature confidence has been brutally ripped away by a bunch of third rate emo douchebags. All the quipping, over top of her desperate pleading for her life, issues from the douchebags, who treat the whole scene as a joke. The affect of this scene feels complex to me. It's still Diablo Cody's script so there's some pretty good one liners. Megan Fox, though, is playing the scene for pure horror, so the humor adds to the horror for me. For these guys, rape and murder is just, like, kind of a fun night out. They can sing pop songs while ramming a bowie knife ("Bowie! Nice!") into a teenage girl's body because their biggest concern is whether or not they can get their shit band on Letterman. 

I think it's notable that for a solid number of people--particularly though by no means exclusively women--this scene is not damaged in its horror by this dissonance. At least not now. And why should it be? Horror has never just been about what's "scary" or worse about startling people with jump scares. Horror has always partaken of a complex mix of affects: fear and visceral startlement, yes, but also grief, shock, disgust, rage, contempt... attraction... humor. The best horror might fuck with the viewer's head, prompting arousal or humor simultaneous with disgust or fear. Why play these things off each other? Maybe to destabilize us. If we feel a moment during Jennifer's brutal murder where we're just a little bit charmed by these self admittedly cute boys, maybe that prompts a question like: what other monsters might be hiding behind charming façades?

The post-9/11 years and incipient Obama cultural revolution were unfortunately for Jennifer's Body a time for dumb affects. We pretended Rudy Giuliani hadn't spent several years turning NYC into a characterless, facile police state before bungling the 9/11 disaster response. Clear Channel, now the insipidly named "iHeartRadio," banned numerous songs for fear of causing even a shred of offense. The FCC got more censorious, waving its own dick around to far more culturally degenerate effect than any superbowl nip slips. Even researching this period is tedious: the articles I access are full of euphemistic phrases ("Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable") so tortured they could have been dreamed up by the Bush admin's army of Eichmanns. I did discover that the maximum penalty for saying "fuck" went under Bush from a draconian $32,500 to a wild-eyed spittle-mouthed $325,000. People who objected to the dogshit state of culture and politics were drummed out of society, as The Dixie Chicks were. Or, more commonly, folks sorta slipped out of the public eye after getting played off at awards ceremonies, quietly shelved.

The primary objection to all this unfortunately did not come from anything really resembling a left but libertarians, constitutional bill of rights fetishists, and South Park. Democrats, never willing to lose an opportunity to supplicate themselves in spineless nematoad subservience to reactionary forces, attacked the Bush FCC for not fining stations MORE for Janet Jackson's sexual harassment by Justin Timberlake. Cool!

I wanted to talk about how this extended into the Obama years but here's the weird and ominous thing: a lot of the statistics and research material on the FCC's censorship actions just sorta stop in 2006. A lot of the relevant links from the FCC's own website are dead now. I doubt that means things improved under Obama. I mean, why should the FCC have stopped fining people for saying "dickhole"? It's not like any of the natsec state's border wars ceased, or the detaining of people without trial in the torture pits of Guantanamo, or the deportation of migrants, or the wiretapping of civilians. The prosecution of whistleblowers actually increased drastically under Obama, as did the lobbing of drones at wedding parties.

We bore this because Obama offered an alternative to divisiveness and the stale politics of the Bush era. We didn't have to tear down and dismantle what the Neoconservatives and Bible-brandishing Evangelical cultists had built through rancor and strife, we simply had to present a different way. A way that would unite the country. A way of hope. THROUGH THE TREEEES I WILL FIIIIIND YOU I WILL HEEEEAL THE RUINS LEFT INSIIIIIDE YOU

Now Needy's increasingly frantic sense that something is very wrong and all the memorial rallies and posters in the world can't fix it resonate pretty strongly with me. And, of course, after watching Low Shoulder brutally murder a teenage girl the whole grief and recovery (with a hit song!) thing feels like a cathartic confirmation of what I felt a lot during this period: that all sorts of cynical fucks were exploiting tragedy to their own ends. It never seemed to be quite the right time to bring up how cloying and often disturbingly fascistic a lot of the Strong In The Face Of Tragedy pop culture was. It was either offensive to the victims of terrorism, or offensive to Our Troops, or, extremely conveniently, before the critique even had a chance to be levied it was suddenly old hat: the Village Voice sneeringly dismisses this film's "routine “risky” digs at 9/11 kitsch". It was hard to tell Republicans to go lick a d*ckh*le when President Obama was wearing flag lapels and having grotesquely performative "beer summits" to bring together a completely innocent black college professor with the racist pig that arrested him. You wanna talk kitsch? Obama was so fucking kitsch, homeskillet. Kitsch and twee to a degree no Diablo Cody dialogue could ever sink.

Here's something that's not kitsch or twee: Needy finding the sacrificial knife that stole her friend/love interest, and using it and inherited succubus powers to murder the shit out of every member of Low Shoulder. That's cathartic as hell. I said earlier that no one in this film really deserves what happens to them. Low Shoulder are the exception, and it's so satisfying to see that knife buried to the hilt in the lead singer's shitty torso.

from We Were Too Stupid for Jennifer's Body

[chaos0pikachu]

Did you see the ending of Last Twilight? What did you think of it?

Personally I tuned into LT for 1 episode and it just didn't catch me at all but I'm nosy, so I've been reading the posts that cross my dash. I won't say I know everything but from the reactions of the people who have watched it - it's clear it's not good.

Then I came across a post that was smt like: We don't trust Jojo. We can't trust Aof smt smt. And that got me thinking.

You've said you don't like GMMTV shows, iirc. That they are more a product being sold than a story being told. And that's what I remembered reading the above post.

I also realized the last GMMTV BL to hold my interest was The Eclipse and even that went messy towards the end. Somehow GMMTV continues to make bad shows and continues to keep getting praise for it(until people realize this is a shit show from the get go). Though I am glad that people are recognizing how well made the BLs from other companies are. I think part of it has to do with being palatable. Even at it's worst Only Friends was nowhere near horny enough, like many other BLs, and that was GMMTV's horniest show. Also they put their stuff out on YouTube which makes it accessible to everyone. That ease / lack of barrier to entry means a majority of the fandom, especially new fans would end up at GMMTV. Then there is the fact that these shows just keep getting recommended. If someone made a shows to watch list - some GMMTV show is on there with a warning 'badly done ending'.

That makes me think GMMTV has gotten cocky. They want to pump out as much as they can and suck as much money as they can from the fans. I get running a business but it's detrimental to the company in the long run when none of it's BLs in a whole year managed to stick the landing. Perhaps they just don't care. It reminds me of corruption. Think of it in a metaphorical way. It's a short term solution that creates some money but will create long term problems. (Well I don't think GMMTV will be affected that much. It's just an interesting thought.)

So what are your thoughts?

~ Fork Around

omg is hating gmmtv shows becoming ✨my brand✨ cause that would be so fucking funny

for home players I don't actually "hate" gmmtv or the studios shows I just think fandom, at large, overhypes them to fuck when in reality all the ones I've watched I've found them to be thoroughly mediocre in regards to both narrative and film making.

To answer your first question, no I didn't watch Last Twilight, not out of any moral~~~ reason or whatever the hell, just cause I didn't want to. It didn't look interesting or appealing to me so I didn't bother. I'm picky about what things I watch b/c I'm hella fucking lazy lol am I gonna spend 12+ hours watching a mid show from gmmtv or am I gonna spend that same amount of time watching like, Marry My Husband? The latter, I'm choosing the latter. Hell, I'd rather watch Wing Chun which has less budget than Last Twilight does b/c Michelle Yeoh even at her earliest can act circles - also bonus Donnie Yen as her love interest!! - around any actor at gmmtv.

God people are gonna now think I think all the gmmtv actors can't act, I don't think that, the ones I've seen range from bad, to fine, to good. Calm down I'm not after your faves, and I can only name like four dudes that are signed at gmmtv anyway.

Then I came across a post that was smt like: We don't trust Jojo. We can't trust Aof smt smt. And that got me thinking.

man the folks in fandom who keep deifying directors should like, stop. Y'all are just setting yourselves up for disappointment. It's giving Joss Whedon's fanbase for real. Like Spielberg directed Schindler's List and Ready Player One okay? No one director bats a thousand every round.

Somehow GMMTV continues to make bad shows and continues to keep getting praise for it(until people realize this is a shit show from the get go). [...] I think part of it has to do with being palatable. Even at it's worst Only Friends was nowhere near horny enough, like many other BLs, and that was GMMTV's horniest show. Also they put their stuff out on YouTube which makes it accessible to everyone. That ease / lack of barrier to entry means a majority of the fandom, especially new fans would end up at GMMTV. Then there is the fact that these shows just keep getting recommended. If someone made a shows to watch list - some GMMTV show is on there with a warning 'badly done ending'.

Okay so like, I've had a lot of thoughts about this in general since gmmtv shows do make up a mass majority of The BL Fandom in general.

The way I would break this down is into factors:

Parasocial relationships (between the audience and actors)

Palatable Brand (queerness packaged in a non-threatening and non-challenging way with simple, low stakes stories typically about acceptance, and romance aka squeecore romances)

Accessibility (being available on youtube for free)

Easily consumable (b/c the shows are low stakes and non-challenging they're really easy binge watches, and since gmmtv puts out like 50 of these things a year fans just move on to the next one really quickly. Have y'all noticed that there's like, a general lack of fan works in BL fandom? It's usually just weekly episode meta posts and weekly gifsets but not a ton of fan art and fanfic is made for these shows)

Consuming vs Engaging (a trend I see in general in regards to BL fandom is this seemingly need to watch like as many BL shows as possible even moving on as quickly as possible to the next show instead of sitting with the show and building a community around said show, the only exceptions I've really seen to this is kinnporsche and slightly love in the air & bad buddy)

I'm gonna break these things down further underneath the cut:

Parasocial Relationships

"Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other’s existence. Parasocial relationships are most common with celebrities, organizations (such as sports teams) or television stars." (source)

Gmmtv is really, really good at creating para-social relationships between the audience and their actors. How many people were willing to give Ray the benefit of the doubt and write sad woobie meta after one singular episode of Only Friends simply b/c Khao was playing the char? How many people were rooting for SandRay and TopMew simply b/c they liked FirstKhao and ForceBook?

Not everyone, obviously, but from my observations on tumblr, twitter, reddit, and youtube, a fuckton did this. Even unintentionally, I saw fans do this. Like ignoring Ray calling Sand a whore, or just...everything about the clusterfuck that was Top and Mew's relationship. Double standards were abound in Only Friends fandom when it came to how fandom treated chars like Mew, Ray and even Sand (especially Ray) in comparison to Boston. Not gonna get into that here - wait for the podcast episode to drop y'all - but it's an example.

Branded couples are gmmtv's bread and butter when it comes to their BL. They sell sticker sheets and postcard packets like these actors are kpop idols. The gmmtv house party thing or whatever trends on twitter. The studio directly encourages fans to grow attached to their actors specifically so they foster a para-social attachment so they can sell you the next six ForceBook, or OffGun or whoever show with the same or slightly different concept - this time they're in an office au! this time they're in a coffee shop au! - its just RPF at this point with extra steps. Not everyone~ obviously but a good chunk of people watched Dangerous Romance b/c they liked Perth and whoever his partner is. A lot of people checked out Cooking Crush b/c of OffGun.

I'm not saying this is a "bad" thing, one of the reasons I'm interested in watching Abigail is b/c of Melissa Barrera. So like I do get it, but as much as I enjoy Melissa her character in Abigail might be like, badly written. Who knows. I really enjoy Angie Jolie but lord knows she's had some awful roles and films.

Because of this emphasis on branded couples and para-social relationships, this effects the quality of the story b/c not every actor they pick for whichever show is the right actor. Earth was the wrong actor to play Jim in Moonlight Chicken, he just was. When Wen says he "likes old people" or someone makes a boomer joke about Jim I'm like that's a 29 yr old man. It takes me directly out of the story. It's no different than Jennifer Lawance playing a 40+ yr old woman in American Hustle at like 26. It's ridiculous.

Why NOT pair Mix up with an older actor who could also better play a world weary older man? Because it's not about The Story, it's about how much merch gmmtv can sell you or how many tickets they can sell to an EarthMix fan meet.

Palatable Brand/Easily Consumable

Gonna get myself in trouble, look gmmtv is a mix of Disney for gays and CW for gays. All the shows from gmmtv I've watched have 1) followed a very basic romance arc throughline, 2) been overall non-challenging in terms of narrative ideas or risks and 3) are straightforward in both film making style and narrative direction.

I have not watched every single gmmtv show nor will I cause again I am fucking lazy, but out of the ones I have watched this is how I feel about them.

Their shows tend to be about self-acceptance and romance. Which is FINE. I'm not saying this is a bad thing!! It's just boring after the 65th show about the subject. Especially when gmmtv doesn't care enough to cast actors that are right for the roles and give their crew a second light or five more nickels to the budget.

Sorry but 2gether is a poorly filmed show. 1000 Stars, imo, is thoroughly overhyped for how poorly paced it is, and how thin the actual story is (wait for the podcast ep on THAT lmao)

But these shows are comfortable and comforting. This is a neutral statement. You can like squeecore shows all you want I'm just saying that's part of the mass appeal of them. They're like the MCU films, they suggest the ideas of leftish politics just enough but don't really say anything further then that. And at times even enforce some harmful rhetoric - like the slut shaming in only friends and this ending to last twilight. They're just comfortable, easy shows that people can watch First and Khao in, enjoy their scenes, and then immediately move on to the next First and Khao show - hope they play street racers next! - without much of a thought.

Because these shows are pretty "safe" in terms of the depiction of queerness and sex it also makes them more palatable to mass recommend. When people make lists for what to show non-BL watches I usually see a lot of these "palatable" shows, stuff with straightforward romances, a couple kisses, fade-to-black sex. It's less based on genre preferences and more based on "what's the least scary thing we can recommend to folks". You see ppl do this with anime too. Everything gets lumped together under the sub-genre which is a shame (and also feels a bit xenophobic but I ain't getting into that).

But like, if I knew my friend was into fantasy gay shit I'd recommend them like, The Sign for live action, Drug and Drop for manga, Revolutionary Girl Utena for anime, Word of Honor and/or Legend of Yunze for (censored but still super gay) live action. I haven't read any fantasy bl/gl manwha yet so drop recs if y'all have some.

Accessibility

This one is pretty self-explanatory. We've seen how accessibility can increase a shows reach from Avatar getting a resurgence when it appeared on Netflix, where as, a show like Playboyy is gonna have a smaller reach since it's mainly available on streaming platforms like Gaga.

Consuming vs Engaging

gmmtv puts out the most Thai BLs period. This is just a fact of the industry. When you put out that much the quality of your media is going to go down - again we saw this with Disney regarding Star Wars and the MCU - because the goal is to sell merch not the stories. (Disney gets most of their sales via their parks and merch not their box office returns).

I see a lot of Big BL Blogs recommending gmmtv shows all the time, and I see a lot of these blogs and the fandom at large consuming these shows rather than engaging with said show. It becomes more of a challenge to watch 49 BLs, writing a quick meta post/review on them, and then moving on to the next one. There's a lack of higher end engagement, people aren't sitting with these shows and exploring the nooks of them. The empty spaces, the potential.

Probably b/c there's not a lot TO explore in regards to gmmtv shows, they all end pretty definitively. The couple goes through their couple journey, end up together, usually with marriage or an engagement, either way the promise of being together forever. Which is, again, fine, there's just not a lot of meat there to explore further.

This isn't specific to gmmtv shows - Domundi's shows come to mind regarding this too like Naughty Babe ends very definitively - but people just move on to the next one. They write episode-to-episode meta, end of show meta/recaps, make some gifs, move on to the next thing. It doesn't help that a lot of characters in gmmtv shows are thin and their worlds are empty.

But I think what attracts people is the constant churn of content. gmmtv shows are like tiktok videos, you scroll, watch, scroll to the next. Keep things quick and moving.

Where is the BL fanfic???

Moonlight Chicken only has 389 once you remove 1000 Stars, My School President, and Thai RPF works. Only Friends has 809 but only after also removing Only Friends RPF, Thai Actor RPF, 1000 Stars, The Eclipse, The Eclipse RPF, and Moonlight Chicken. 1000 Stars only has 292 once you remove similar crossovers (and a lot of RPF). My School President is down to 609 fics once you get rid of all the RPF and crossovers.

For comparison, kinnporsche has 11,444 fics even with all the RPF and crossovers removed.

I'm losing steam here at the end. These are a lot of thoughts, and I know they're not 100% articulate. These are just some general feelings and observations regarding gmmtv shows and fandom.

I'm NOT saying all~~~~ gmmtv show "bad" - though most I do think on a technical level are filmed very averagely with only MLC and Not Me breaking any molds - nor is anyone "wrong" or "bad" for liking idk Cooking Crush or Cherry Magic. I don't care like what you like bro.

I do think fandom overall overhypes gmmtv shows for a lot of factors - whether it's b/c they like the actors and feel that para-social pull towards them, or b/c they just like the squeecore comfort of these shows, or some mix of both - I think fandom would have an easier time if they just treated gmmtv shows are they are - average.

It's fine to be average and made for mass consumption. I like cheetos too dude. These shows don't have to be the peak of queer cinema to be valid, or for you to be "valid" for liking them. Why do any of us need to be "valid" in terms of the media we engage with? Who fucking cares? Like what you like, it doesn't have to be The Best Thing To Ever Gay for you to be valid for liking it. It doesn't have to "be important" either it can be gushers or twizzlers eat your snacks and enjoy life.

Just stop telling me it's a 4 star steak dinner or getting mad when you're charged 60 dollars for gushers.

[iam93percentstardust]

Natasha Romanoff for your ask game!

Natasha, my other most beloved <3

favorite thing about them her hair. it's so pretty (my favorite is her CACW look). also the fact that despite her femme fatale reputation, she only has one romantic interest in the entire mcu, and let's face it, the brutasha relationship is so shoehorned it that it's completely unbelievable. aro queen natasha my love

least favorite thing about them her entire storyline in age of ultron. not just the brutasha thing, but the pregnancy thing and the getting captured and i just hate it so much

favorite line "THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION" THE SCREAM I SCRUMPT AT THIS LINE TOO. BADASS GOOD GIRL, I LOVE YOU. HELL YEAH NATASHA ROMANOFF FLIPPING THE SCRIPT ON ITS HEAD AND SURPRISING AND OUTSMARTING A MILLENNIA YEARS OLD TRICKSTER GOD

brOTP Sharon & Nat. do we get any of this in the mcu? no. do i still think that we should have gotten sharon & natasha besties? yes. will i gleefully write it for the rest of my life? yes, a million times yes

OTP Aro queen natasha my love, but also I was such a hardcore Clintasha shipper in 2012. Joss Whedon, come back and answer for your crimes

nOTP Steve and Natasha. nope. not for me. they have big sibling energy to me

random headcanon natasha stayed with clint and laura immediately after her escape from the red room. cooper had just been born, and natasha was terrified to be left alone with him because of her memories of yelena but also couldn't bear to stay away from him, again because of yelena. clint fully believed for the first time that she could be rehabilitated watching natasha take care of cooper

unpopular opinion it's okay that she's a femme fatale. the early mcu actually did a fairly decent job of diversifying job prospects for female characters. natasha being a badass spy wasn't actually that much of a problem until later

song i associate with them Something Wild by Lindsey Sterling and Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness

favorite picture of them CHARACTER DIFFERENCES IN HOW THEY SIT! HER ARROW NECKLACE! HER CURLS! THE RED BELT BUCKLE!

[nonhumanhottie]

The force awakens rewatch

I told my housemate I'm sorry for the person I'm about to become while we watch this film

I have this on blu-ray and even the menu gives me nostalgia

Poe dameron I love you sir

Kylo's theme is so good

Kylo really said delete it old

Poe has zero fear

Rey is so cute like shut up

God I actually missed this Joss Whedon-esque dialogue

The instant bestie-ification of Finn and Poe

Kylo and Hux: Co-workers who hate each other iconic

Finn is so impressed by Rey's spunk

Non-consensual hand holding to best friends pipelines

I miss Sass King kylo

Why would Finn be taught Han is a war hero lol

Serial killer stare Kylo

One BOY yeah okay sure he was totally a boy when he burned the temple

Local bitch sees trees for the first time and loves it

Maz is perceiving!!! She is perceiving you!!

I love Finn's arc so much

Sure would love to know who the Knights of Ren are!!

Someone finally came back for Rey

That's what sneeping and snooping gets you girl don't touch the youngline slayer 3000

Hux's speech is so topical lmao fascists sure do suck

Finn and the lightsaber!!

Snap and Jess!!

Kylo making her faint is like so wild truly horror villain

Threepio!!!

Leia you're so perfect I love you

Homosexual lip biting by Poe Dameron

Why is Kylo squatting like that

Y'all need to put your seatbelts on

Finn saying fuck you to his meal trooper mom

Dude them naming their child after Obi-Wan hits so much harder after the Kenobi show

Fuck him up Rey!!

Forehead kiss!

This movie makes me happy!!

[mushiemellows]

OP ask game: 1 and 4?

1. Which major character do you think is most likely to die before the end of the series?

So I don’t actually know if it’s clear, but this is actually the origin story of how Franky of all fucking characters became Blorbo #1 for me. I genuinely think he sits in the Prime Killability Zone, so I’m trying to stake my territory early. If I had to compare his position to anyone it would be Wash from Firefly/Serenity. Like the Joss Whedon that haunts my brain VERY MUCH against my will says that Franky is supremely killable. Right at the start of the end. 1) he is liked in general enough that people will go aw that’s sad maybe the stakes are real for everyone else (a tension bar that will need to be established for the last fight to have teeth) but he’s not SO well liked that there will be a backlash if he dies (I know that like. Sanji’s not getting killed off. They don’t have the guts). 2) his dream’s just to like. Physically get them to Laugh Tale. So once they’re at Laugh Tale he’s kind of got no where to like, go? He did what he set out to do, which means they can totally kill him off in style. 3) he really hasn’t had much of a character arc since the timeskip, though I do still hold out that egghead’s got one more trick up it’s sleeve for him. But I think that the culmination of his character being fully self-sacrificial would be like, the last big turn in his development. 4) oh my god I just had something huge written out and then this app glitched in the formatting and I lost it all ACK. Okay. So this is going to sound biased from like, a shipping perspective, but I do genuinely mean this more neutrally. Killing off Franky helps oda to dodge the Frobin bullet in a way that still feels emotional. I know Ods’s rules on ships. He knows them. But also, he’s definitely injected quite a lot of his own heteronormative social biases onto this character. They’re “Mom and Dad” for a reason (even if I myself argue with that interpretation of both characters, it still seems to be the dominant reading of how they interact with their sphere)(but clearly a lot of the “frobin proof” is like, Oda’s subconscious utilization of the little world around him. He does not leave his house much, and he goes for easy to reach tropes, generally. The whole “if any ship has a chance at becoming canon it’s frobin” idea I see floating around stems from a similar place). And how do you develop a slightly older male character in your Gender Propaganda Text that’s always One Man Step ahead of everyone else? Where is he to go developmentally in his mid-to-late-30s? You pair him off, you put him in a relationship. But oda can’t do that because it breaks his rule. So the one major Quick and Easy way to develop this guy any further is off the table. But if they leave things wink wink vague and then kill him off, they don’t need to address that grey area. Not to go on a whole ship tangent lol. But I do genuinely think that’s the easiest path to the corner he’s written himself into with this character. Just kill him!

4. What do you think the One Piece itself actually is?

Real. Hahah no but I’m of the opinion that it’s going to be something fairly simple. My bet is like, a cool looking coin thing, something that Shueisha Entertainment can mass produce in plastic once OP is over. Like, this whole thing is about toy/merch sales at the end of the day, so it makes sense to me that the function of the one piece is to be infinitely merchandisable. Small, simple design, keychainable, printable for a sweatshirt, could even make a plushie. A single sort of gold coin thing opens up quite a lot of easy possibilities, even if I myself find it kind of…boring.

That, or it’s got something to do with the hat. A second, smaller straw hate to put on the first. Hahaha.

[seldnei]

Re: that last gif set …

I remember reading an intro to one of the Sandman collections where I thought “Seriously, Neil?” about something childcare related. Then he and his first wife got divorced and there was something there that bothered me. But: parasocial relationship, not anyone I actually know, whatever.

Then the whole mess with Covid and him going to Scotland while Amanda and their son were in NZ, and how he broke quarantine rules, and I was like … ok, parasocial relationship, but Jesus Christ, dude, what the fuck?

But. Neil Gaiman. He seemed like a decent person, a person trying to do good things, so okay, Neil can have one major fuckup as a treat, yeah? We’re all human and Covid traumatized everyone. But I remember thinking, “Yowza, what a trainwreck, esp. when it comes to relationships, damn.”

And now, I have read all the things about the podcast, the accusations, the whisper network, the fucking Clarion rule, and yeah, I believe the women. (I believed *something* happened from the start, but it’s Neil Gaiman, surely he should get a little grace—oh. Well. Never mind. Fucking hell.) I am so incredibly disappointed in this person I have never met but thought was a decent person—and honestly? I don’t necessarily think he’s *not* a progressive, allied person who cares about refugees and trans rights and LGBTQ+ issues and, god help me, feminist issues. I think human beings can be scummy af and also have excellent ratings from the Human Rights Campaign. It’s cognitively dissonant, but it’s true.

With that said: He hurt people. That is not okay. And I really hope those people get the help and support that they need to cope with what happened.

When it comes to his work—well, I can’t read Orson Scott Card anymore, and I can’t read Harry Potter anymore (that one really hurts; y’all know I read those to Z when he was little before she admitted she was a transphobe). But I can watch Buffy. Because Buffy is more than Joss Whedon—Buffy is Marti Noxon and Jane Espensen and Sarah Michelle Gellar. And I think (I hope) I can still watch/read Good Omens and Sandman for the same reasons.

(Gonna be honest, I’m not sure losing the novels is upsetting me? *That’s* interesting. How much of what I love about Neil Gaiman’s work is due to his collaborators? Hmmm.)

So, anyway, those are my thoughts there, if anyone was wondering. I usually tag stuff with titles (I hate it when I see a gif set that’s interesting and then it’s not labeled with the title of the thing, so I do always try to make sure the title is somewhere), so block as you need to. And again, I believe the women.

[ketchup-monthly]

Lanternfam’s favorite vampire media

with the help by @space-specs

Hal- Monster High (the justice league hates when they do mental links via J’onn because he constantly has the first opening stuck in his head and doesn’t even realize hes humming it until someone says something and even then it doesn’t really go away until he has something else stuck in his head. he has also on multiple occasions cross-dresses as one of the female characters to match with Helen, who would dress as one of the guy characters. Hal kills it every single time. he looks so good its not even funny.)(the main two that Hal does are Rochelle Goyle and Operetta. Helen’s are Deuce Gorgon and Holt Hyde)(if anyone wants to draw Hal in either of those outfits please hit me up it would be so good and i would be forever grateful and maybe even owe you a kiss on the forehead for your troubles)

Guy- Twilight (he likes the side characters and wishes that SMeyer hadn’t fucked them all up like she did. he likes the baseball scene in the first movie bc it slaps, and Emmett and Leah are his favorite characters. Emmett is a lot like him and Leah was written so badly. They both deserved so much better.)(he totally doesn’t write twilight fix its on the internet but if you know the right places to go, there may be a fix it fic written by one EmeraldWarrior.)(the fics fix a lot of things about the series and are actually pretty good and god i wish they were real -ketchup)(jo doesn’t read his fics, but she has mutuals who are into Twilight and have read them, so she has heard about the fics in detail from them. she doesn’t put two and two together until she meets Guy and immediately is like “hey wait” and the secret is out but still between the two of them -specs)

John- The Argeneau Series (its vampires but they made it scientific and actually gave answers for why vampires do and require certain things instead of just leaving it down to “idk man. magic or something.” its also not too well known or talked about, so no one has had a chance to ruin it yet. just like how john likes it.)

Kyle- The Lost Boys (comics nerds have to fight vampires and look into comic books to find the answers. home alone with vampire fighting mechanics. need i say more?)(ketchup has never seen this before ever)

Jess- The Mortal Instruments/Shadowhunters (the series focuses more on the angelic and demonic than the vampires themselves, but they still play a large role in it. She believes Raphael deserved better and thinks its funny that the main vampire character is named Simon.)(the movie does not exist.)

Simon- Buffy the Vampire Slayer (fuck Joss Whedon but Buffy. he liked some parts of the show and hated others but thought it was a very interesting interpretations of an American high school.)

Jo- Castlevania (it is not anime but it is the closest western media will get to that. western animation can do things good too! -specs)(as soon as specs mentioned this, i went oooooooooooh *eyes emoji* bc i love the first two seasons sooo much -ketchup)(also yayyyyy video game series!!)

Keli- Dracula das Musical (she accidentally found it through the Korean version of Zu Ende with the redheaded Dracula on youtube and then watched a subtitled recording of it and fell in love. She likes all the versions of it that are not in English, but the German one is her favorite)(this is ketchups favorite musical)

Alan- Nosferatu (1922) (it is the vampire movie of all time and even though its corny as all get out, he likes the simplicity of it as well as the staying power it had through the depression and the world war. its also just a really hilariously stupid adaptation of Dracula.)

Carol- Vampire Academy (she can and will go on hours long rants about various things in the series. Hal has never read the books, but he did watch the movie on his own time so he could better understand her rants but that just made Carol more angry. the movie does not exist. Hal can still have a conversation with even the most dedicated of readers about the series based on what he has absorbed through osmosis from Carol.)(in this scenario specs is Hal and me and our roommate are both Carol. as this was typed, specs and i had a conversation about the plot in vampire academy lol -ketchup)

Kilowog- Hotel Transylvania (Keli showed it to him while deviously grinning in the corner, a grinch smile on her face bc she was determined to get the big tough alien into the most memeable animated vampire media ever. ‘wog doesn’t get it and ends up dealing psychic damage to the rest fo the earth lanterns when he says its his favorite of the Terran media they show him)

Razer- Blade (he likes knives so he likes the name. also. Blade is a vampire who fights other vampires and Razer is a red lantern who fights other red lanterns. it fits.)

Thaal- Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) (theres a weird monsterfucking scene that kept ketchup from watching it the first time they tried. Thaal would get a kick out of it because hes a kinky motherfucker, as well as the stupid butt wig. seriously wtf is up with the butt wig. its so stupid)

B’dg- Count Chocula cereal boxes (his preferred form of media is staring at cardboard boxes. he finds them very entertaining.)

Helen- Cirque du Freak (specifically the manga adaptation)(she 100% convinced Hal to dress up as Larten Crepsley so she could dress up as Darren for Halloween one year, and this series singlehandedly got her over her fear of spiders)(if you haven’t read the graphic novels they’re so good i promise -ketchup)

[scare-ard--sleigh]

tagged by @maplefiasco 8 shows to get to know me uhhhh in no particular order!!

tagging (no pressure tho!) ;; @cauldronofmorning @angellspt @spacephrasing @ambrwolf @wesninskijr @rolodextra @zapkilikan and anyone else who wants to do it !

what we do in the shadows: wwdits caters to me so heavily. it captures all of my genders. everyone's hot and fucking each other and they're all so fucking stupid. i've watched it 90 billion times and i still laugh bc the jokes still make me laugh.

midnight mass: we're setting aside my taste in men for a minute here. midnight mass does a really excellent job capturing the more horrifying aspects of growing up as an outsider in a very tight-knit religious community. i've never seen that done in a way that's resonated so much. i talked about this show a lot in therapy. plus okay fine; father skinnyjeans thee vampire [chef's kiss.]

the magicians: idk how to sum up the everything about the magicians in a few sentences. i have an eliot prayer candle lmao, his arc and his friendships and the way he does masculinity are so important to me despite the writing having a few missteps (mind the warnings definitely.) the fandom experience is unlike anything i've ever had, yes derogatorily but also in a really good way--my writing got so good because of the things that i created for this show.

steven universe / sailor moon: i combined them because while they're separately very important to me, it's for a lot of the same reasons and i don't feel right putting one without the other. i'm very saccharine underneath everything, i wanna believe love and friendship can heal anything. i grew up on sailor moon, and i think su would have had the same impact on me if i was the right age.

daredevil: where do i even start :( human disaster matt murdock is just like me fr. foggy nelson is who i wish i was (he also reminds me so much of my husband.) i almost went to law school bc of this fucking show. it's the first time i ever saw two guys crying during an argument bc they love each other that much (nelson v murdock is a treasure of an episode.) i didn't dig s3 as much and i hated the defenders but god the rest of it's so good.

bob's burgers: it's less because i think it's deeply telling and more because it's 100% comfort food. if i'm sick or stoned or sad or trying to find a crowdpleaser, bob's is always my go-to. their family and bob & linda's parenting methods are a lot of what i picture for myself when the time comes.

death note: death note was the thing i was obsessed with as a teenager and while i missed a lot of the point of it, it also is what started making me smarter about media consumption, interpretation, and analysis. mello is also like thee gender of all time.

succession: the latest and greatest "oh jeez that's me." like firstly i love watching shows about terrible rich people but to dig deeper: some of the dynamics hit soooo fucking close. i feel like the portrayal of mental illness and abuse are done almost too well: proceed with caution.

honorable mentions:

buffy the vampire slayer: buffy was the first show i ever got like really, really obsessed with (as well as the first canon i ever tried to make an oc for) but it's almost impossible to recommend for actual viewing bc of how badly it's aged. i didn't rewatch it for the many years, cringed through the last one, and am at permanent hiatus since we've entered the Joyce Is Dying arc which is just like painful to watch on top of the uhhh. joss whedon writing.

archer fx: i don't think archer's necessarily required viewing to get to know me, but i've definitely done some of my best writing for that canon and if you're willing to listen to me talk ad nauseam about archer and cyril's dynamic i'll probably love you forever.

[sayyoume]

This. Whis is why I like when people don't hide their thoughts in tags, Your thoughts are better than the tags. take them out of there

#god!! GOD!!! they both deserved better#i hate the whole idea of Angel's curse so fucking much#but also this highlights how once Willow cursed him again the rules must have changed#and the happiness clause stopped working#not just bc of this really i mean the whole Connor thing??#you're going to tell me ANgel was happier fucking Buffy than he was when he held his baby?? when he realised Darla sacrificed herself for#their baby because even without a soul she loved him and wanted the best for him thus redeeming herself in Angel's eyes which is what he'd#wanted for her the whole time? (bc he could say he'd never really loved her all but i don't buy it)

#ALSO after reading the Joss Whedon article where he talks about how he figured out in college that he could break strong women#by sleeping with them and then''ghosting them or whatever''... i can't help but see the similarity between these two scenes & Parker to that#it's like he got off on it

The whole idea of being the happiest person after fucking someone is such a shit actually. Not any 'I love you' did it to him. Not any sacrifice. Not his own child. But the moment after sex with a 17 year old girl. Fuck you Whedon. You are just a disgrace trying to preach to people at the same time. And what he said about women in college... The more I learn about him, the more I disgusted. I just see reasons why things were like that in the show. And also, looking at him, honestly, how could he even 'fuck' any girl expecially some 'strong women' like he said. Bragging about it. Like an absolute loser.

btvs l “innocence” / ats l “epiphany” (insp)