#he's like a queer-coded disney villain

[dr-mothman]

WHY IS TRALOC SO BABYGIRL IN THE TV SHOW

[bonetrousledbones]

at this point i’m convinced folks saying “people ONLY want perfect unproblematic queer characters but I’M different and want them to KILL” are just making up guys to get mad at because who. literally genuinely who are the people that only want flat/”perfect” queer rep i haven’t seen a single one since like 2018 but i’ve seen like 6 posts like this in the past week

[filmfactors]

do you think after the episode "halloween and nobi the frog" we could say suneo is canonically 💅🏻?

I feel like we could've said that for a long time now, but yes I mean- it's absolute proof of something LGBT is happening here. Gag or not, he did in fact get starry eyed and flustered over being kissed by Nobita.

for those unaware:

[rainbowgod666]

Yeah it sounds as bad as you think but like

I genuinely cant put these two things together.

let my bro out for fucks sake

definitely weird to see someone ive known since like 2020 be sentenced to life in hospital prison, but i guess it's to be expected with the work i do

[crazy-pages]

I'm going to throw my two cents in to the conversation about why James Somerton didn't get caught earlier. Part of the answer is of course that he did get caught, he just bullied and lied to get away with it for a while, but I know a lot of people still express confusion. And of course he went out of his way to make sure his audience didn't know about other queer history sources other than himself. But still. How could he have so many viewers of his videos and none of them had seen X source material?

Well. To be blunt, most of his videos were pretty basic. He tended to copy the highlights of what he was plagiarizing, not the really advanced stuff. And insofar as he copied the advanced stuff, he had a tendency to chop it up and serve it out of context alongside other plagiarized work. The material he was presenting was revolutionary to an audience unfamiliar with queer history, but like. I'm guessing 'Disney villains are queer coded' is not exactly a new concept to the kind of people who read multiple books about queer coding in film.

Now I'm not a film studies person, I'm a physicist. But you know what I do when I get a video in my YouTube recommendations about some fairly basic physics concept?

I skip it. No shade to the creator, but like. I hit that topic a decade ago and I've added literally thousands of hours of studying and research to my brain since. I'm just going to give it a pass, all right?

These kinds of videos self-select for an audience which isn't going to be familiar with the source material. The people who know it are unlikely to keep listening after the first minute or so.

And you've got to remember how much of this content the experts have consumed! With very few exceptions for weird little things that stuck in my head after all these years, I would probably not notice a physics explanation plagiarized from one of my textbooks! Not because I wasn't intimately acquainted with the textbook, but because I was intimately acquainted with many such textbooks. Spend enough time learning this stuff and it all blurs together a little bit. Does this explanation sound familiar because you've heard it before, or because you've just read books which cover this specific topic seven different times? And does that wording or that example ring a bell because it's plagiarized, or because it's common to the field?

Catching this kind of plagiarism requires having the kind of people who are already familiar with these sources, and therefore uninterested in video summaries on the topic, to watch the video. And among those people who do, it requires them to match Somerton's words to one specific source on the topic out of many, that they probably read quite some time ago. And then you have the filter of how many of those subject matter experts have the source on hand to check, to turn a vague "...hmm" into something solid.

If you know enough about queer history to say that some of his plagiarism was obvious, now that you've watched the video, then you should remember that there is a reason you probably weren't one of the people watching his videos! And because YouTube promotes videos through algorithmic engagement, none of this stuff has to pass the sniff test for any other expert in the field before it gets released. No experts have to like it for it to get published or for it to get good reviews or for it to get a recommendation in, I don't know, the New York Times.

The only people who have to like the videos for them to get traction are people who are just trying to learn introductory queer history and film theory. The exact people who aren't going to notice this. And for those of you who to whom it is obvious, ask yourself. When was the last time you watched a basic level queer history introduction on YouTube?

[wisteria-lodge]

And now for a HP fandom question - do you have any thoughts on queercoding in the series and if JKR ever actually intended it, and then backtracked, or if it was always completely unintentional? I'm thinking specifically about Lupin and Tonks (as individuals, not as a ship) Inspired by your post about the intention vs how fans perceived Draco Malfoy. Thanks!

So the first thing I want to do is make a distinction between femme-coding and queer-coding. They're tropes with very similar histories, and a lot of works treat them as the same thing. But Harry Potter doesn’t, and I think we can chalk this one up to JK Rowling’s habit of grabbing aesthetics and visuals without really thinking through the history behind them. 

(Like - the goblins. She says she didn’t mean to write an antisemitic thing, and I actually do believe her. But did she use a lot of tropes and images with a long history of being tied to antisemitism? yes.)

So when I say “femme” I mean giving a male character traits stereotypically associated with femininity. Heightened sensitivity/emotionality, an interest in hair, clothes and being attractive, a love of lace/pink/frills, a dislike of violence and physical confrontation, and a preference for the soft power of manipulation, character assassination and poison - versus the hard power of direct confrontation and physical prowess. Are these things super stereotypical? Yes. But they’re ALSO traits you see all the time on male villains, especially ones that you don’t want to seem that threatening. Femme-coded villains show up a lot in children’s media, or as the Big Bad’s #2. They’re not meant to be heroic or sympathetic (since all these feminine traits are not desirable, especially for guys.) But they also aren’t scary, and you can pretty much always play them for comedy. 

For example: see almost every male Disney villain. And JKR was writing children’s literature in the 90s, so of course she’s pulling from the same zeitgeist as the Disney Renaissance. 

JKR loves herself a femme villain. The absolute gold standard is of course Lockhart - who wears pink, wants to start his own line of hair care products, is self-centered, vain, obsessed with popularity… but he sucks in a fight. His entire MO involves manipulating people into thinking he has these traditional masculine qualities when he just doesn’t. But there’s also fussy, prissy Percy wearing his prefect badge on his pajamas. Bitchy, emotional mean-girl poisoners Draco and Snape (especially early book Snape - which is Snape at his most villainous.) Draco, Percy and Snape are also unusual for being male characters who we see crying for reasons other than grief (apparently the only truly acceptable reason for masculine crying). 

Lucius Malfoy is an interesting case because he starts off quite masc. He’s threatening to curse people, the governors are scared of him, etc. But, as the books go on… and he gets less powerful… he also gets more femme. When we meet him in Book 5 he’s no longer threatening people, but bribing them, spreading rumors, and giving interviews to the Prophet casting Arthur Weasley in a negative light. He's also getting really into peacocks. In Book 2 he was a major threat, but as he gets recast as Voldemort’s #2 he becomes a more femme, soft-power villain. When he leads the attack on the Department of Mysteries, he absolutely bungles it, which defines his character (and relationship with Voldemort) for the rest of the series. And it makes sense that Lucius is given this kind of treatment! It’s a way of communicating that there's a new villain in town, a real villain. 

So, are any of these femme-coded villains additionally queer-coded? I’m actually going to say no. Queer-coding is (like it says on the tin) finding ways to imply that your character is specifically gay. Like maybe giving them a same-sex relationship that is written romantically, but not explicitly called out by the text. Or pairing up all of the characters except them. Maybe have other characters joke about them being gay, and use that as a way to talk about the subject with some plausible deniability. Or they could just play suggestively with a cigar, or a walking stick. There are different strategies.  

But Lockhart doesn't get any of that. Honestly, I think that if JKR actually thought of him as gay, she would have been a lot more wary about a scene where he keeps Harry alone with him in his office for way longer than he’s supposed to. And she might have skipped this joke: 

“Harry was hauled to the front of the class during their very next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, this time acting a werewolf (...) “Nice loud howl, Harry — exactly — and then, if you’ll believe it, I pounced — like this — slammed him to the floor — thus — with one hand, I managed to hold him down — with my other, I put my wand to his throat (...) he let out a piteous moan — go on, Harry — higher than that — good —” 

Like. At least she would have picked a different word than “moan,” right? Which unfortunately has slightly sexual connotations. Especially if she wanted to keep Lockhart a buffoon, to properly set up the twist at the end. 

Slughorn also gets femme-coded in a similar way: he loves his candy, his parties, his smoking jackets, his lilac silk pajamas, his web of connections he can use to get stuff (Lucius style.) We are introduced to him squatting in specifically a “fussy old lady’s” house. He’s also unusually emotional, getting weepy at Aragog‘s funeral. But I don’t think we’re meant to read him as actually gay, or else his relationship with Tom Riddle might’ve read a little too close to Tom seducing/trying to seduce him. Which is a beat JKR does subtly play out with Hepzibah Smith, but idk. by that point at least Tom is a legal adult.

(As a side note - the Harry Potter series got so lucky that all of its adult characters are played by absolutely top-shelf actors who are aware of the connotations and history behind various symbols, and do consider these things in their performances. Kenneth Brannagh and Jim Broadbent are good enough to make sure there’s not even a hint of iffy subtext when they play Lockhart and Slughorn. Also, Emma Thompson took the potentially very problematic character of Trelawney and made her cute and sympathetic… and not Romani in the slightest.) 

Draco, Snape, and Percy all have a case of the not-gays. Percy has a girlfriend (we don’t really see her or anything, but we’re told she’s there.) Snape of course gets his whole thing with Lily, and Draco… after one too many beats where it’s clear that Pansy is into him, but he’s not into Pansy…  gets a scene where he’s talking to his buddies with his head in her lap. (JKR uses “no one‘s good enough for me” beats with Blaise, Draco and Sirius, and the idea there seems to be more that they have undeservedly high opinions of themselves, and less that they don’t like girls.)

But, I do agree that a lot of JKR's characters do come across as a little more queer than intended. It boils down, I think, to the general lack of any kind of romance in the Harry Potter books and JKR being generally bad at/uncomfortable with writing male attraction directed at women, BUT being perfectly happy writing attraction directed at pretty guys. And because of that… yeah, it can sometimes feel like maybe Harry has a thing for Cedric. Especially when Dudley goes on to tease him about Cedric being his boyfriend, which I believe is the only actual mention of gay people in the entire series.  

So is there any intentional queer-coding in the book? It’s really subtle, but yes. I think Dumbledore is queer-coded. He is unusually emotional/cries unusually often for a Rowling guy. He is also given a scene which emphasizes his “flamboyantly” cut plum-velvet suit, and his relationship with Grindelwald is implied to be romantic for one book and two movies before being actually confirmed in Fantastic Beasts 3. (With the line of dialogue “I was in love with you.” Big step up from “We were closer than brothers.” which is an odd thing to say about someone you are interested in romantically.) 

But you brought up Tonks and Lupin, two characters very commonly interpreted as queer. So let’s get into that. JKR has said that she considers Lupin’s lycanthropy to be a metaphor for stigmatized diseases like AIDS. And… as incredible as it is to say… I actually do not think that she made the jump from there to thinking that maybe the character suffering from AIDS should be gay.

Because the narrative places so much weight on Lupin being bitten young and then on maybe not being allowed to attend school, I’m pretty sure that he’s not intended to be queer so much as he’s meant to be Ryan White, the literal poster child for AIDS activism who got infected via blood transfusion when he was two. Tragic, absolutely. But not gay. Honestly, I hope JKR was thinking of ‘lycanthropy’ as a metaphor for stigmatized illness in the abstract and not as a comment on gay people specifically. Because otherwise, Greyback’s thing about biting children becomes a mash-up of two of the biggest homophobic boogeymen from the 80s: gay men infecting people with AIDS on purpose because… idk, they hate the world or something. And the influence of gay men somehow “turning” children gay. Both absolutely real, if ridiculous, moral panics.

On top of that, Remus and Sirius do get a pretty clear case of the not-gays early on (“He embraced Black like a brother.”) Buuuut Alfonso Cuarón did think through those implications for Movie 3, absolutely saw Lupin as gay, and directed David Thewlis to play him accordingly. No reports confirming or denying whether Alfonso Cuarón ships Wolfstar, but I think that if I’m an actor trying to make sense of Lupin’s motivations… and I know he didn’t show Dumbledore the Marauders’ Map and didn’t tell anyone Sirius was an animagus… and then I’m told my character is gay… well. Anyway, I think there are absolutely hints of Wolfstar in that performance. 

And there's Tonks. Tonks is introduced during a very spooky segment in Book 5: Harry has been going through it, been left alone at the Dursleys while having what sounds like a depressive episode. It’s dark, he hears intruders. It's a really good piece of writing. But JKR knows that it’s the good guys who are coming and thinks, okay. Let’s make that as clear as possible from the word go. And so the first thing Harry sees is Tonks' pink hair. And what kind of person has pink hair? A young adult. A punky young adult. And what power would a teenager think was cool? Well, the ability to change the color of their hair at will. That, by itself, would have worked perfectly fine for this character.

But then (for reasons best known to herself) JKR goes further. Even though Tonk’s hair changing color is easily 90% of the transformations we see and there is no plot reason her appearance needs to change more than that, we see her drastically change her age and body type. When you think about this power for more than five seconds, it becomes kind of OP. For worldbuilding reasons alone, my instinct would’ve been to tone it down a bit. 

But no, we have this counterculture character who seems interested in her career and not in a relationship, who can easily change anything about her body, and (if her ability works anything like Polyjuice) that means she should definitely be able to change her gender. Cool.

Then, in everyone’s least favorite romance, Tonks and Lupin are paired up. I have heard the argument that this was meant to walk back queer-coding, or to punish people who thought they were queer... but I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think JKR expected these two to be fan favorites, and then was kind of surprised when everyone wanted to hear about their continuing adventures. 

(There are a handful of characters who JKR clearly really enjoys - and really enjoys writing - that fandom honestly could not care less about. Mundungus Fletcher and Ludo Bagman spring to mind. But the reverse is also true. She had one story for Lupin and people wanted to see more. Tonks is probably supposed to be her comment on immature young adults: she is loud, in your face, causes mild destruction and is “a little annoying at times.” But the fans fell in love with her.) 

So JKR has these two fan favorite characters and nothing for them to do. A romance is something for them to do. JKR also has a kind of weird pattern where good people need to either have kids or take care of kids. It’s not good to be a woman who isn’t involved with taking care of children in some fashion: see Rita Skeeter, Dolores Umbridge, Bellatrix Lestrange. This is also (I think) why Harry names his kids specifically after Severus, Sirius, and Albus. Since they’re good men, JKR had to find a way to give them kids after the fact. 

So yeah. I think we were meant to read Tonks and Lupin having a kid as kind of a reward, or at least as proof of their intrinsic goodness. There also just isn’t another guy in the right age range to ship Tonks with. The only other option is Sirius. 

(Harry in the books and Lupin on Pottermore both suspect that Tonks/Sirius is a thing. Completely forgetting, I guess, that they're cousins.)

[spenglernot]

STORIES TELLING: NED LOWE AND THE DEATH OF POOR REPRESENTATION IN OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH

In history, Ned Lowe was one of the most sadistic and violent pirates in the early 18th century, so he’s an obvious choice for a villain for season 2, episode 6 – Calypso’s Birthday.  What is interesting is what the OFMD writers chose to do with him.

Lowe announces himself to the crew of the Revenge with great fanfare (cannon ball attack) and gets right to the point.

Ed is thoroughly unimpressed.

Cut to Ed and Stede tied up while Ned attempts to set the mood so he can monologue about why he wants to kill Ed.

Ed knows what’s coming. He is going to suffer but he still can’t be arsed to meet Ned with anything but vaguely bored dismissiveness (and Stede is happy to play along).

Up on the deck, Ned prepares the crew for his big, dramatic moment of symphonic torture.

Note that the Revenge crew is tied down, braced by vices and generally unable to protect themselves from imminent torture and possible death, but their spirits are up. They don’t seem terribly fussed.

Then Stede uses his people positive management style to happily orchestrate a worker uprising in Ned’s crew.

Ned’s crew responds instantly; severing their allegiance to Lowe and telling him off.

The crew sails away and talks profit sharing while Ned dully threatens to hunt them down.

Ned is now a prisoner of the Revenge crew and seems entirely disinterested in his own survival.

And Ned sinks to the depths, without struggling at all.

There is a lot going on in this episode: pay and labor equity direct action, gay love engagement bliss, kink humor, Stede being a hero and saving his crew by playing to his strengths, then having to decide whether to kill in cold blood and feel the consequences of that choice. Ed having one more reason to be done with piracy (while being so impressed with and fond of Stede), and then watching his man make a fraught choice and having to deal with the fallout from that. (And, damn, I haven’t even mentioned the passionate sex bit.) Anyway, back to the point.

Now for the the meta part

The Ned Lowe sequences are perfectly in keeping with OFMD’s signature blend of madcap violence, humor, and big emotional gut punches. But something about Ned Lowe just strikes me as off for this show.

Ned is seriously threatening the crews’ lives, so why don’t they take him seriously?

Why does Ned have such a boring, throwaway backstory?

Why is Ned so nonchalant about his own death; like it’s a foregone conclusion?

Why does Ned have a silver violin and silver spurs on his slip-on dress shoes?

Why is Ned sartorially monochromatic?

And then I realized who Ned reminds me of.

This guy,

Earnst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film Diamonds are Forever (1971)

And this guy,

Scar in Disney's The Lion King (1994).

And this guy,

Xerxes, 300 (2006).

And it sure seems like Ned Lowe isn’t just an episodic villain. He is an archetype of the one-dimensional, stereotypical queer-coded villain that has been endemic in film and television throughout history. The OFMD writers have a lot to say about what to do with this kind of character:

Don’t respect him.

Feel free to openly mock him.

Don’t let him take your joy, even though he will hurt you.

He won’t disappear on his own. You have to throw something at him (take action) to make him go away.

Once he’s in the water, he’s content to drown. He’s not into what he’s doing any more than you are.

Oh and, just to be clear,

The LGBTQIA+ community has a very long history of turning shit media into better stories. So, hey, big media, prepare to have your crap characters wrecked (improved).

Now, back to our transformative pirate show with rich, complex queer characters and a multi-layered plot that surprises me every week and makes me feel big feelings - most of all, joy.

Final thought: I do wonder if Ned Lowe is monochromatically silver as a tribute to/poke at, Hollywood and the silver screen.

This meta was written before OFMD season 2 has fully aired. No idea what’s going to happen in the finale (and I’ve generally fled social media to avoid spoilers). I’ll be back, looking at everyone’s fascinating posts after episode 8 airs.

[yaboisoph]

"Slightly androgynous character"

scar isn't 'slightly' anything, he is putting his entire ass into being a faggot and I think that's neat

i watched the 1994 lion king today for the first time since i was a kid and holy shit the queer coding of scar is so blatant.

[raphfish]

emet-selch really is the character of all time. he's a queer-coded disney villain. he's an evil wizard. he tried to be a member of your party and got denied. he's a boomer. he has a tragic backstory involving a dead wife/husband/best friend. you're the reincarnated wife/husband/best friend. he's a tsundere. he saved your catgirl. he's a politician. he's fantasy caesar. his great-grandson is obsessed with you. his name means "yours truly" in hebrew. oh hes not queer coded he's actually gay. he has a dead husband that isn't you. he's like a grumpy old cat. he's the most popular character in ffxiv.

[faelapis]

despite some concerns raised by the trailer/marketing, i am still excited for the wish movie. a lot of that has to do with king magnifico.

that being said, i approach it from a different direction than a lot of other people excited for a “classic disney villain.”

first of all, yes. i, too, love the camp and melodrama of classic disney villains. i love that they express their wishes through big bombastic musical numbers, and said musical numbers are often the best in their movies. i like how queer-coded and fun they often are. i like the sass, the drama, the energy.

where i disagree with a lot of people is with this notion that disney movies “don’t have villains” anymore. i don’t think the likes of hans (frozen) and tamatoa (moana) are less evil than "classic" villains - they’re plenty willing to kill with a smile on their face.

i think what people ACTUALLY miss is the big performance around it all. the aesthetic. someone who does these things while being a major character (so not tamatoa) and deliciously, obviously evil while having fun with it the whole time (so not hans). i think it’s that specific combination people are missing. we still have villains, they’re just either not as “fun” or not as “important.”

of course, that take is less punchy than saying disney doesn’t have villains because "steven cringeyverse destroyed western animation and now companies are too scared to make real villains >:( !1!!!"

yeah i never understood where that came from. if anything, redeeming villains is more controversial than killing them. especially in america, being punitive is the norm. forgiveness is cringe. yet so many act as if there was some big consumer and/or corporate pushback against the idea of villains…? at some point?? i guess????

someone must've forgotten to tell that to disney tv animation, where you’ll find everything from bill cipher to belos in the modern era. (also, other companies exist? dreamworks is not some indie studio, they’re fully willing to have big, campy villains.)

but yknow, people like to feel like underdogs. they like to feel like they're somehow oppressed because some animated media don't have classic villains anymore... despite there still being plenty around. you can’t just like villains, you have to make it everyone else’s problem. like disney is obliged to do the same character tropes in every movie. or villains are "dead."

what actually happened is just… some writers at disney decided they wanted to do different things. that’s it. so you now have a handful of movies where the villain is either a minor character, or nonexistent.

it’s not a conspiracy, it’s not a concerted effort to destroy villains. it’s, at most, a trend. because some writers wanted to push against the previous status quo. and now other writers who grew up with that want to have more classic villains, because that’s what they see as exciting and new. it’s just a cycle of trends and countertrends.

anyway. long tangent aside, i’m actually very excited for king magnifico. in part for a classic villain performance (he gets a song!!) - but also, it sounds like he might scratch a particular itch of mine.

which is to have a big, dramatic, irredeemable villain… who is still a human and has an understandable pov.

yes, you can combine these things. it’s not common for disney, but a lot of what we consider “great movie villains” throughout history have been this exact combination. they have to be defeated, they refuse redemption, they are 100% committed to their goals and will not budge - but they also GENUINELY BELIEVE in those goals.

what i’m really asking for here is a sincerely motivated character. someone who is a villain, but doesn’t SEE himself as a villain. someone who isn’t lying when they try to endear themselves to the hero or promise to make the world better if they join forces. it’s just that they are completely misguided about what would be good for the world, and nothing will persuade them.

whether someone is a villain, a hero, or anywhere in between, i think asking a character’s motivation - and playing those motivations straight, rather than just as a mask for plain selfishness - is key.

as i’m saying this, you might notice that it’s not actually too far off from what i like in other characters. jasper in SU is basically this in her "main arc” in season three. she refuses help, she’s a huge dick to everyone… but she also 100% believes in homeworld as an institution and is actually, genuinely selfless. even if it means her own corruption, she refuses help, because that would betray her cause. which she values above her own life. and by rebecca sugar’s own words, jasper doesn’t even believe she deserves help.

the common thread here is really tragedy. someone you can root for and against at the same time.

so how does this relate to king magnifico? well, jennifer lee (writer for this movie & also the frozen movies) just had an interview where she talked a lot about wish, and in specific, having a classic disney villain in magnifico.

she illustrates a lot of what i’ve been talking about - that there is no grand conspiracy at disney against villains. they just had different stories they wanted to tell. there was no mandate either for or against villains, not in this movie or any other. they just did what they wanted to do with those stories. (btw, that’s not me saying there isn’t pressure at disney to tell certain stories and not others. it’s just that the concept of a villain isn’t as important to the corporate side as, say, not making elsa gay.)

anyway. what makes the king magnifico portion interesting is how lee talks about exactly what i’ve been saying. they knew they wanted a classic disney villain, but it sounds like they still want him to be different from other such characters. namely, they wanted to find the benevolent side of him, how he genuinely believes what he believes and DOES want what he thinks is best for the city of rosas.

and the plot totally checks out - basically, he decides whose wishes come true. and that’s really interesting, because a wish can be anything, good or bad. it sounds like he really wants to prevent what he sees as bad wishes from coming true, and is too conservative in what he allows or not. and his way of being kind about rejection is to remove those wishes from people’s hearts if he cannot fulfill them.

that’s SUCH a great concept for a villain. it speaks to issues of control, of agency, of being in the paternalistic position of deciding what is “best” for everyone else. it gives me a little bit the wizard of oz (as in the wizard himself, who is a charlatan trying to maintain a pleasant status quo, even if it’s a lie), and a little bit white diamond (controlling the lives of others, but genuinely believing you are being selfless and heroic about it / steering people on the “right” path).

reading that interview, my excitement for this movie went from like a 2/10 to a 8/10. jennifer lee seems to have a real interest in creating characters, not just stock tropes. elsa is one of the best disney princesses (fight me) for exactly the same reason.

another great concept talked about here (which you also see in lee’s frozen, with anna and elsa as opposites) is that of duality. there’s a lot of talk about magnifico and asha being two sides of the same coin, both initially believing in this system and wanting what’s best for the city. and from there, they divert to their opposite paths in what specifically they think is right. the interview talks about them as if they were this thesis and antithesis about what’s right for the city, needing to reach a synthesis. in talking about this concept, they included this illustration:

notice the similar poses. both have their hands behind their back (commonly used to convey a character is hiding something), their feet pointed out, and give the world a pleasant smile. asha has a darker color palette in a world of light, magnifico is a ray of light in a dark space. it's interesting for its duality.

so yeah. all in all, i’m still excited for wish. i want to take alan tudyk goat out back and shoot it for a quick, humane death… but failing that, i’ll just pray his role was hammed up for the trailer. please tell me it’s not that insufferable. please.

because i do really like everything else i’ve heard about this movie!! i like that asha is described as this idealist with “dumb courage”, like maybe she’ll actually have some character flaws and need to learn?? (maybe? hopefully?) i like everything i just said about king magnifico. i like that we have this blend of 2d and 3d animation, that’s such a clever concept for a “100 years of disney” celebration.

so yeah. i will be watching. never have i ever prayed for chris pine to save a movie, but today might just be the day!

[sleepynegress]

Meta About How Fandom Dishonestly Talks About Wanting "Queer (It Only Counts When it's White Male!) Rep"....

Fandom always looks like fandom...

The above tweet is dishonest. They are only talking about the characters they want to see be gay or queer in media, coincidentally white men. Mind you, Loki said he was into men and women in his show, they had bisexual lighting, and classic queerbait w/ Morbius and (sorry shippers but I gotta be honest about just my opinion, continue to ship away tho) ZERO chemistry with Sylvie. ...A lot of fandom ate that bait up back in the day, because that's as far as the media for these fandoms would go, back then. Given that Wiccan literally only just appeared with zero indication of his sexuality in MCU, beyond the character himself being portrayed by a gay actor (which I've written can be limiting as an assumption for gay actors, shout out to J Bailey playing love well, regardless), and having in-community affect (if there is a more appropriate term, let me know). Loki, if we're judging them by the same rules... And really, Loki is ahead since he outright said he likes both... The big difference I see is Loki gave classic queer (Disney) villain "coding" which is based in times when queerness wasn't allowed to be played outright as much, while Wiccan is simply giving gay teen existing. So, about that queer rep in the MCU... You mean Phastos and his whole husband and kids in The Eternals?

or Ayo literally being kissed by her partner in Black Panther 2 but we know it only counts to fandom if it's a white male... *sideeye* There's Val and her big gay energy... Hell, Taika went as far as cutting out some tongue action with Thor, which kept her bi much less obvious, and pushed the sapphic energy much more forward:

*the difference between coding and bait is these two confident acts, the second while winkingly gazing at the audience for a beat vs. Carol and Maria's "gal-pal" montage...it don't always have to be intimacy with the same sex* All this to say, you cannot claim to honestly want queer rep while ignoring explicit queer rep that ain't white male... because then it's obvious that you just want to see white gays in a hot make-out session... Which IMO is just the fandom version of straight dudes watching two girls kiss, and that ain't about rep, especially when deeper rep already exists and you ignored it. As for Loki, to me he always came off sort of vaguely slutty/flirty when bound, hit, or challenged in some way.

His energy has always been that, but I will give you, that the only person Loki actually *penetrated* onscreen was a man... not Mobius, but Agent Coulson... Once again, it's coding.

As for Wiccan, I think it's too early to say what the MCU will do rep-wise. YES Agatha All Along is giving EXPLICITLY gay energy. And yeah he's a gay character played by a gay actor, but will he get to be explicitly and honestly be attracted to another boy onscreen? I hope so for him, it would be qt and I would be chin-hands all the way for it.

...But again (same show!), I feel the same about Agatha and *spoiler*I know who Aubrey Plaza is playing but I'll be quiet *spoiler*

[simpingforcys]

First of all, your writing: hot 🥵 Just read your latest spicy Drabble 10/10 you cooked and I will definitely come back for second helpings.

Also, I know people like the idea of King Candy / Turbo as gay, but I’m a pan sexual King Candy truther. You cannot convince me that this touch staved mess of a man would not be down, to get down, with anyone that would validate his ego and be willing to take him to bed.

I was in a mood and when I'm in a mood, well that's what this blog was made for 🩷 BUT ALSO THANK YOOUUUUU I'm glad yall enjoy my rambles<3

I can definitely see why people (mostly, it seems) HC King Candy/Turbo as gay or even trans, like I get it, he's got that ✨flare✨ that highly resembles the classic Disney villain energy which was characterized even back then as queer coding (and why they're so memorable), but me, as a poor little bisexual panic simp, I could see him going both way SPECIALLY AS YOU PUT IT. This man is TOUCH-STARVED with that level ego. The fact there's no allusion to it because his main 'love' is racing and winning, if someone were to straight up FLIRT or touch this man romantically, he's just like "wait hold up-"

Even in Magical Kingdoms he admits he isn't the most 'marketable' (though his original cabinet image might say otherwise??), I think he LOWKEY MIGHT have image issues? I mean he made himself A KING with his face splattered on the environment. Butter him up with flirting, compliments, praising, maybe a little teasing~ this man becomes a flustered confused mess and I will take that to my grave.

I also try to make my Canon x Reader drabbles as gender neutral as I can. If it's male or female specifically, I will put it into the title, but I do try to let it be as 'vague' to let the reader use their imagination as well.

[nite-puff]

Hey hey your idea about Daiya being a closeted animator making the queerest character he could with Mondo sent me down a mental rabbit hole (pun unintentioned haha). It made me think of Andreas Deja, gay Disney animator who did and still does a lot of stuff for the company, but one of the things he's most famous for is for being the supervising animator on the queer-coded villain trifecta of Gaston, Jafar, and Scar. That made me think about Mondo in the context of the AU and how Ishimondo in canon has that sort of enemies-to-lovers thing going on. So, thought..... what if Mondo was never made to be Kiyotaka's love interest at all, but his queer-coded antagonist? And offscreen the queer-coding that was baked into him for a gag (or at least with the excuse that it's a gag) blossomed into something deeper with his cartoon co-star?

THATS SUCH A GOOD IDEA WHAT????

maybe they had something that was overall very similar to the ishimondo story, where their pre-determined roles as a protagonist and antagonist kinda affected how they viewed each other off set as well. because that’s how they just are outside of their cartoons as well. they were literally made to hate each other. but push comes to shove and they end up in a situation where they’re pretty much forced to spend time with each other and learn about each other beyond their roles as hero and villain. and the result of that was a cute friendship. which quickly developed into something more.

also. their relationship progressing like this really affected how they performed in their cartoons. they can’t even pretend to hate each other anymore because that’s not how they feel. it’s mondo and taka, what’re ya gonna do??

eventually the studio gets sick of it and has to make the decision to separate them, at least on set. they can’t just let go of their star, so they’re forced to fire mondo and replace him with a new antagonist. which is how mondo ends up performing in night clubs and such. his iconography is bound to attract a lot of patrons, to say the least.

all in all, mondo and taka’s love story is one the film world has never seen before. there’s never been a toon couple that wasn’t previously written to be together, let alone a hero and a villain falling in love off set. it’s a rare occurrence, to say the least, but mondo and taka wouldn’t have it any other way.

(also mondo being a villain and him also being queer-coded during a time where i believe the hays code was in full effect was definitely a big contributor to why so many people found it easy to believe mondo was cheating on taka right??? i mean, if we’re going in the direction of the original movie…)

anyways, happy pride month to them.

[mickeyeyesarts]

My Wish-Nimona Conspiracy Theory

*This is completely speculative and I'm sure can be proven wrong by some research but I'm not going to do that*

My theory is Disney tried to kill 2 birds with one stone when they shut down Blue Sky 1. To cancel Nimona 2. To use the assets/ideas from Nimona

Saying something like this is pretty controversial I get it but here's my evidence: 1. Both the movies are the only ones who use the same new type of artstyle, that being 3D blended with Watercolor. Nimona's style was literally achieved by repainting everything to give it that storybook-esque aesthetic.

2. Ballister and King Magnifico look way too similar. To that I say Ballister's design has been in the works since at least 2016.

Obviously Ballister is far more well executed and superior than Magnifico, but that's not the point of this post.

But Ballister is designed to look like a generic villain, down to the facial hair, the scar, ...the queer-coding, but if Magnifico's design is not copied then he just looks and acts like a generic sexy villain. So its either copied or its lazy, you decide which is worse.

3. This the point that made me want to write this post, that is in the concept art of Wish, the Wishing star was a shapeshifting boy.

Now its entirely possible that Disney was just Lazy and chose to go with a marketable plush than a well flushed character as it save time and brings money. But it is not completely absurd to think that Disney chose to copy this idea from Nimona, and that they had to do damage control when they realised Nimona is getting released, that too before their own movie and hence this was done to avoid being accused of plagiarism. If you want to get technical and if this was Disney's intention, to get rid of the studio and the movie to use its assets, it is theft. Again all of this is speculation.

And if they had gone with Star boy, that would have been far too many coincidences to not raise any eyebrows. So now its upto you to decide: Was it Disney's intention to copy Nimona from the beginning, or is it just a coincidence? But that's just a theory...

[amuseoffyre]

Looking through your Ned Low tag brought me to the Ratigan post, which reminded me of the issue I have with TGMD: not only the implication that Ratigan is "wrong" to try to move upward socially, but the fact that Basil is never (IIRC) called out for what very much amounts to a racist remark (calling Ratigan a "filthy, disgusting sewer rat"). Plus, Ratigan is visibly not of the dominant race of this setting, and is shown descending into animalistic behaviour when enraged. Or am I overthinking?

There are definitely elements in there because Disney does love itself a binary and Othering by making him a different species is... yeah. Like Zootopia with the carnivores versus the herbivores.

There's also the fact that rats have always been villainised in the media in a way that mice aren't. Mice are cutesy animal friends and helpers and sweet (see Cinderella, the Aristocrats, the Rescuers, Fievel etc) but rats? Very very rarely anything more than vermin, even though they're not really that different.

But bringing this back to Ratigan, more than anything, he's one of their extreme queer-coded villains of the 80s/90s Disney set (see also Ursula and Jafar). He's histrionic, melodramatic, over-the-top, a camp theatrical character who seems like he should be harmless and nonsensical, who dresses up and tries to act like one of the mice, and in reality, he's some kind of dangerous vermin out to corrupt their lovely civilised society 🙃

But, to be honest, he's also one of my favourite of the Disney villains because Vincent Price had such a joyful time creating him. Shout out to a theatrical queer actor who brought that energy to the room and made him so much more interesting than he might've been.

[wisteria-lodge]

Sorting Gaston

Up until now, all the Disney villains in my little project been criminals, loners, weirdos, or some combination of all three. Gaston is notable for being none of those things. He is a popular community leader, extremely Establishment, always surrounded by people. He’s also our first explicitly sexist villain (“It’s not right for a woman to read. Soon she’ll start getting ideas and… thinking.”) Belle is, of course, disgusted by this. And that’s the problem. The question here is why has Belle specifically gotten under Gaston’s skin so badly that he has to marry her… when he probably could’ve married all three of his blonde groupies at the same time. Like... Belle isn’t THAT much more beautiful. 

At first I thought it could be an insecurity thing… but... Gaston isn’t insecure. So I think it’s more ideological than that. Belle is a rebel who mocks and rejects Gaston's idea of an ideal community, and that is incredibly disturbing, and threatening to him. In kind of a twisted way, the best way to deal with this is to marry Belle and you know - slot her into the established system. Bring her in line. Gaston handles “crazy old Maurice” the same way, by getting corrupt authority to throw him in the insane asylum. 

I separated this out from my other, goofier Disney villain sorting, because when talking about Gaston I really wanted to bring up Howard Ashman, the creative force behind the film, who died of AIDS before it was finished. And it’s easy to see some of his experience in the ‘monstrous,’ ‘unlovable,’ shunned Beast, and the rule-breaking “peculiar” Belle who just wants out. Ashman drops lyrics like “We don't like / What we don't understand / In fact it scares us” during Gaston’s villain song, and that’s some pretty real stuff. Andreas Deja, who designed and animated Gaston, is also gay, and I think it’s so interesting that Gaston’s design went from REALLY queer coded at the beginning of production.

To the much *straighter* macho outdoorsman we have today. 

(also I want to throw in this amazing drawing I found on Andreas Deja’s website, where he’s shipping Gaston with another character he designed/animated.) 

But I’m still slotting Gaston into my system here, and for all those reasons - the community, the Establishment - I want to say that he is a Badger primary villain, and goes hard with Badger primary dehumanization in the way he interacts with Maurice and the Beast. He’s also a Lion secondary. Round up the troops, give them a rousing speech, charge in at the head of the forces. “Surprise Wedding” is also a comically Lion secondary beat. It’s actually kind of fun that he is a Badger Lion, since that is typically the Hero sorting. That’s the point of Gaston. He looks good. He looks like the hero at first… and then you think about him for five seconds.