#i was like “i think this is romantic subtext but maybe im just reading into things”

[yourhighness6]

The last thing I expected to be doing when I started watching the 3rd season of the mandalorian was ship DinBo but here we are

[ckret2]

i know you're reading the book rn, but i need to know is it true that bill has a redemption arc??? and that billford is canon??? I HAVENT GOTTEN MY COPY YET BUT IM SEEING OTHER PEOPLES COMMENTS AND POSTS ABOUT IT I NEED TO KNOW😭

As of the end of the book, Bill is in the process of being forced into a redemption arc. Please understand that I say that like "the airplane is in the process of being forced into a shoebox." It's not successful thus far and might never be successful from what the book presents. But the road is offered to him.

In my opinion, Bill & Ford's relationship is being written like a (mostly one-sided) romantic relationship (from Bill toward Ford), with multiple in-text parallels between how Bill talks about romance and how Bill interacts with Ford, and I believe the romantic coding is deliberate. I have not yet read something that explicitly verifies Romantic Emotions Are Happening and I don't expect to.

Like, we're at a point where Bill crushing on Ford has less textual support than Dipper crushing on Wendy, but more textual support than Tyler Cutebiker crushing on Manly Dan, and maybe even more textual support than whatever thing Dipper & Pacifica have going on.

It's left open-ended enough that you CAN go "Bill's just platonically obsessed with Ford and platonically trying to 'seduce' him and platonically heartbroken when Ford rejects their partnership after learning what Bill's up to." That is still an option. But this is some INCREDIBLY heavy romantic subtext.

At this point, "there's no romantic feelings on anybody's part here" is no longer the most default/neutral reading of Bill & Ford; it's gotta be, like, a choice. A choice that remains valid within the canon text, but still a choice.

So not "canon" as in "the word love is brought up between them" or "they were in a relationship," but "canon" as in "I believe wholeheartedly that the writer's intent was to make us think about a (toxic) romantic relationship when reading these scenes, whether or not such a relationship ever took place." The text doesn't quite go there, but it openly invites you to go there if you want.

I firmly believed the book wouldn't be any more billfordish than the show & J3 were—just some light, probably unintentional subtext. It completely blew past my expectations.

[oceanwithouthermoon]

okay some people genuinely really need to accept that the ONLY "queer coding" in saiki k is when they make gay jokes. there is NO other intentional queer coding, and i think people dont understand that claiming rep where it isnt there is much much more harmful than you think it is... just headcanon! its fun! you guys act like youre going to fucking die if you ship/hc something not canon, so you convince everyone that everything you say is canon ☠️ its literally insane

theres a HUGE difference between a headcanon or ship having what YOU see as canon backing, and a hc or ship that is actually implied or canon...

the only ship that you could argue is implied in saiki k is terusai, thats literally it, you could potentially make an argument that yumekai could be reciprocated towards the end, satoumiya, or MAYBE mikosai, but im pretty sure thats it...

nonbinary saiki is one of my personal favorite headcanons (one of the only ones i pretty much ALWAYS have in mind when talking or writing about him, it's practically a given) and i think it has pretty good canon backing, but its not ACTUALLY implied.

hes FAIRLY certain that his biological sex is male, and all evidence points to that, but he doesnt know and specifically says that he doesnt know what his true gender is... he clearly has absolutely zero discomfort with masculinity OR femininity, doesnt know or care about his gender, and is comfortable with either sex... he seems very happy to just be either...

seems like pretty solid evidence, but you also have to realize that there is literally zero chance that the author intended for saiki to be read as nonbinary, or trans in any way, this was literally just an excuse for plot and to have a reason to take advantage of his shapeshifting to do crossdressing/genderbend chapters ☠️ i love to see it as him being nonbinary and i think it has a lot of backing, but its not canon or even "implied" at all.

theres a lot of other examples of this kind of thing in this fandom, like theres a lot of people who claim that kubokai are queer coded (its usually just a joke when people say things like "hehe my ship is so canon" but im talking about like... people who see yumekai and go "um 🤨 this is LITERALLY homophobic because erm um kubokai are basically canon and queer coded and you shipping one of them with a WOMAN is HOMOPHOBIC" lmfao) and i am actually just not even sure where this comes from because they dont have anything that can even be twisted into romantic subtext, theyre just a popular ship because they have a good friendship. which is great! but theyre like the LAST thing i wouldve expected people to claim as implied or canon. they are absolutely not. the only thing i can even think of that might make people think that is saiki saying they look gay in that one chapter ☠️

[kindlespark]

this is gonna be SO long and rambly sorry anyway i saw a post abt how babel does queer characters and it got me thinking abt why the tropes it uses would usually turn me off other stories but didn’t here

MAJOR BABEL SPOILERS //

i feel like i’d be more mad abt how robinramy ended up in babel if it marketed itself as queer lit at all or if its fans were going “WOW AMAZING QUEER REP” abt it. but no one told me any of that, so finding out they were gay was just a fun little bonus surprise to me. i get why ppl are eh abt robinramy not getting together/technically still being subtext (which i dont think is really true btw like the book literally says “robin was falling in love” but idk i guess if you were stupid you might’ve assumed that it was falling in love with oxford given how romantic some of the other language is (WHICH IS ALSO THE POINT bc i think robin’s friendship with ramy blurring into romance is why he romanticised like all his friendships/experiences in oxford BUT IM GETTING OFF-TOPIC)). i just think robin’s repression abt being gay was intrinsically tied to his attitudes on imperialism (wrt refusing to acknowledge anything that complicated his life until it was too late) and i don’t consider it a cop out or queerbait. like i genuinely don’t think robinramy could ever have gotten together without drastic alterations being made in terms of plot and character. plus i think it’s clear that kuang didn’t want to write a story with any kind of focus on romance at all, because it’s not that kind of book. there’s no successful het romance either, so it grates a lot less. the only reason romance is included at all is to show the ways in which white entitlement manifests. so the tragic way robinramy played out just made sense to me.

and i speak as someone who accidentally spoiled myself on You Know What in the middle of reading and i was like ugghh boooo dreading it the whole time expecting to roll my eyes when it happened but then when it did i was like. wow im actually not that mad LMFAO 😭😭😭 actually thematically the book sets it up so well that i believed that this was unfortunately the only way it could’ve gone. babel is about the loss and tragedy and grief that colonised people experience. it’s about the lengths people will go to to uphold empire and the lengths ppl will go to to tear it down like idk 😭 i guess it is bury your gays but it didnt bother me this time because i thought it fit thematically ❤️ i enjoy tragedy as a genre a lot and i would’ve made it gay anyway you know. thanks rf kuang for doing it for me so i didnt have to.

WHICH IS ALL TO SAY that i guess if you’re going into babel for the queer rep without appreciating that the story is fundamentally a tragedy it would feel like it’s just reusing tired tropes….. but i think the choices kuang made were rly deliberate and not in a way that feels like trauma porn or shock value. the book is fundamentally about the struggles of poc so the layer of queerness that was introduced felt like a subtle extension of the experiences of characters of colour in the book, and i enjoyed and related to it as a queer chinese person who kind of realised they had to prioritise their fight for the liberation of poc over queerness mainly because the idea of western queer liberation cannot be dissociated from imperialism and many aspects of homophobia as we know it was an export of christian european empire into our colonised countries in the first place and FUCK THIS IS A WHOLE OTHER TANGENT ABOUT HOW I THINK RAMY AS A CHARACTER IS EMBLEMATIC OF THE TENSION AND STRUGGLE THAT QUEER POC DIASPORA HAVE BETWEEN OUR IDENTITIES GODDAMNIT OK FORGET IT POST CANCELLED i just rly think babel’s handling of queer characters is fine and makes sense and i like it personally and maybe i will make a coherent analysis about it one day but that day is not today byeeeeeee

[just-call-mefr1es]

cupioromantic titania

HEAR ME OUT HEAR ME OUT-

so like, im sure its obvious that solarballs wants to make titanic (titan x titania) a canoj ship, deapite their like,, four one-on-one interactions. i have nothing ahainst the shippers, adtually, most titanic shippers ive met r really chill/cool people!! i jus think the ship felt forced,, not even a little. like, really forced. but hey, this isnt a titanic slander post, this is about titania

first off, cupioromantic people are people who desire a romatntic relationship, but dont feel any romantic attraction whatsoever. how does this fit with titania? cue her and titans first interaction. barely any romantic subtext aside from deimos’ inner wattpad demons. so now, lets say deimos’ words got into titania’s head, and suddenly she’s like ‘oh, relationship with titan?’ she doesn’t feel that much of a connection to him (because agian, BARELY ANY INTERACTION) but she does think ‘maybe i could get with him? i dont really like him like that but he does seem like a good partner and could probably help me out..’ sometime later (because i dont think she would have immediately jump to the relationship thought).

and then this continues! looking at the other moons of uranus’ actions, they seem really into titanic because thw wattpad demons are contagious, apparently. usijg the power of delusion, i think they (as in other uranus moons) kinda pressured titania into wanting to be with titan after the moon revolution. this probably made titania a lil pressured, and her previous thoughts from ewrlier about thinking ‘hey, he could be a good partner’ didnt make it any better.

so what does she do? she gives in.

girlie probably forced herself to think she has feelings for this dried olive (sorry titan i actually love you💔) so that she doesn’t have to overthink anymore because her mind’s alrady pretty full of thought. she makes herself think that she’s inlove with him so that the others could be pleased, when in reality, she only likes the thought of them together. i think that sometimes shed like a little help, and she thinks that titan can be that help, i guess.

lpng story shotrt, titania thinks a relationship will help her feel less pressured at times and therefore convinces herself that shes inlove with titna.

okay, im not sure if that explained my thoughts well😭😭 reading back i do not. think it did, so if u think it didnt, just take the hc and run lmao🤕🤕 this was a hc ive been thinking about ever since moon club first dropped and only had guts to share it on the day after canada day at two in the morning (no joke), so uh yeah. please dont yell at me😜

[eddiediazismyhusband]

Hi! A bit of a weird ask here, hope you don't mind. (I swear it's not meant in bad faith)

So, I'm new to the fandom. I'd wanted to watch the show for a while and I finally found time. I did like it, and all the characters, esp Hen and Buck.

Even previous to watching it, I had seen many posts about Buddie. I didn't think much of it until I watched the show. And now I can say... I don't see it. Like, from Buck's side? Sure. But from Eddie's? Not so much.

They both clearly act like Christopher's co-parents a lot, and that's where I'm like "oh, maybe there IS something". But outside of that, I actually see their interactions as mostly platonic. And when I see people talk about it, I see mostly about how Eddie completely trusts Buck with his son (which I agree with and makes a good point), but not much else.

So, what am I missing? Sometimes some characters are harder for me to "read", so I know there could be stuff that I'm missing. What interactions do you see from them that are so clearly romantic (at least more so than they are platonic)? In which ways do you see Eddie showing feelings for Buck?

Sorry about such a long ask. This might be more of a rant (oops). I just really want to understand, bc everyone's so sure... and I'm not. (Also, thanks for reading if you got this far)

So i’m obviously not going to tell you thst your interpretation is wrong- art is subjective and your interpretation of things is completely valid.

that being said, to me i see myself in eddie in a lot of ways:

- only son in the family, so i had unrealistic expectations fixed on me about what my life as a “man” should look like (im not a man, im nonbinary but i was still amab so to my parents i’ve always been a ‘man’)

- raised in a very religious household where there were certain expectations on who i would one day marry and have a family with (because not getting married at all and never having kids was out of the question)

- i was repressed for years emotionally (and sexually) due to pressure from my parents/church and thought there was something “wrong” with me for the feelings i felt

- i often revert to anger as my default defense mechanism because i have repressed my emotions for so long (which is something i am working through in therapy)

so seeing those things i relate to reflected in eddie, it is easy for me to pick up on subtext (whether intentional or not) when it comes to his sexuality/feelings for Buck.

you mentioned eddie trusting buck with christopher— to me this is one of the clearest examples of eddie’s true feelings for buck because he completely trusts the most precious thing in his life with Buck, but he has never even come close to that same kind of trust with any of his romantic partners… even shannon he was apprehensive about letting her back into chris’s life. this means he trusts buck on a level he has never trusted anyone else before— and not to get into psychology, but often when people are repressed emotionally, they find ways to feed those feelings without overtly feeding them if that makes sense. so eddie giving chris (who is practically his whole heart) to buck is essentially eddie offering up his heart on a platter.

so that gets that one out of the way.

as for other examples… i am going to state again that eddie is more repressed than buck and doesn’t show emotion as easily as buck does so Buck’s attraction/feelings are going to be more clear-cut and obvious.

but i am constantly seeing examples of eddie’s feelings for buck interwoven subtly through things:

- crying over buck after the lightning strike when we had only ever seen him cry twice before

- the hurt in his face when buck said natalia was the only person who “saw” him

- the way that he gets overly jealous and acts petty around buck’s romantic partners (the most egregious being Taylor, but we have seen it happen in his other relationships as well)

- the fact that he has never been able to fully allow himself to have feelings for the women he’s dated

- he is looking for a mother figure (second parental unit for chris) but has already effectively filled that role with buck

- he is constantly looking at buck like he hung the stars and the sun and the moon

- he has only started going off the deep end of this fixation with shannon after buck came out to him, and he is onyl actively remembering their relationship as what he wished it had been rather than what it was— something i used to do back when i was still in denial about my sexuality was imagining this dream life where i was happily married to a woman because that is what i was supposed to want, not because it’s what i actually wanted

- eddie is the only one who has shown he understands buck’s recklessness is less him being reckless/thinking he’s unbreakable, but that it’s actually buck seeing himself as invaluable enough that getting hurt wouldn’t affect anyone around him

- one of my favorite scenes is post lightning-strike when eddie climbed the ladder and instead of trying to lower buck to the ground immediately, he initially tries to pull buck closer to him while screaming for him

the list could go on and on and if anyone else wants to leave their observations on eddie’s feelings for buck in the replies by all means please do! but these are just a few ways in which i have personally seen eddie’s devotion to buck portrayed in a light that is much deeper than a platonic level.

i hope this made sense and offers a new perspective for you, and i’m glad that even though you haven’t seen enough evidence in your own interpretation, your first instinct isn’t to jump down people’s throats to tell them they are wrong, but instead reaching out and asking for other opinions to better contextualize why us buddie shippers are so invested in these two!

(and never apologize for a long ask to me… if there’s one thing about me i love to yap lmao)

i hope you have a lovely day, anon!! 💕💕

[sammygender]

hi.. erm im back (anon from the last 2 asks) (im too scared to un-anon sorry) i want to ask (another) genuine question abt wincest because ur the nicest person ive ever met who's willing to talk abt it from both sides.

i guess i just don't get why people ship wincest? background: im aromantic and have a hard time understanding certain shippy stuff, but i do notice alot of arophobic statements in regards to the evidence given as to why people ship. ex: a lot of "brothers don't look at each other like that." type things. (which i know is not wincest exclusive and is often used by destiel shippers too)

also i notice alot of people being quite amatonormative (definition: the assumption that all human beings pursue love or romance.) so it's hard to even take wincest shippers seriously when all their evidence tends to be perpetuating arophobic sentiments and stuff.

we can all agree that their relationship is seriously unhealthy. but i just have a hard time with it being even borderline incestuous. i also really like the idea of relationship anarchy (definition: relationships within this structure are fluid, and therefore have no solid differentiation between sexual, romantic, or platonic relationships.) so to me it's like. well it's platonic because they say it is? only the people within a relationship can determine what that relationship is and they have?

anyways i know im throwing a lot of words and definitions at you. you're just extremely helpful to talk to and i like what you have to say, so id be extremely interested in your opinions about this.

hi anon!!! im so sorry i literally yapped like crazy in response to this. had no idea i was capable of this much thought on this topic. everything is under the read more

TLDR for the TLDR: for me the 'borderline incestuous' nature of their relationship isnt actually the way they act with each other cause i do think boundaries of romantic/platonic r weird and fake (tho by normal 'societal standards' sam and dean r strange). its more the framing of it by the narrative and genre conventions of spn as a horror. i think. <3

everything im abt to say has been written on at length by much smarter people than me - if ur interested i probably have reblogged other peoples posts on similar topics and tagged them somewhere under #poison in the water and maybe #she walked in on us. i am SO sorry for the mountain of yap you have unleashed.

before i rly start, re: talking abt the concept of wincest from different angles/sides - its honestly so totally beyond me why people dont actually DISCUSS this stuff more. ofc wincest shippers are sometimes obnoxious when they go ‘NORMAL BROTHERS DON’T ACT LIKE THIS!!!’ over anything (like i personally don’t like the whole ‘sam and dean are OBVIOUSLY in love because they bring each other back from the dead!!’ thing. like why is that romantic. i’d try my hardest to bring my siblings back from the dead too.) but like u said pretty much all shippers do that. i think people are (UNDERSTANDABLY) squicked out by the idea of incest, even fictional, and have an immediate kneejerk reaction when people ‘corrupt’ their favorite characters by talking abt it in relation to them. and i completely understand just not wanting to engage with readings you find uncomfortable or odd!! TV can just be escapism there’s nothing wrong with that!! but i tend to find immediate negative reactions against anything that even ACKNOWLEDGES the incestuous subtext in spn uncharitable and annoying. for one, incest is a real thing that happens and its not shipping goggles or creep behavior to look at fiction through the lens of it, just as its not whatsoever unreasonable to look at, for example, the azazel demon blood storyline as a CSA allegory (again of course all this is real heavy and just one interpretation and absolutely no hate for fans who like… just don’t want to think like this <3). for two, i do think there is an undercurrent of it written into supernatural with intentionality to further the themes of familial horror.

so to kind of…. explain i guess… why i say i can see canonical backing for sam and dean’s relationship as incestuous or incestuous-adjacent (lol), i have to go back to the general incest subtext in supernatural as a whole, from a completely academic-interest and not at all shippy way. like i said ofc SPN is primarily a show about FAMILY HORROR - ‘family is hell’, to quote eric kripke in the pilot commentary. or at least this is how i view it; a lot of destiel fans, for example, tend to see it more as…. idk really, i don’t claim to have much contact with them, but certainly not usually a horror. an action-adventure. a western. a story about a Tragic American Hero (sorry im being tongue in cheek and bitchy). i think viewing the show with a sam-focused lens tends to make you view it as horror for… a lot of reasons which i won’t get into here. but i PERSONALLY - getting off track here, sorry - view it as horror. that’s what he originally intended, and it’s what supernatural is most successful at doing. and incest in horror, especially gothic horror, especially gothic horror about the family and the home, is well-trodden territory (where’s my essay from last term about incest in wuthering heights where i somehow ended up, while researching, on an essay about wincest itself). - and supernatural is full of allusions to it. azazel’s silhouette in the pilot as intentionally strikingly similar to john’s, when he first feeds sam demon blood (framed as a CSA allegory, whether intentional or not). then azazel actually possessing john later. mary making the deal that dooms her family for years after via kissing her father on the mouth. hunting portrayed as something abnormal, irregular, taboo in direct opposition to a ‘normal family’ (tho abuse also comes from the nuclear family etc etc). then you can look at sam and dean specifically….

from the pilot, you have the woman in white telling sam, who has just left to go on a roadtrip with his brother, that he’s about to be unfaithful to jess; even if this could technically be said to be about the fact she then attempts to assault him (tho that doesn’t really fit with woman in white lore?? she goes after people who have already cheated…), it’s still portraying jess and dean as innately in opposition, just as jess has to die in order for sam to join dean. all the loaded lines about ‘the way they were raised’ - dean telling sam he can’t escape it. supernatural is clear: the rot is IN the family.

OF COURSE all of this can equally just be about familial abuse!! and IS about familial abuse!! but the way the story unfolds DOES position sam and dean in…. shall we say Roles. sam is the feminised ‘bitch’ to dean’s ‘jerk’; they’re mistaken for a couple in 1x08, in 1x18, in 2x16, in s8; they’re compared to bonnie and clyde, to mallory and mickey, serial killer lover duos. crowley tells dean, ‘you’re lying to sam like he’s your wife’. dean says, at a later opportunity, ‘what about sam? does he want a divorce?’. an ANGEL tells their HALF BROTHER that sam and dean are ‘psychotically, irrationally, EROTICALLY codependent’. dean himself is unable to name what’s between them, explicitly saying ‘love, family, whatever it is’ (which is just SUCH an odd line. Like it’s love and family between you two Dean is it not??? Why are you acting like neither of those words describe it???). then there’s the way jensen and jared act it, their physicality, eg. sam looking genuinely like he’s about to pull dean in for a kiss during playthings 2x16… i also find the whole ‘brothers don’t look at each other like that!!’ annoying, but tbh, they do give each other wild looks sometimes. the end of wendigo sticks out to me whenever i watch it as a genuine ‘why is jared/sam looking at jensen/dean like that… what possessed him…’.

wait another addition - when i first wrote this i also totally forgot about 4x14 sex and violence, which iirc has dean’s siren, originally described only in terms of sex/romance, literally telling him ‘i should be your little brother’. of course the concept of a siren that isn’t really about sex or even romance is really interesting and one valid reading - and also lends itself to a reading of dean as aro which i rly like. but i don’t think that reading is any more or less valid than the more obvious one. (irrelevant side bar but there’s a 2003 sociology book about sibling incest that i read for an essay on wuthering heights called ‘Siblings: Sex and Violence and that makes me go ??? every time i think about the episode. Literally what. That has to be a coincidence. But??)

i think in regards to why people ‘ship’ wincest, a lot of it is of course just that they just kind of See It, for whatever reason. whether it’s the thematic (which i talked on at length already sorry <3) or just the way they look at each other or just because jared and jensen are hot or just because they think it’s really interesting to explore an added dimension to sam and dean’s already messed up relationship. same with destiel, same with sastiel, same with whatever, like u said. shipping culture in general IS hugely amatonormative - people love to declare wide statements about what people who are In Love do and don’t do, which are always silly and shallow. partly why i don’t really consider myself as someone who ships things in general.

i also totally agree w u that only people within a relationship can determine what that relationship is. im not aro but i also really like the concept of relationship anarchy. however, when i see the incestuous subtext between sam and dean, it’s more in a media studies way than in a way of analysing their actual Relationship (though to be fair i’m not a wincest shipper); eg. asking the question why is their relationship portrayed ‘like that’, and what does that say about the themes of spn itself. also it is just an interesting concept to a lot of people.

TLDR the reason i can view sam and dean’s relationship as borderline incestuous isn’t due to their codependency, or dean’s intense possessiveness, or how close they are, or because they spend all of their time together, or because they’ve brought each other back from the dead multiple times and get suicidal without each other. this is even though in our society all that together IS often coded as romantic/sexual and is definitely acknowledged in that lens by the writers (hence constant comparison of them to married couples) - because it could also just as equally be completely platonic and completely insane and the result of the world’s worst trauma bond (the latter which it CERTAINLY is <3). when i talk abt canonical backing for their relationship as borderline incestuous, it’s more about the narrative framing and context surrounding it. at the very least, their relationship is ‘abnormal’, deviant (meant in the most literal meaning as an digression from social norms); different from accepted ‘sibling relationships’, pointed out by the characters around them. <- none of this makes any sense but its 3am and im on tumblr so its ok.

feel free to dm also if u want to or just send an ask back!! and also ofc feel free to argue with/disagree with me in any way u like. or ask wtf i mean by anything cause i talk too much. tbh from what u say it sounds like u just don’t really vibe with shipping culture in general (might be an assumption sorry if so) which i totally understand/agree w. but i hope i answered ur question in some way somehow

[angstics]

nonsense deadpool & wolverine rant

ive been talking about deadpool 3 for days over on twitter -- which is a lot for a movie i was meh about and will forget in 2 weeks (like i have all other deadpool films). BUT i like thinking about how gay ppl & themes are treated in popular film and this is probably going to be the biggest "gay themed" film this year ... which is sad considering this is the year of 2 luca guadagnino films and monkey man and tv glow et al. anyhow. this was a big hit in fandom -- which should not be a surprise considering the mcu and comics fandoms. the "this was sooooo gay" response has been irritating, and so has the counter-argument. the text may not be a gay text but it DOES use gay elements in its text. like Obviously so. to the point that it's hard to discern whether it's appropriation or meaningful, a homophobic joke or somewhat earnest... and why???

part of it will always be the comic characterization of deadpool as a hypersexual pansexual freak who sexually harasses men because that has been deemed highlarious. there's at least one joke recycled (about being tied up together and getting an erection), replacing spiderman in the comics with wolverine in the movie. i can easily see straight men playing these jokes with each other -- i probably have on youtube. this is what makes the "you cant deny this is gay" thing fandom people say sooooooooooooooooooo annoying -- HOMOSEXUAL encounters are not limited to people with THE GAY GENE. straight men sexually harass their friends ("friends") all the time. allllll the time. what makes someone (and a relationship) gay is intention and affection and desire and identity and cultural place -- and a billion other things. there are many movies about two men (and less about two women) who everyone sees as super gay... defiant ones (1958) comes to mind since i recently was reminded of it. heat 1995, thelma & louise 1991. dead poets society 1989 also comes to mind. but no one Serious is claiming this is the dominant (as in "common") reading or INTENDED meaning -- no one is saying these are gay characters in gay relationships. they arent like fried green tomatoes 1991 or midnight cowboy 1969 or rebel without a cause 1955, where it was verifiably gay in some way.

there's a phenomena where a character / relationship (probably) wasnt supposed to be gay, but it came off that way UNDENIABLY because they borrowed too much from gay experiences -- like scream 1992, or very commonly in terms of trans experiences: psycho 1960, silence of the lambs 1991, synecdoche new york 2008. and fraiser lol. Every movie is different and has a different way of doing things which result in different suggestions and conclusions and interpretations and impacts. Big surprise.

deadpool 3 obscures these boundaries in this new pseudo-progressive age. but it is still inaccurate to pretend it was "gay coding" -- as in they were hiding a gay story via Big Subtext and using a straight story to sell a gay movie (which i have seen suggested the use of DP's ex). i cant fucking believe we're still doing destiel conspiracies. im sure stucky had a similar reaction this deadpool ship has (and the spideypool ship), but i think it is understood that Steve Whatshisname wasnt and would never be gay (Bucky could be, he has time).

the misunderstanding comes in the blurring. it's like in the middle of a political compass. ok fine i made one

some moments obviously meant to evoke a gay spirit: bar scene, car scene, madonna scene, "introducing the boyfriend" scene, the Appreciation of the Male Body & Fighting as Fucking theme (note that DP's lesbians were just standing there in 2 scenes?)

Deadpool (and Wolverine) really are pan: an alternate Wolverine is in love w the Mythic Hercules in a comic series (and maybe Cyclops? Subtextually? Throupley?). deadpool is well known in comics, but he does off-hand talk about having non-vaginal sex (? or masturbating?) in this movie

what is romantic is defined by DP's LI: the movie cant hide behind everything being a joke when it has a guiding emotional core consisting of DP's lost (female) love, who he can express affection and attraction to in both serious and comedic contexts

No honest romantic or sexual tension: i have seen movies with subtextual / coded tension and this doesnt have it. it's no popped champagne bottle, or face caressed in blood. there is also no story. i havent mentioned this yet but this movie has a really lackluster story between dp & wolverine that doesnt allow for much interpretation even in a platonic or narrative sense

all these things are true at once, and ignoring one aspect for another doesnt make sense of the film (and characters and audience reaction) as a whole. at the end of the day............. it doesnt matter........ i only really care about being accurate and respecting film history & gay history & continuing to call for gay gay gay stories in popular film. dp3 made a lot of gay jokes that were genuinely unexpected, so it isnt LE FOU 2. but it isnt the end of the line. this was a good thread that described the split well

[quillkiller]

do youuuuu…… can youuuuu…………. speak about rhaenicent…..??? pretty please <3333

oh god. you have no idea what you’ve asked for. they make me absolutely sick in the head. sick to my stomach. like im close to hyperventilating whenever a new episode drops…

like obviously im a rhaenicent girlie down to the bone but honestly ?? i genuinely see them as the unrequited trope. alicent being my repressed lesbian princess angel who’s in love with her childhood best friend who’s just so painfully heterosexual. yes, sadly rhaenyra gives me heterosexual vibes…:/ (however lets talk about the tension between rhaenyra and mysaria in the last episode.. i was going insane jumping up and down. so now i have to reevalute if rhaenyra is actually heterosexual to me or if she’s just not. in love. with alicent. violently throwing up at the thought like imagine you’re in unrequited in love with your childhood best friend but shes straight so whatever what can you do <- what she does is slut shame out of pure jealousy<3. but then shes NOT straight and she STILL doesn’t want you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lets all kill ourselves.)

something i also think about a lot is the scene in season one where alicient grabs the knife and attacks rhaenyra and yells ��WHERE IS DUTY, WHERE IS SACRIFICE? IT’S TRAMPLED UNDER YOUR PRETTY FOOT AGAIN,” <- pretty being keyword. alicent didn’t have to call her pretty but it slips out and they haven’t touched physically in years and there’s so much yearning and desire and resentment and hatred between them and alicent still calls her pretty. and maybe it’s supposed to be in a condescending way, it’s up to anyone to make their own reading of that, but to me it didn’t sound or land as an insult at all. it sounded impulsive and desperate and as if it just slipped out after alicent touched her again for the first time in years. just so much pent up internalized desire and resentment for her childhood companion :/ it also makes me think of the quote ’i confuse instinct for desire— isn’t bite also touch?’ by natalie diaz. makes me absolutely sick in the head

i genuinely, personally, can’t see alicent as anything other than a deeply repressed lesbian and like it doesn’t matter to me that she’s sleeping with crispy cole. to be honest it only helps my argument…. like rhaenyra lost her virginity to him and alicent is sleeping with him in the same sleeping quarters whete rhaenyra slept with him ??? thats genuinely SO interesting to me. i think both alicent and crispy are so deeply obsessed with rhaenyra and are projecting that onto each other. like rhaenyra will always be present whenever they’re together there’s just no way around that. i’d argue that they’re only attracted to each other because of rhaenyra. i had an argument about this a few weeks ago where someone said they dont think alicent is in love with rhaenyra / thinks shes in love with cole / thinks she loved viserys. like. alicent has genuinely only ever loved one single person (except her children but that’s different) and she only ever had one single meaningful relationship and that was with rhaenyra. like bruh be serious… how do you witness alicent having one single meaningful relationship throughout the series and go ’i actually think she loved viserys’. the homoerotic context is right there. but yeah heterosexual people couldnt pick up on queer subtext even if it hit them right in the face

however. i will say. i wouldve actually liked to see alicent sleeping with women/taking a woman as a lover this season and was sort of hoping for it :/ i would’ve liked it confirmed…. but yeah that’s wishful thinking and i doubt that’s going to happen :/ and besides. with how alicent actively denies herself pleasure i don’t think she ever would

anyway. i hate to say it. but i don’t think rhaenyra is in love with alicent. i know a lot of people think she is/read into it as if she is and like this is just me talking about how i personally see them. rhaenyra, to me, doesn’t read as having romantic feelings for alicent and it KILLS ME !!!!!!!!! because i WANT HER TO!!!!!!!! and it hurts SO MUCH !!!!!!!! and i WANT THEM TO KISS!!!!!!!!!!! but yeah. absolutely miserable. there’s just this, to me, disconnect between rhaenyra and her feelings for alicent. it doesn’t pain her in the same way it pains alicent. alicent genuinely can’t think clearly because of her attachment to rhaenyra, whereas rhaenyra can and always could. the codependancy was one-sided <- im going to Throw Up

that’s not to say rhaenyra didn’t love alicent, and maybe she still does. i absolutely think she holds love for alicent and deeply misses her…. i just don’t necessarily see it as romantic from her pov. :(

anyway. this is my phone bg:

[feelingthedisaster]

Hello hi. I have no idea anything about the fandom you’re in, however I recognize a few names based off of the stuff you reblog. Mainly Aaron and Neil, I believe. So for that ask about characters could you tell me a bit about (either of) them?

hiii <3 <3

okay, so a lot of yapping alert cause im obssesed with those two little guys

aaron

How I feel about this character: i cannot physically stop thinking about him. he invades all my thoughts. he is basically my head roomie at this point. he is such an asshole. i love him. he is not normal and trying so hard to be which its a fact i cannot get over. also, he is the funniest motherfuxker alive and has been way before the bonus chapters, finally some recognition to my boy

All the people I ship romantically with this character: katelyn basically and only. tho i've read kevaaron/katekevaaron fics but i dont really ship them i just think the fics are neat

My non-romantic OTP for this character: hmmmmmmmmmmm. so hard to choose. i think he has a lot of potential with matt for a super cool friendship. i have him and andrew's sibling relationship rotating in my brain 24/6 (saturdays are aaron only) but the neilaaron bestfriendisims are so funny to read idk. AND nicky god. i need to crack open his parent-esque/cousin relationship. its impossible to deffine by normal standars, calling them cousins feels like it isnt enough and parent figure doesnt fit but they are family, and technically blood family but they are actually found family and and and

My unpopular opinion about this character: this opinion has actually becoming less unpopular since nora had to write text of the subtext but he isnt as homophobic as people make him to be. like, he isnt disgusted/feels hatred towards homosexuality he just dislikes neil and doesnt like the oversexualizating comments nicky makes. bc i mean, love nicky, but sometimes they are a little bit much. and yeah, he has internalized homophobia, he has even admitted it but i dont he externalizes it. the thing with neil is dislike towards neil/getting a reaction out to break the bros before hoes deal. (sorry i love calling it the bros before hoes deal its so funny, its their fault)

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i want to see him break. like for real. super ugly. gimme whump. . gimme failing everything he work for. gimme relapse. gimme all the bad things that could happen and worse. (except the trial going badly, i cant handle that)

neil

How I feel about this character: neil josten neil josten neil josten neil josten neil josten. i cannot describe him. he is such a concept. i devore it like i've never eaten before. he is a bit of nathaniel and a bit of neil and he is both and he is all and he is everything. and he is a lie but its all true. and he doesnt care but he cares very much. he manipulates like he breathes and he crimes like its in his blood but that bad but that has a benefit but no no thats not. god. he sees people, he helps, he is a sweetheart with who he cares/needs but can be the absolute worst if he needs it. like, like, he makes me insane. i cant form coherent thoughts about him

All the people I ship romantically with this character: andrew. and that kinda it. maybe kandreil in a weird queerplatonic way but not romantic with kevin but like yk

My non-romantic OTP for this character: kevin. and jean. and dan. and wymack. and idk, everything and everyone. all his interpersonal relationships are so interesting to me.

My unpopular opinion about this character: i can remember anything right now? maybe like i dont like him and andrew getting married but idk.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: mental health. shit has to affect him. he will never go to the therapy, its neil cmon, but that doesnt mean that shit doesnt happen and that his mental health is pristine and that there arent other things aside therapy. like, i want to explore more of everything that happened in the books affect him mental health-wise. not like a diagnosis/recovery but more like an exploration of his intricate issues

[olderthannetfic]

The “noncanonical pairings are usually wish fulfillment” thing is so bonkers because there’s so much variety in terms of what is “non canon.” By the strictest definitions of canon, something like Anthy/Utena isn’t “canon” in the original anime series because they never explicitly say they’re romantic lesbian lovers or kiss (except in the ending theme, which people often don’t count), even though the entire fucking show is about that relationship and it makes significantly less sense if you interpret them in a platonic way. Same with something like Yuuri and Victor in Yuri on Ice. Most people would call those “canon” (I would with both) but I’ve seen people fight over it because it’s not “explicit enough.” A lot of people who are used to really didactic storytelling — which, lbh, is clearly a lot of people in fandom spaces based on the discourse that gets started here — don’t really know what to make of works like Revolutionary Girl Utena that rely a lot on symbolism and allusion, and in expecting their audience to do the work to meet them where they are rather than getting down to where the dumbest possible viewer is.

Then, on the next level, you get relationships that were built up to in some way, but then the writers later decided to take it another direction. You get ones that got a lot of subtext, but they were a same-sex relationship or an interracial relationship or something else taboo in a time before that was permissible in mainstream media of that kind. You get ones where it was the actors interpreting it that way, but not the writers; or the writers, but not the directors; or the directors and script, but the actor didn’t play it that way. (A good example of both of the last two examples: Garak/Bashir from Star Trek Deep Space Nine, whose actors have both admitted to playing them that way and supporting the ship, and where the creators have basically said they saw that there was something there but knew they wouldn’t be able to get away with that on a Star Trek show then.)

On the next level down, you might get something where it fits into a well-established romantic trope but the creator somehow has no idea of but the fans pick up on it — for instance, maybe they would only see it as romantic if it were between a man and a woman, but this is two women, and they don’t recognize how it’s going to look different to someone who is less heteronormative in their thinking. Maybe the creator just has such a strong bias against some particular combo of characters that they don’t want to acknowledge what they wrote by accident. (Like how J.K. Rowling was so mad that so many of her readers liked Draco Malfoy even though it’s pretty obvious to anyone else what’s so appealing about how she wrote that character, but for relationships rather than individual characters.)

And then of course, you do get some ships that are just completely out of left field, someone projecting a particular dynamic really hard that they wish was there on some characters that don’t have that kind of chemistry at all to anyone else watching/reading/etc. One of my fandoms had a really vocal group get really into a ship like that recently (because the person who started it framed it as “progressive” and herself as a bit of a BNF so a lot of younger discourse-addled people went along with it who also thought the more popular main ship was “problematic”) and it was annoying because they were so self-aggrandizing about how there was all this hidden subtext that no one but them was seeing because we were all less social justice enlightened than them or something. When it was really just that those characters didn’t have that dynamic at all, but they THOUGHT they should. There was a lot of hilarious misinterpretation of scenes that were in context, not remotely shippy, but one character was touching the other one very slightly or something.

But IME, those kinds of ships getting any kind of substantial following is rare. Most fairly popular ships that are non-canon, including pretty much every non-canon juggernaut ship I’ve ever seen (going back to DS9, Garashir is like 45% of the DS9 fanfic on AO3 last time I checked, so it’s definitely a juggernaut ship), there is at least SOMETHING there that comes from the original work. Even if it’s just “these two guys have the kind of buddy-cop dynamic that slash shippers often like to envision in romantic ways,” “this guy and this girl are the kind of lifelong childhood friends that we’re used to being romantic in anime like this so a lot of people started shipping them immediately,” “these two girls have the kind of Fuffy/Catradora/etc. friends-to-enemies-to-friends-again-to-lovers dynamic that makes a lot of femslashers lose their minds,” etc. Even with those three examples, while it may not be *intentional* on the part of the creator, it’s bizarre to say those people are “projecting” when they’re responding to those couples fitting into longstanding media trends that a lot of people identify. “Projection” to me is something like the earlier example I gave of the obnoxious people in my one fandom, where they are just determined to make some square peg fit a round hole because they’re desperate to have everything be round. And again, I don’t think that’s nearly as common as a lot of people, and especially salty het shippers who want to demonize the popularity of M/M or F/F in their fandoms, seem to think it is. (Also, like het-only shippers aren’t the ultimate in seeing romantic dynamics with every time a man and a woman are close at all, and throwing a fit when it doesn’t happen in canon, lol)

(I also think some of these people confuse the “projection” for people who are more dedicated rarepair shippers, where the motivation is often more “okay this might not be here but WHAT IF” than sincerely thinking the work is actually doing something that it isn’t really doing. Again, I’ve met people who are into rarepairs who just seem to have a really bad lack of understanding for what “subtext” is and confusing anything they wish was there with “subtext,” but I think those people are a rarity. For a lot of people who like rarepairs, the fact that it’s not at all what canon is suggesting is something they are aware of and that is The Point. It’s “I know the work doesn’t actually suggest this, but how can I change it so that it does”)

--

In my experience, that particular flavor of oldschool homophobe invariably ships tons of het that is not actually canon.

They just don't like it when 1. anything that's not their favorite gets popular and 2. people think a character could be queer without it being literally stated in the first episode/page.

[help-is-on-the-way]

Ive finally reread the Lemonade Mouth book and i have feelings. This may be long.

Ive watched the movie countless times since i was like 12, it has always been one of my favorite disney movies. I had their songs in my mp3 and at school i liked carrying my house keys around so i could pretend i was Wen in Turn Up The Music. Anyway. Ive always known it was a story adapted from a book. I remember buying it when i was like 16 after watching the movie for the bajillionth time. I never finished it. I remember the different POVs threw me off a bit and the language didnt make it any easier (english isnt my first language and the book has never been translated). My bookmarker said i made it to page 152. But i honestly did Not remember at all like 90% of the changes. So im like pretty sure i read it without Actually reading.

Anyway. Now im 24 and i rewatched the movie 3 nights in a row this week. And im way more well versed in english nowadays. So i decided to give the book another shot. Now, like i said, i have feelings. I read the whole thing in 2 nights. Im not sure what im doing right now and im sure im overexplaining things, as i usually do. But well. I think i wanna say some stuff.

First of all, after reading the book i can confidently say the movie is a pretty amazing adaptation. Ive always known that, but like, now i have undisputable proof. The way they made the story flow in just under 2 hours always baffled me. They got like 7 character stories going on and it never feels too much. And the changes from the book are mostly all understandable, and some of them i even like way better in the movie in my opinion. I mean. Except their appearances changes. I love Bridget Mendler as much as the next guy, but .. Fat Olivia wouldve been so cool to see. Especially considering the movie/book themes.

I remember whenever i rewatched the movie as a 18 year old and onwards, i always thought something along the lines of. Wow. For a movie all about revolution, and being a freak, and not conforming to the social mold, and being a minority in an elitist society - the lack of queer related stuff is so Loud. I guess it always disappointed me. Not that we are necessarily freaks, but well. Im sure we all felt like it at some point. I remember being angry about it, then. But i get it. Of course i always did, in a way. It was 2011 and it was disney. And im not stupid either. Stella is a glaringly obvious lgbt subtext allegory - maybe its the Hayley Kyoko in her, but they all knew what they were doing, i think. I can see that. Its subtext. I just cant help it but feel a bit disappointed that it isnt text too. I kinda always secretly hoped the book had something more in this subject. Dont get me wrong. Stella's character in the book manages to be even more marvellous than in the movie (an impressive feat). I was in shock that she was written explicitly and diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. Being a different but similar kind of neurodivergent myself, that was really cool and genuinely surprised me, as ive always related to the feeling dumb sentiments she has. But, you know. Still kinda made me sad. You could make the argument that she didnt need a romantic arc or whatever, cause she was going through a lot, blablabla. And, yeah. I agree with you. She was going through a lot. Thats kinda the point though. All five of them were. Its the whole point of their characters. Theyre all going through their own personal stuff and they got school problems on top of it - the band and their music is an answer to all of it. Im not saying she needed a girlfriend or anything. She didnt, and her character is one of the most fleshed out ones. I just cant help but wish.

Which then brings me to my next point. Honestly. I feel like the book had a lot more romance going on than the movie. In parts it was really sweet, and in others kind of annoying. The movie always made it very clear that Mo and Charlie wouldnt be a thing, and i come from that reality and mentality. So imagine my surprise when they are actually a thing by the end of the book. Idk. Ive always disliked Scott, and hated that he got in the band and played with them at the Madison Square Garden by the end. He never felt like one of the band, he never felt like a lemonade mouth. I dont think he ever really understood their struggles as freaks. At least not in my eyes. So he always felt a bit undeserving of his spot. He's there because of Mo, for Mo and Mo only. He's even more of an asshole in the book, so im glad hes not really brought up again after he tries to apologize and Mo says she isnt interested. I really like that this is what happens in the book. I might be too much of a Scott hater, but, yeah. I do like it. I dont think Mo shouldve gotten with Scott in the movie either. But i also dont think she shouldve gotten with Charlie, is the point. Sure, Charlie's character in the book actually puts in the effort to get to know Mo, he is sweet, he makes her feel listened to, and he tries to learn about her heritage and culture. He does not feel like hes in love with the idea of Mo (aside the first few POVs of him) (he quickly grows from that when they become proper friends). He loves her for her. And thats something i dont feel like it happens with movie-Charlie.

In fact, im gonna go in a bit of tangent here, i feel like movie-Charlie is the most not-book character of them all. Hes got the most background change, and most of the time he isnt seem doing much (most of his scenes were passed on to Wen - going with Stella to ask about the lemonade machine, being the one that's approached by Lyle when he sells the Lemonade Mouth Live at the Bash CDs, etc). When theyre deciding if they should become a band or not at the pizzaria, his coin flip in the book matters because thats heavily tied to his way of seeing the world and the universe. Tied to his belief that hes the wrong brother to have survived, so Aaron (heads) also deserves a chance to choose his actions for him, just as much as Charlie himself (tails) does. And thats explored time and time again over the pages. Its incredibly interesting and original. When they get rid of his dead twin brother, and build up a living-in-the-shadow-of-a-perfect-older-brother backstory for him, the coin flip just seems like hes an undecisive guy, who doesnt have a good reason to say No, but also not to say Yes either. And while thats fine, i guess... it just doesnt hold the same value narratively speaking. It just feels more shallow, like hes simply a more laid back guy - and although that is consistent, it just couldve been so much more. I do like movie-Charlie, but book-Charlie is way more interesting. His book appearance is more fitting too. Hes described as a regular chubby guy with unruly hair. I like that.

Anyway, back to the romance thing. Its fine i guess. Im mostly against Mo x Charlie in the book because it just kinda feels weird after watching the movie for 12 years. I liked the "friendzone" arc. Its nice when a boy and a girl can just be friends in media, no ulterior motives behind it (though that doesnt really happen between them either) (we see that more with Stella and the boys). Also because idk im not a huge fan of how Mo eventually came around and confessed to Charlie in the book. I know that theyre 14 but Charlie was still hurt by what she had said, and though she did apologize and admited that she screwed up, i feel like i wouldve liked it more if she explained to him what was going on through her head better. Like if she had explained to him what she had explained to the reader, that she was too preoccupied desesperately chasing after a future that doesnt belong to her, it kinda wouldve made it a lot better for me. Cause Charlie said multiple times that he was confused by the whole thing, and still hurt, but they kinda ignored that and kissed twice. And that was it, they were dating now. But then again, if they were able to express themselves that well, they wouldnt be 14 year olds.

And then on the other side of the romantic things going on theres Wen and Olivia. Ive always liked them as a couple since i was a kid. And their moments in the book were pretty fucking good. I love the subtle ways in which Wen slowly begins to pay more attention to her, and notice how his feelings toward her change, even though he doesnt really understand what they are. I lost my mind when in the beginning he described her eyes as a simple brown, but the next time it happens he sees that it has hints of yellow as well. And their fight scene ?!?!??!! Bro !!! The peak-ism of it all..... the way Wen crosses the street without Olivia, and theyre shouting while on different opposing sidewalks, with cars going between them, a clear and visual indication of this rift they suddenly found themselves in, and how sometimes they can think in opposite ways. Its so good. Hurts so well. And it gives more of a reason for Olivia to lose her voice as well, cause she had to yell over the noise and stuff. While in the movie she lost her voice over yelling two sentences while they were 2 meters away from each other, which always striked me as odd.

Speaking of which i feel like i have so much to say about Olivia, and at the same time so little. I honestly dont know which i prefer better, movie-Olivia or book-Olivia. From a poetic and creative standpoint, i really like that Olivia's POV throughout the book is told solely through her letters to her dad (+ Naomi at the end). Its very charming. But at the same time it also kinda feels like it hurts her characterization a bit in places. She tells stuff through a letter format to her dad, so at times it feels like she is withholding stuff while at the same time saying Much More than a 14 year old would say to their dad. And, granted, that does say a lot about her as a character, but you know. The point of different POVs is to explore the characters more. But because shes stuck telling the events to her dad, i dont feel like shes explored enough, it almost feels like shes only allowed to be his daughter - and it also feels forced at times when she tells stuff to him that i know just needs to be said for plot reasons. Which is a bit sad. I have the feeling that it is intentional, but idk. I feel like after 336 pages i still barely know her. We mostly get to know about her through other people - we basically only see Olivia [daughter] and Olivia [quiet friend]. I wanna see Olivia, dammit!!! It kinda sucks cause i love her and the book did not answer the questions i had about her. Shes the main singer, for goodness' sake !!!! And in the book nobody else sings besides her too.

This paragraph from one of Mo's POV kinda sums it all. Im stuck in a fence trying to understand if thats a good thing or not, when shes still a mystery even to the reader, only a 100 pages away from the end of the book. I want to know whats going on in her head so badly.

The exerpt kinda brings me to another point, slightly connected to the romance thing. The girls barely interact with each other. Of course we know they all become friends, and by the time the Halloween Bash is over and Nancy dies, Wen is already describing them all as a family in his POV. So we know they are all closer than they were before. From this point on they always describe themselves as friends, when before there was always an uncertainty over their relationship. But like, getting to my original point. The girls' interaction is scarce. Mo and Stella have the fight scene in the beginning, when the band first tried to make things work and they butted heads during practice. And then they get a descriptive paragraph soon after of the two of them having fun while reading a magazine and coloring the pictures with a pen after practice. After that, all of Mo's scenes are with Charlie, Naomi, or the other 4 as a band (or her dad). At the end Wen mentions that Mo gives him the "shovel talk" so he doesnt hurt Olivia by dating her. But we never get to see Mo and Olivia properly interacting one on one. The shovel talk isnt effective if i dont know the lengths that Mo would go for Olivia. I guess its fine narratively speaking, but like. I wanna see, you know. Olivia's scenes are even worse, theyre all either with Wen or the whole band. Olivia has more scenes with Sydney than with the other girls in her band. And its not just the girls, Wen and Charlie also never interact with each other. I feel like the focus in romance is greatly to blame for this. The movie lacks on this too, dont get me wrong. But its easier to convey their closeness to each other when there's a visual representation of them happening in front of my eyes and i can See them all interacting in between themselves without dialogue. Like Wen and Charlie singing the jingle of Rising Star together when they were in detention, or later on the two of them walking around school together. Or Mo hugging Olivia and standing close to her after Nancy died and More Than a Band happens. The whole More Than a Band scene actually, cause it kinda becomes a "silent" montage of them having fun together. Or having Wen with Stella when she realizes the actions of her consequences and suddenly the whole school knows shes the one responsible for cutting Mudslide Crush's set for the Bash in half. You know what i mean ?? As a big fan of found family i just kinda wish there was more of the rest of the relationships between the 5 of them. And in the book thats especially jarring. Which kinda goes back into the thing i said about Olivia's POV.

She wont write about these details to her dad. The only time she wrote in detail about a conversation was when she fought with Wen, cause she was venting about it to her dad. So we're kinda missing out on a POV that Could help bridge the band together in a way for the reader to see more clearly. Cause its obvious they love each other and theyre family, but we dont get to see much How exactly that happens. The cloud watching scene is like the main bonding moment in between the group and practically the only one we get to participate in. And it's not from Olivia's POV, it never is. Her cat died and we're told what happens through Wen's eyes. She has a "nervous attack" before the Halloween Bash to the point of puking and we're told what happens through Random Girl #6 That Just So Happens to Be Hiding and Eavesdropping in The Next Stall Over. She takes the band to see her dad in prison (a pretty big deal to everyone envolved) and, again, we're told through Wen's eyes. I wanna know what she was thinking !!!!! Cause its obvious it was hard for her to do that, and she had to prepare herself before even telling them where exactly they were going. What was going on through her head, then ?? Was she scared ?? Was she nervous ?? Was she thinking that maybe they wouldnt be her friends anymore because of it ????? We will never know, i can only assume stuff !!!!!!! And its really kinda frustrating. I wanna know for sure.

In the movie, Olivia's mom died when she was really young (young enough to not remember her face), and her dad "made bad decisions because of it". The way she talks about it makes it seem that immediately after her mom died, her father got into trouble with the law. So like her dad has been gone idk 12 years or something. She doesn't know him, doesn't know her mom. We're never told what exactly he did, and i kinda always got the impression that it was something bad, something that Olivia kinda resented him by, at least a little bit. I know she simply stated that she never wrote him back cause she didnt know what to say to him, cause he was basically a stranger to her. But you know. I feel thats enough to resent somebody, cause maybe she doesnt even know what he did either. If something like this happened in my family, i probably wouldnt know either. Not until i was like 22 and my aunt spilled the story while drunk during Christmas. The point is: its not the type of thing you tell a child - it's the type of thing the child quietly accepts as just a part of their normal life. So, at the end, she decides to give him a chance by writing a letter to him. I quite like that cause she was kinda doing the same thing that she fought Wen about. He never gave Sydney a chance, and she had never given her father a chance either. I like hypocrisy in characters cause it makes them complex. It makes the fight more interesting as well, cause otherwise its just suffering Olympics. And it hurts Olivia's character in my eyes cause thats really annoying and pointless. But interpreting it this way i can make more sense of it.

Book-Olivia, on the other hand. Her mother didn't die, she simply left. Olivia also does not remember her face. Her mom and dad had a teen pregnancy, the mom had drug problems and the dad already had minor criminal records. Mom left when she was 1. And her dad was a good father to her until she was 8. And she remembers that he was a good father. He had dreams of being an english teacher. And then he got fired from his taxi driving job, couldnt get another because of his past felonies, fell into old habits, and accidentally caused an old man to have a heart attack while attempting robbery with a toy gun. So he's in jail. And Olivia knows this stuff because she remembers. She was old enough to ask questions, to demand answers when her loving father suddenly wasn't coming home anymore. So she writes letters to him all the time, she keeps him updated on her life cause she knows he would like to be present, but can't. She also knows he made mistakes, and isnt looking for excuses for him. But he's a good father too. And she trusts him a lot. He's the person she trusts most in the world. So when she invites the band to visit him, she's trusting them as well.

Theyre similar backstories but also so different. Theres things i like about both. The Sydney-dad parallels in the movie are pretty good. Its what really sells it to me. The book's scene of the band visiting dad in prison is fantastic. I feel like the movie did a good job translating the book and adaptating Olivia's backstory. I quite like that the whole movie is Olivia's letter to her dad, telling him about her band. It's a pretty good way to tie her to her POVs from the book. ..I dont remember where i was going with this, honestly. I like Olivia. I may like movie-Olivia more just because, like i said, the hypocrisy makes her more complex. And book-Olivia is unfortunately a mystery i cant solve.

Mo's story is also pretty good in both. I feel like the only significant difference between book-Mo and movie-Mo is that Naomi's whole character is gone. So is her family owned store and the obvious religious references and practices, and Mo is seen doing less extracurriculars. So the illness she contracts before Rising Star in the movie feels less like a burn out and more like a really unfortunate coincidence - which lowkey sucks cause the burn out she feels is essential to Mo finally understanding that she cant keep overworking herself like this, which ultimately results into her coming to terms with the fact that she cant plan her whole future and expect it to not go wrong at some point. Cause that burned out Mo isnt the real Mo. Which then leads her to her confronting her dad. I understand why they cut Naomi out, but the fact that Mo had a pretty good friend before the band makes so much sense. She doesnt really struggle socially, its more that she has a family influenced plan for her future, and doesnt have time for other stuff (doesnt let herself have time for other stuff, especially after Scott). Mo in the book and in the movie do not feel like two different characters, it's more that the book has bonus content of the same girl. Its nice. Same thing with Stella and lowkey Wen, i think. And because of it i dont have much to say about Mo. Shes like Stella in the way that shes a very fleshed out character. Everything she does make sense. I highly recommend the book only for her POVs cause it touches her religion, faith and heritage in ways disney could never do cause theyre cowards. It really enriches her character. I love that even though she doesnt see eye to eye with her father, she still went and prayed with him. She doesn't hate her culture nor her religion. She values her family a lot and its especially telling in the book. I feel like thats a bit harder to see with movie-Mo.

Wen also feels like pretty much the same guy. In the movie they cut his pointless popular social hierarchy chase and replaced it with self absorbed jokes, which is important characterization nonetheless cause it tells the viewer that Wen isnt really insecure. In fact, id say he is very confident in himself. If he could, he wouldve named the band Wen. I dont think he is as confident in the book, but he also isnt trying to be someone he isnt, and you gotta be confident enough for that. He never tried to change who he is; he knows he is a weird guy but he thinks he still can be popular and That could work in his favor if he plays his cards right. But, through no fault of his own, he couldnt play them and thats why he fell so hard down the social hierarchy ladder. And he isnt happy about that. The Sydney situation in the book is a bit different from the movie, and way more awkward. Wen is described as being in love with her and the photographs he accidentally brought to school with him were Sydney's self portrait nude drawings. Its a very uncomfortable situation to everyone involved, including me that had to read and imagine it. I personally prefer the movie version of this cause it minimally touches Wen's problems with his mom leaving them behind and the impact it had on him. Sydney bothers movie-Wen so much because her presence is sudden, everywhere, and to him she's trying to replace something she could never be - his real mom. So he's angry and he lashes out. Thats way more interesting to me than having a teenage boy crush on your dad's 26 year old girlfriend. But i do like that he eventually realizes he grew out of it when Sydney starts treating him more "motherly" - fussing over his injury and offering him leftovers. It slightly-but-not-really touches the 'replacing his mom' role Sydney could have. Idk. Again, i like my characters when theyre more complex. Sure, the crushing on your dad's girlfriend brought him quite a lot of guilt, and that was a positive to me for his complexity's sake, but i feel like we already know so little about Wen's biological mom and how that affects him as is. Both in the movies and in the book, we're only told that she left them. Literally only that. I guess one could interpret it as she leaving them cause of a potential death, but i personally always saw it as abandonment. And something like that is ALWAYS gonna affect a child. At least movie-Wen touches a bit on how that affects Wen, and i like that.

Also wouldve it killed disney to give Wen his fucking glasses ?! Thats literally all thats different from his movie and book appearances and that kinda hurts a lil bit. Well, despite that Adam Hicks is kinda ginger and Wen is described as blond. But i dont think that matters much.

I guess to sum all this "character study" stuff up.

• Same character as in the movie but with bonus content: Mo and Stella.

• Movie has a different interpretation of the same character: Olivia.

• Movie and book got completely different characters they might as well have different names: Charlie. (and they do have different last names)

• Wen: Wen.

I do love the movie's songs cause theyre all a BANGER and i grew up listening to them. I just wish the book somehow had a CD built-in with their songs. Just so i could know what they sound like cause its REALLY hard to imagine. Especially cause the book gives us some song lyrics as well.

Anyway. Now to talk about the band itself. The book is interesting cause they all use unusual instruments: Stella plays an ukelele (she does know how to play electric guitar, but she ditches it for the sake of the band); Charlie's got a bunch of bongos and im-assuming-at-least-some-drum-plate-thingies; Wen plays the trumpet; Mo plays the big bass instrument that i forgot the name of; and Olivia sometimes plays an accordion + her voice. Olivia is also the only singer. I really like this cause its yet another reminder that those kids are weird. And thats CHARMING as hell !!! It kinda makes me sad that the movie didnt embrace these instruments cause im really fucking curious to how theyd sound together. Like, really, thats a big complaint of mine. Its such a weird mix of instruments that i really wish i could listen to them - its frustrating, even. I feel like that could change me as a person. Cause thats what so magical about them as a band. By all accounts they should not work well together, but they do somehow. Their instruments are a visual and soundful (?) (thats definitely not a word) representation of their weird friendship, its a reflection of it. Theyre all really different people but they somehow work well together. Theyre a family. And you cant separate them cause together theyre an unstoppable revolution.

One thing i really did Not like about the movie after having Book Hindsight, is the way the band reacts to Stella and the lemonade machine situation. In the movie it really feels sometimes that Stella is the only one that cares about that. Especially during the jail scene. I do love the Turn Up The Music callback but i HATE that they all blame Stella so blatantly and they never properly apologize. While in the book theyre ALL in this together, theyre fighting for what they believe in, and they never fault her for calling them and making them come to the school. Cause they all know its not just about the lemonade machine. Charlie does say in the book that "its just a stupid lemonade machine, Stella" but we know he doesnt really believe in that because of his thiughts. Its a half-hearted statement cause he might know its a lost cause but we Know he's worried as well, we know he doesnt mean it. But, at least to me, in the movie when they say stuff like that it really does feel like they dont care, sometimes. Especially when theyre in jail. And it kinda really fucking sucks. Its the main fucking theme of the book/movie !!!!!!! The lemonade machine matters cause it symbolyzes THEM !!!!! Its in their band name !!!!! And when they lose the machine they dont even feel like fighting for the band anymore !!!!!! Thats how much it bothers them that the machine is gone !!!!!

I think im gonna reread that part and rewatch the movie and come back to this actually. So i can judge and hate on this particular movie choice with more arguments.

[hxhhasmysoul]

Im pretty sure that killua took gon saying ‘lets stay together’ on whale island as a agreement to commit shinju,because shinju is dying together so you can be together in the afterlife or in the next life,so does that mean that killua didnt want to die with gon out of his non platonic love for him but just because of that agreement,and it wasnt romantic??

Well, in Japanese "staying together forever" is a pretty romantic kind of declaration, even more than in a language like English. And in English it already is a more romantic kind of sentiment than a platonic one.

I mean it's not impossible for people to have a platonic relationship and tell each other such stuff. Of course I have no statistics on something like that, but I would imagine it's much more often expressed in a romantic context.

The way that Gon and Killua speak about/to each other has a lot of romantic subtext. Even if you don't know Japanese, these things sound pretty intense in English too.

I don't know that much about shinjuu, maybe it's formalised, but I personally don't think there has to be an agreement of both parties to a lovers' suicide. At least in the most classical western example of "Romeo and Juliette" there wasn't any such agreement. My biggest exposure to classical Japanese literature was to Heian nikki, I haven't really read that much of the later stuff, and I think shinjuu as a theme was popularised later. Still, I don't think that shinjuu is the same as a suicide pact, just for loved ones. But I might be wrong.

The word shinjuu in itself is very dramatic. 心中 means literally something like "through the heart", so whether romantic or not, the act seems to be very emotionally loaded, not just some agreement.

To me Killua's actions read more as him not wanting to live without Gon, so if Gon has entered a path to suicide, Killua wants to follow. Maybe so they can stay together forever, even in the next life? That dying together would make it easier for them to meet in the next life?

If anything, the shinjuu would be Killua defying Gon openly. When they were capture by Nobunaga, Gon openly tells Killua that only Gon's allowed to be suicidal.

If you prefer to think of the relationship between Gon and Killua as platonic, then you should. Togashi uses very romantically loaded language between them and for instance the anime creators have been outspoken about noticing that, but there has been no official statement of Togashi's that "yes, they are definitely in love with each other". So you can interpret it however makes HxH more fun for you.

[menlove]

Ugh sorry I know you talked about it briefly not long ago, but I have to yap

Bc of july 6th there's been an influx of tiktoks celebrating p&j's meeting and friendship but many creators i've seen had to give disclaimers and captions saying that they "don't ship them!!" bc under each and every one of these videos there were comments like "let's not🫤" "they were friends..." "how can you ship them"

Like, maybe im just hella unlucky (I hope so tbh) but the amount of these kids thinking that by reading queer subtext (AND text) and understanding that what was going on between john and paul was something more that friendship, you're ultimately a disrespectful conspiracy theorist, racist & mysogynist (bc you obv must hate their wives) is absurd

I think I really need to work on changing my algorhythm

Sorry for negativity

NEVER BEEN SO GLAD IN MY LIFE TO BE FAR AWAY FROM BEATLES TIKTOK THATS CRAZY i

I hate people so much genuinely like this actually really genuinely pisses me off and I rant abt this to millie like at least bimonthly. bc the thing about it all is if these exact same events took place between a man and a woman there would be ZERO doubt. ZERO. that they were romantically and/or sexually involved. like it would just be an accepted part of rock history. but bc it's two same gendered people oh jesus christ we have to throw a FIT when people point out the incredibly obvious

like I'm sorry but honestly to me at this point it's just bordering on homophobic. that's not to say you Have to believe they fucked or were in love but to Insist that they weren't when they so blatantly had shit going on........ get so serious Immediately

and even taking paul out of it people insisting john is straight when he talked abt his attraction to men on numerous occasions is just so crazy. like the bi/homophobia of that is genuinely disrespectful

and the "they had wives" thing makes me insane btw like yeah so do many bisexuals and closeted men what is your point 😭 you've never heard of two men married to women having an affair? that sounds like you need to talk to more people and listen to more queer men's stories from the past jfc

[anthonycrowley]

same anon w the braime fic - IM SO GLAD i also did the classic tv show > ao3 > actual asoiaf source text order of consumption lol i wasn’t sure if you were abstaining from fic till u read the books or smth idk but anyway. if u did a fic rec i would totally eat that up

braime dynamic is so far up my street u are so right about horny subtext + slow reveal emotional vulnerability, plus a side of enemies to lovers or like. prisoner/captor to reluctant allies to lovers. man i haven’t thought about them in so long… are there any other pairings in the show/books that u enjoy?

naaaah fuck that noise, no offense but i needed to be in the right mindset to read multiple thousand plus page books and i like fanfic. sorry. i guess. i’m here now. anyway.

i could talk about them but. god. clenches fist. i’ll go insane. and people will stop listening to my commentary. i think you got it except metatextually they are destiel. like what happened to destiel happened to them. two nickels. absolutely bonkers.

aaaaaand as far as other pairings. hm. i think largely i tend to gravitate towards character’s plotlines rather than ships - i find arya fascinating but not don’t really care all that much about gendarya, although i don’t mind it. - braime being the exception. or if i do find pairings interesting they’re usually more because of platonic reasons more than romantic. if i had to pick. hm. and before i say these we are going to remember this is the problematic ship book and i am not necessarily saying they are morally good just very fun to explore. jokes aside stavos has some hilson energy going on. what do you want from me. i think samgilly is cute (this is helped because sam is one of my faves). is it weird if i say robbjeyne is cute. jaimecersei i actually do enjoy in a these two are toxically codependent in a fun way and i wish people could explore it in a way that’s not incredibly black and white because there’s A Lot there. sansatyrion but i think that one might get me shot (and once she’s older preferably). robbtheon i get the appeal of and makes me insane to think about but i don’t like read fic for them. sansamargaery because sansa deserves nice things and i think they’d be good for each other. my hottest take i think is that jon and sam should explore each other’s bodies and i do feel this wholeheartedly and unironically. that’s all i can think of off the top of my head there’s so many fucking characters in this book. why are most of my ships straight. feels wrong. or maybe that’s just what happens when the female characters are good. idk.

[kekkuda]

god its tough bein the local ludwigposter, like i already had a lot of frustration w/ the way morgott’s character is interpreted by the elden ring fanbase, but at least there’s more concrete information to draw from. there are SOME people who don’t just immediately jump to the whole noble suffering hero interpretation. with ludwig though, there’s really not much solid lore about who he is as a person, just mostly about his status as the big boy top church hunter. as a result a lot of readings of his character are very dull and leave something to be desired, he just becomes a generic chivalrous knight figure. when mfs talk about how much they love his lore, it’s always this super shallow “wow it’s so sad this prolific knight figure became a beast.” is that really satisfying? you think lore is good because it is sad? idk maybe im just fucking autistic but when i interpret bb lore im reading it through my understanding of 19th century history and sociology, Romantic/Transcendentalist/Gothic literature, and a lot of gendered politics. idk i hate that mfs usually will jerk off the lore of souls games and then only have the most barebones reading of it. mfs will be like “i love how everything is left to the imagination” and then only ever talk about what we do know? like. dog have you ever heard of subtext????? IDK man i just think that a road to hell is paved with good intentions reading of Ludwig is infinitely more interesting than the “good nice guy who became a beast and did nothing wrong” but idk 97% of soulsborne fans haven’t read a book outside of berserk and youtube summaries of some trash hp lovecraft and by god does it show bc if they knew about The Sublime the lore understanders would have a much more compelling reconstruction of the game world