#i’m saying that it’s upsetting if queer romance being the reason why it’s bad is the main takeaway | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

masterthespianduchovny · 3 years ago

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As much as I understand the need for queer representation, queer shipping around mlm ships tend to be misogynistic as fuck. Doubly so if one of the male characters has a canon female love interest. They have to shit on her and "punish" her for interfering with a ship that isn't canon and was never going to be canon.

And that's important to note because, within the last few years, fans of these ships frame these relationships as barriers to their preferred ship or they get mad that there isn't an open ended to pretend these two characters ended up together.

As if this is somehow the fault of the female characters and not the writers. Most importantly, it overlooks the fact that, more times than not, these character sexualities were considered and there is a vague outline of where they might end up. It's unfortunate that queerness isn't often considered, actually very little, but it's not okay to engage in misogynistic rhetoric all because your mlm ship didn't happen.

From my own personal experience, a prime example is Steggy.

Steve is framed as straight. Maybe there's a chance that his bi--idk. But the MCU has always positioned him as being into women with the subtext that he'll end up with a woman. Yet, because he ended up with Peggy, she's constantly attacked and doesn't "deserve" him because she didn't know him as long as Bucky. She's been called all sorts of derogatory things, slandered, criticized for random bullshit, etc. Reduced to just her reproductive parts, having ageist remarks leveled at her, and so forth.

Most of this didn't exist before Endgame, but after Endgame, the attacks are non stop. People are triggered whenever she comes her. All because Cap chose her over someone he wasn't even interested in. All because fans shipped him and Bucky together and the MCU didn't bend to their will.

Another example: Darvey. Harvey and Donna from Suits.

No one has to like a character, but usually, the way certain fans rip into Donna usually ends up with it being a Marvey shipper. They'll contort truth, ignore details, and color her in the worst possible light to prove how she's bad for Harvey, yet ignore all of Harvey's bullshit to prove how he and Mike are MFEO.

Let's be clear: I don't fucking care if people ship non canon ships or think two other characters, whether or not they're the same gender, are better together. However, When you're being misogynistic and sexist to upload your OTP, you can rightly fuck off. It's so easy to ship what you like without bringing that bullshit into it.

Tragically, many of these critics are women who have massive internalized misogyny, but believe they are being progressive, inclusive, and ship without prejudice. If you're tearing women down to uplift any ship, even if it's queer, that's not progressive and feeds into the patriarchy.

It's okay to prefer something else, it's not okay to feed into a pre-existing, harmful, and sexist narrative.

And it's really bothersome because these same people call themselves trying to validate the LBGTQ community, many of these shippers are straight (which this opinion is based on various discourses and criticisms of how gay characters are written in these stories and dialogue surrounding them) and ironically end up invalidating Bi, Pan, and NB people.

Some of these ships are due to these characters being hot, which is fine.

Other times it's due to chemistry, which is also fine.

But as another person argued years ago, one of the reasons why mlm shipping is so popular and prevalent is because male dynamics are actually fleshed out and explored meaningfully. This leads to wanting to ship characters who have real relationships, conflicts, and history with each other no matter how small or large.

However, the issue comes in for some because it's not canon. These meaningful relationships aren't romantic and many women tend to want some romance included, which isn't a bad thing. But when you know the romance will never happen, it's easy to get upset about that. And they know people who ship canon pairings have that over them, which is infuriating.

Which is understandable.

Regardless, diminishing, trivializing, and insulting women is not okay, esp when some of these women have the relationships with men that are usually reserved for male dynamics.

Donna and Harvey have a long, complicated relationship that is based on a professional dynamic, friendship, and romantic yearning. This was established in the first season and didn't come out of nowhere, yet people either ignore that, play it as one sided, go on and on about why they couldn't be just friends (they never were), and hilariously, refer to it as fan service.

Peggy and Steve develop a friendship of sorts, are supportive of one another, genuinely are in love with each other, and have worked alongside each other is criticized because Peggy didn't know Steve as long as Bucky. Appalling things are said about her.

Thing is: these aren't the only fandoms that do this. Trust and believe, whenever there is a major male pairing, if any woman is canonically paired with ether one of them, she's being attacked and called gross things. That's not okay even in the name of representation. If you genuinely hate this female character because of who she is and not because of her gender, I get that. However, a lot of it is gender based and it's quite obvious when reading these criticisms.

Wanting better and more representation doesn't excuse or justify shitty behavior.

Lastly, people factor in compulsive heterosexuality regarding their criticisms of various straight pairings. That's a validate take, however, we need to be honest about our issues with certain pairings rather than piling on undeserved hate towards female characters, and then have nuanced conversations about what this means in context to that specific series.

No. You're not going to have these conversations with show runners, writers, and actors. I get this. But some of you need to stop harassing others and acting like assholes because they don't support your pairing (which they don't have to). If you believe Steve is bisexual, then stop fucking harassing people who ship him with Peggy. If deep, meaningful relationships are important, then stop undermining them to push a ship. And stop turning women into fucking mascots in your fanfic and fan art to prop up your ship--that shit is so dehumanizing. Often times, when these shippers don't hate the women, they only exist to say, "when will these two silly kids get together?" OR "I'mg lad you two silly kids finally got together."

Turning a woman into a mascot isn't any better than harming her or killing her to fuel a man's story--even if the man is gay.

Ironically, I'm less likely to see this from wlw ships or ships that has more queer support and than het support.

Quite interesting.

#steggy #peggy carter #steve rogers #captain america #misogyny #sexism #fandom bullshit #darvey #donna paulsen #harvey specter #suits #shipping

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hardtoflex · 3 years ago

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I’m Im sick of herpes misconceptions in movies. Okay so you guys don’t know this but I’m bi and lately I’m starting to think I’m lesbian but that’s a post for another day! Anyway I’ve been watching lots of wlw media lately and if you know anything about that it’s hard to find a wide range of that type of media because a lot of it is indie, international or I’ve already seen. So I decided to check out Tubi and there’s this film with all black queer femme characters and I’m like yay representation but broooooo!!! 1) The acting isn’t good but I’m still hanging in there at this point. 2) It deals with religion and religious trauma and how it effects queer black women (because if you’re black you know what that’s like.) 3) But then there’s this young couple, they are hanging out at one of the girls houses and one of girls goes to the bathroom and she’s bleeding and I’m thinking okay she has her period. But started getting weird when she gets all upset and I’m like why is she so upsets it’s just a period. But then she says there’s bumps down there and they’re bleeding. And though I fully believe that everyone’s symptoms are different I have never heard a case where it bleeds to the level they tried to show in this movie. I have never seen someone misrepresent herpes soooo bad in my life. Like I want to write a letter to the writers sooo bad. I get they were trying to be all woke and what not but my god it’s like they didn’t even do research. UPDATE: So I finished the movie and omg!!! Not one of those relationships were good like every single one was toxic!! I wasted my tiiime. This whole film is hella problematic and hardly registers as a romance. Two of the 4 main characters ends up with a man, the one with herpes ends up messing around with a student and the last lady is being outed by her partner in the form of blackmail. The movie didn’t address anything about the church’s involvement, even though it was a reason all these women were in the closet and running around cheating and doing terrible things. It’s basically Christian propaganda wrapped up to seem progressive and woke.

#herpes #queer with herpes #herpesdating #lgbt #wlw #queerfilm #sec health #hsv #hsv2

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mircallablue · 4 years ago

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So, in the wake of BeauJesters seeming passing, I’m going to take a moment to be more than a little self-indulgent and explain why I love these characters and their unique dynamic so goddamn much, as well as why I’m so disheartened by the way the show seems to be taking them. Warning: essay ahead lol. This is just a rambly rant that I’m writing because it’s cathartic to vent a little bit of frustration, and I love these characters so much. (and I love the entire cast, every goddamn one, and every other character in the show too. This is about love, not hate).

So, for a few brief and wonderful episodes in this campaign, I actually believed that I was being told a love story about falling in love with your best friend, and figuring out your sexuality, while also unlearning all of the untrue lessons that the world taught you about love while you were growing up, and in so doing, finding value in yourself. Which, for me personally, is just super relatable. Like, that ticks every damn box I have lol, which partly explains why I love BeauJester so much, and I know a lot of B/J shippers feel the same. I’ve shipped B/J from super early on, but I never in a million years really believed it would happen, for a lot of reasons. Mostly homophobia, biphobia and heteronormativity. But I enjoyed their dynamic nonetheless, even though I thought (and was often TOLD by other shippers) that it didn’t stand a chance in hell of happening.

So you can imagine how VALIDATING it was when Marisha, both in character and out of game, confirmed that Beau had very significant romantic feelings for Jester. All of the crumbs we’d collected over the course of the campaign were finally coming together and all of the gaslighters who told us we were delusional suddenly had to acknowledge that there was something there. And once it had been acknowledged, it was OBVIOUS. Omg it was so obvious and I loved every second of it. It was so undeniable for the next few episodes, and in hindsight, that there was something building there between them, there was potential. There was definitely a connection between these two characters. And for a few weeks, it was great.

Then Liam - out of character - mentions that Caleb is in love with Jester. And it is immediately, fandom wide, treated with more respect than Marisha and Beau.

I know a lot of people get very very angry when this is brought up, but it is just the ugly, unfortunate reality that a lot of people in this fandom treat Jester like a manic pixie dream girl. Even the people who do not consciously believe her to be that (and I don’t think there are many that genuinely believe it), are perfectly fine /treating her/ like one, as long as it serves one of the straight men that they love so much, usually Caleb. And this is where the heteronormativity comes in. Because even though it was an out-of-game confession with no bearing on canon, Calebs feelings immediately took precedence over Beaus in terms of the fandom narrative.

I personally have never liked the way Liam handles romance in game. He did pretty much the exact same thing in campaign 1 as well, where his sad boy pines after the happy girl from afar until he’s uncontrollably in love with her, and then with no warning he drops it like a bomb. He just happened to drop it out of game this time. The main reason I don’t like this style of romance is because of how (unintentionally) manipulative it is. You see it in bad romcoms all the time. The guy makes a public declaration of love that pressures the girl into reciprocating or looking like the bad guy. But the main reason I don’t like /this particular/ declaration is the timing.

Liam - who has always said he likes things to come out in game - inexplicably decides out of game reveal something as major as Caleb being in love with Jester, right after Marisha IN GAME took steps towards Beau and Jester being together. And it completely changed the narrative. Suddenly it was “top table top table”, and that's if Beaus feelings ever got mentioned at all. It was not at all helped by the fact that a lot of cast members (sam) still pushed Fjorester HARD, even with Jester telling Nott to stop, which must have sucked for Marisha/Beau. But even as recently as episode 99, Beau was still flirting with Jester, and there were definite hints at Jester maybe having unacknowledged feelings for Beau.

Then the hiatus happened. When we return, Beau is throwing herself at Yasha, and there’s not even a song for Jester on her playlist. And then Travis reveals (also out of game, like Liam) that Fjord has feelings for Jester (in a playlist heavily curated by known fjorester, Dani Carr). And even /that/ is treated with more weight by some fans than Beaus in canon confession. And Yasha is having all of these super convenient dreams where Zuala tells her its ok to move on, and Beau and Jester are barely speaking. And now Beau is calling Yasha her GIRLFRIEND? WHAT??? Did I miss 20 secret episodes that aired during hiatus or something???? Beau and Yasha have still, in 107 episodes, only had ONE meaningful conversation and yet their relationship is being treated as deep and inevitable. Sure, you can read into their other interactions if you want. But as a queer person, I am sick to death of my love needing to be represented as subtext.

And so it has become pretty clear that the cast has decided out of game to go in a different direction. And of course they are well within their right to do that. But I just can’t help feeling incredibly disheartened, and again, more than a little bit gas-lighted. It really does seem as if Beaus' feelings for Jester have just been scrubbed from canon - as if they never even happened. All, seemingly, to make way for a typical happy-girl-sad-guy relationship with either Fjord or Caleb, and a typical pair-the-spares barely-any-depth relationship between the two out lesbians because its easy.

For the entirety of campaign 2, BeauJester has been treated as one thing - inconvenient. Inconvenient by the fans, who prefer other ships and have treated BeauJesters terribly, and now it seems, inconvenient by the cast, who have seemingly discarded it and scrubbed it from canon.

And one thing that really upsets me is the amount of genuine viciousness and vitriol coming from (some) BeauYasha shippers. I really wish BeauYasha was something I could get on board with, I do. And a lot of people who are sending me hate seem to assume I don’t want them to end up together. But I would be fine with that. But as it stands, they’ve literally only had one real conversation in 107 episodes, and they’re calling each other girlfriend? While literally having not spoken about anything like that? While one of those characters is supposed to have canon romantic feelings for another woman? Imagine that situation with any other characters and it would be comical.

I swear, the queer ladies in this fandom have been done dirty. All of us. Imagine if, in campaign one, Grog and Keyleth, in episode 107, started calling each other boyfriend/girlfriend in the middle of a battle. (I picked those two because they probably had the fewest moments together of any VM pairing). That’s pretty much what happened here, and we’re supposed to like it - be grateful, even - because it’s wlw rep? And I swear, the number of times I’ve been called lesbophobic in the last month is absurd - all because I’m not comfortable with a canon lesbians canon feelings being swept under the rug. All because I want wlw relationships to be allowed to have the same depth and growth as the straight ones. Yes, even if that relationship is B/Y. We should not settle for less. Imagine if they had done this with any other character's canon feelings for another. People would be angry.

And I know there are going to be a lot of people saying “It’s their game, they can do what they like”.

True. I never said otherwise. But it is also a show. It is a product. They sell merch. It is something that they have taken the time and the steps to make sure that we care about. And this is what that looks like.

I know what happened here isn’t technically queerbaiting, but damn if it doesn’t cut the same.

#critical role #cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #beaujester #cr discourse #i look forward to being called toxic

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zandracourt · 4 years ago

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And now for something completely personal...

I have unfollowed Misha on social media, which makes me sad. I appreciate anyone who wants to keep talking, but I had to turn it off because Misha’s words tonight were hard to hear from someone I thought had a better understanding of the community he is advocating for. And perhaps what we are seeing is just the reality of being an ally versus actually being part of the community. In the same way that whites just end up sounding defensive and tone deaf when trying to explain why something racist really wasn’t.

My story is of being bi. I have a daughter who is pan, and I am het-married because that happened before I fully understood my bisexuality. I’m out now and I have had F/F experiences, but I have not moved in the world with a full-time female sexual partner, so I don’t know the full weight of queer oppression and I think that is important for people to know.

But what I do know really, really well is what it’s like to not fully understand being bisexual until my late 30s-early 40s because of falling for my best friend. I understand that it takes time to process and even believe in the feelings you have. It can take years. I understand having to come to terms with queerness when you’ve lived your life very convincingly heterosexual. I understand the sense of hypocrisy and denial you feel inside. And I understand what it means to know that a life you might idealize just can’t be the life you live. So I profoundly understand Cas making a confession of love and having Dean not be able to reciprocate, whatever his reason. What I don’t understand is why you took a situation that could have been a true gift to the queer community and literally salt and burn it to ash.

The damage SPN did was in being unwilling to operate from any kind of queer perspective while deliberately using queer tokenism to manipulate a fanbase for profit and longevity. The problem the show cannot escape is that the world has changed tremendously in 15 years. Queer viewers no longer have to accept scraps. We have shows that give us queer characters right up front in many genres. Not saying they all do them well, but representation is higher than it has ever been. And that is exactly why all this schlock by the CW, the desperate attempts by the actors to smooth it all over, and their repeated comments that they just have no idea why everyone is so upset just feels like they are reacting to not being able to continue to use queerness for profit and not out any actual caring for queer people. They just don’t want the bad press and they don’t want to be called out for their homophobia because that damages their reputations. They had a chance to be a landmark in queer storytelling and ended up as a enormous example of everything wrong with homophobic storytelling and queerbaiting.

Destiel is not new. It’s not fringe. And it’s not our fucking imaginations. It’s not. And if you can’t see it, chances are you are hopelessly, painfully straight. You will never get queer stories and I feel bad for you honestly, because the depth and vitality that queer characters and queer romance brings to storytelling is incredible.

Cas loved Dean, yes. And he finally got the courage to say so and promptly died. It DOES. NOT. MATTER. Why he died. It doesn’t matter that we got word he was brought to heaven or that it was written by a gay writer. It IS a bury-your-gays, devastating, repressive, horrible message because Cas never got to be fulfilled as a queer character. He never got to discover how to be queer and find happiness even if Dean doesn’t love him back. He became canonically gay and died within seconds. That is NOT supporting the queer community or queer stories. It’s literally killing them.

As for Dean and whatever he said or didn’t say, again, the conspiracy theories around it demonstrates exactly why people are so upset. Because they were cowards. They were cowards in an era when everyone is fucking done with those who cannot take a stand and instead flounder in the “there are great people on both sides” ethos. It is the same level of GTFO attitude I have for any one who says “gays are fine, as long as they are not gay here”: be that church, a restaurant, on a television set, or any where else. To echo Justice Ginsberg, there will be enough queer stories on TV when they all are. And it is exactly SPN’s fear of “going there” with Destiel YEARS ago that brought them to this miserable end. Destiel only became a risk worth doing when they believed there was no cost to them; when they could kill everyone and never show anyone being queer so they never had to actually deal with queerness at all. After all, Buffy didn’t truly love Spike, but she still told him she loved him and held his hand as he sacrificed himself for her in the final episode. *That* is the trope of a sacrificial romantic death. And now they are paying the price for their lack of integrity to their own show and story telling.

As a final note, I’ve been thinking about the fact that as a fic writer, I’ve had no desire to fix this ending, despite having written many Destiel fics over the years. The embers were still burning on the McDanno dumpster-fire last April when I started to write that fix-it fic and that was my first ever fic in that fandom! That’s how badly I needed to change that ending for myself. After Endgame, I needed better closure for Steve, so I wrote one. But after SPN, I’ve had no desire to write Destiel at all. I haven’t even wanted to read any SPN fics. I have lost my joy for the show and everything attached to it.

I don’t give a shit about CW or most of their programming. I *have* cared about the actors and the fan spaces because there are amazing people there and Misha has been an incredible role model in so many, many ways for not just the fandom, but for human beings in general. Until tonight.

Nina Simone said we all have to learn to get up from the table when love is no longer being served. That was exactly how I felt when I saw Misha’s message on Facebook. He is so much more than this fandom and after some time, I know I will probably follow him again in the future because he is a truly fine person who is doing incredible things in this world. For now, though, I can’t.

So to the network, showrunners, and as painful as it is to say, actors, here’s the hard, cold, truth: Destiel fans have not caused any of this. The show did. And sadly, there is nothing you can do to repair the damage you have done. That is your legacy now and we all have to live with it.

#SPN #Destiel #Misha Collins #TheySilencedYou

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lavenderek · 4 years ago

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i have a thought to express, feel free to scroll past.

i’m gonna discuss rape and sexual abuse in this post. it’s also long because i don’t really have a conclusion, it’s just some thoughts.

so i was looking into that reality show that facilitated shane dawson’s horrible movie “not cool” and i stumbled across a reddit thread posted by someone who was a fan of his as a preteen. the OP alleged that shane’s content contributed to them developing some serious issues including body dysmorphia and the normalization of sexual behavior involving children.

some of the comments were in support and agreement, but a large amount of them were like, “where were your parents? it’s not shane’s job to police what you see online. it’s not his fault you were too young for his content.”

now, shane was well aware from the jump that his fans were mostly kids and teens - he talked about it multiple times - but that’s not what this post is about. this post is about that particular argument, which does not sit well with me.

it reminded me of a couple years ago when i made a very critical post about c*ptive prince.

pause: i want to make it crystal clear that i am not drawing a comparison between people who like cp and shane dawson. i’m not mad anymore, so i am not making this post making a value judgment on cp or fans of it, positive or negative.

specifically, i was really bothered by the way cp content was posted and shared with no mention of or reference to the actual material. people were calling it a queer romance. it was a little-known series by a little-known author, so there were no synopses anywhere online, only the summary you’d see on the back of the book. so people would seek out cp thinking it was a romance and be blindsided by the fact that, spoilers, the story is set in a fantasy world where child rape is a major tenet of society. the scenes are explicit, detailed, and many. it’s not a thing that happens once or twice and is a major plot point, it’s a thing that happens multiple times in every chapter and is just kind of a thing that’s going on. if you’ve ever read twilight, i would compare the presence of rape in cp to the presence of rain in twilight.

like, that’s how often it happened, that’s how it was treated. sometimes with indifference, sometimes with a negative opinion, sometimes it caused problems, bella talks about it every two pages. it is a very rapey series.

and people like, did not want to discuss this. they were like, “the characters decide the rape is bad in the end. and that’s not even what the story is about, it just happens in the story. i don’t know what to tell you.” like... people were not receptive to any kind of conversation about this topic lmfao, it was very touchy. they wanted to acknowledge that rape itself is bad, and then they wanted the subject closed.

now, why is this a problem? i read the books. there were parts i enjoyed, and there were parts i didn’t enjoy. i’m not gonna reread them, but i’m still game to talk about it. ultimately i wanted to be able to talk about books with a friend of mine, and while i was like, “yikes, this is a lot of rape, was not expecting the volume of rape,” it didn’t occur to me this would be a pervasive issue at all until a different friend of mine happened upon it. this other friend was a rape survivor, and i happened to know she would find this content very upsetting. when she said she was thinking of buying the book, i was like, “halt, you know what happens in it, right?”

nope! she didn’t. she saw cute fanart and a ficlet on her dash, somebody told her it was a queer romance. nowhere was there any indicator in summaries online or the posts she was seeing that the book would describe a person being drugged and sexually abused. she was pretty relieved that i’d warned her and shaken that that’s what happens in the books lmao. she would never have guessed. the cp fandom was made up of people who loved the main pairing, and they’d talk about them being in love and draw them being in love, and it felt like everybody was just acting like the rape wasn’t even present in the books lmao.

pause: i didn’t go in the tags. this is not representative of the fandom as a whole. this is just my and my friend’s experience of it as passive internetgoers.

people got uncomfortable and a little defensive if i brought it up. they’d agree to tag for cp, but if you don’t know what cp is about, that isn’t helpful information. like that post that’s like, “waterboarding at guantanamo bay sounds like a lot of fun if you don’t know what either of those things are” lmao. if you don’t know what cp is about, tagging for it just tells you what it’s called. and it very clearly ruined everyone’s fun if i talked about this.

so that’s what i was mad about, i was mad that i felt as though there was no recourse here, and i was mad because i felt like the cp fandom was the emperor’s new clothes. nobody was acting like it even existed and everybody got uncomfortable if i brought it up, like, i legitimately wondered at some point if i had somehow accidentally read a kinky rewrite of it, that the real version did not have rape in it and nobody knew what i was talking about. i felt like i was going crazy and i got shitty in the middle of the night one time, and wrote that post.

i ultimately deleted it, so i do not remember how it was worded; but i do recall that it was a venting post, it was not intended to reach a wider audience. i was not trying to convince anyone in that moment, i was just talking shit. so i can bet that it probably came across as very judgmental and unkind.

i made a bunch of people very angry with that post. somebody got thousands of notes by reblogging with an impassioned smackdown saying basically what those redditors were saying about shane - it’s not their job to police what people see online. it’s not their fault you were unprepared for cp.

i do not think this is a nuanced enough argument because i do not think it acknowledges that not all content is created equal.

i even got an anon ask in good faith saying, well, a huge trigger for me is body horror, and people will draw or reblog stuff with body horror in it, and i can’t hold that against them.

and like, no, you can’t, but body horror is not the same as rape or child sexual abuse. body horror isn’t the same as sex trafficking. right? like those things aren’t comparable in the way that i think the anon was wanting them to be. they were saying that both of these are common triggers that people would want tagged and be unable to move past in media, you know? and i get that, i got what they were saying.

kind of like that cartoonist who wrote a spooky horror comic a while ago and somebody sent them an ask being like, “that was really scary, you usually post fun comics, this was damaging, unfollowed :/” like obviously a stranger’s fear of spooky things is not something he should be expected to take on on his own blog lmao. i am deeply afraid of ghosts, by the way.

but according to rainn.org, 1 in 5 women experience rape in their lifetime. 1 in 5 women are not frightened by literal ghosts in their lifetime. 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys aren’t body horrored. body horror and ghosts aren’t used on a global scale as tools to control and abuse people and they do not have the same connotations of shame, degradation, and control. the things are not the same.

i don’t have an easy answer. i can’t wave my magic wand and make people not enjoy the rape erotica, nor was that my goal in the first place. i wasn’t clutching my pearls like, “how dare you! do not draw this art! think of the children!” and i don’t know how else i would have solved the problem, aside from having a weird disclaimer under your art of two dudes cuddling that says “warning, these dudes are from a book that’s got several thousand words of explicit rape in it, and i know that, you’re not the only one seeing that,” like that’s a lot and i get it.

i don’t have an easy answer because there isn’t one. i felt like “well, that’s not my problem” was an easy answer.

as i get older, the more responsibility i have as an adult online to maintain boundaries between me and minors, for example. i am not responsible for their internet experience and they can’t get mad at me for cussing or writing about gay werewolves on my blog, but i do have to be mindful of that context if i’m interacting with someone online. that’s where the complexity comes in. you can’t wash your hands of the context of the things you say and do online.

just how to solve these problems, i did not know then and i do not know now. i guess we take it on a case by case basis.

if you’re curious about shane dawson and his horrible movie, by the way, this guy did a few funny videos about the horrible movie and this guy did a not funny but comprehensive breakdown of shane and his career.

and i tried to tint my eyebrows for the first time the other day, i have red hair and my eyebrows are darker than my hair for some reason, so i tried to use an eyebrow tint to lift my brows just like, a shade, so be closer to my hair? but in doing this i discovered that my eyebrows are a mixture of red and brown?

so the red hairs lifted to a sunny orange, and the brown hairs stayed brown. so my eyebrows are fully like, calico right now. boom, orange juice, that’s life

#diary post #long post

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kaypeace21 · 5 years ago

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I feel like you’re the right person to tell this to, but Mileven makes me REALLY uncomfortable. I’m an adult fan (I watch the show mostly for Winona Ryder) and I felt really gross watching the scenes of them making out, knowing that adults wrote those scenes and shot them, and how many people would’ve been there during shooting. Please tell me I’m not alone.

I agree that it makes me feel uncomfortable and gross, too. But, I actually think the Duffers wanted you to feel uncomfortable (and I think mileven was portrayed as ‘off’ and ‘too much’ for that reason). Think about it, when it comes to almost all their other cannon couples- they use kisses sparingly. Jancy has only kissed, romantically 3x (2 of those times were simple kisses- not full blown make-outs), and their first kiss (and only make-out) was quickly obscured as they closed the door.

(x)

Jopper has never kissed, and lumax had an innocent kid-kiss once (and even when back together in s3, they never kissed).

The duffers are sparing with kiss- scenes, unless they are portraying a relationship that won’t work.Most of the relationships that are cannon (with the exception of mileven) focus almost completely on how they communicate with one another- and relationships that lack this (spend most of their time just making-out). What’s the ship that has had the most kiss scenes in the whole series? In the bathroom, library, bedroom(s), garage, in a car, multiple places at school (and has probably had at least 6-7 kiss scenes or more - and who even made out on a bed to corny romance music just like mileven (pre-s3?)- Stancy. Heck, we even see Nancy lose her v**ginity to Steve- but didn’t see Jancy do-it. Because we aren’t supposed to focus on their physical relationship but their emotional one.

Stancy and mileven have had alot of parallels. The wheelers (Nancy and Karen) already made a habit of pretending they’re in love with people- because that relationship is what is deemed the most socially acceptable. Nancy rebelling with the cool-jock (Steve), trying to not be like her parents. And Karen with Ted. Nancy even says in s1 “I don’t think my parents ever loved each other. My mom was young. My dad was older… but he had a cushy job, money, came from a good family. So they bought a house at the end of the cul de sac and started their nuclear family”. Ted & Steve were paralleled to each other, having them both eat chicken as their partners (Karen/Nancy) stormed off upset (and they did nothing). And El was paralleled to Ted by sitting in Ted’s laz-boy chair. And Dustin even refers to mileven as “bullshit” just like Nancy described Stancy as “bullshit”.

(x)

So to reiterate , Mike is doing the same thing as Nancy & Karen- being with someone they don’t love. And only staying with them becuause they are the more socially acceptable/’correct’ option…because El’s a girl (unlike Will).

Also, the fact that Murray’s line to Nancy sounds more queer coded than applicable to Nancy - “ Afraid that if you’d accept yourself for who you really are (cough queer-subtext), and retreated back to… name, name? Steve. Steve! we like Steve (El) but we don’t love Steve (El).”

So, the over-top kisses were done as yet another parallel. And again s2 made fun of (kids who are) mileven shippers ( I’ll talk about that later).

But , S3 was the Duffers criticizing the adult mileven shippers- who are obsessed with mileven kissing.

Like don’t get me wrong there’s some weird byler shippers (but the majority of byler shippers focus on the emotional not physical part of their relationship).

Think about it. Look how they framed this scene of mileven kissing- making us the viewer feel like a peeping-tom, watching them through the crack in the door. Then El sees the viewer and subsequently gasps and slams the door in front of our faces. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE!

The Duffers and their crew (like good directors) were manipulating your emotions- without you realizing how or why. They were also calling-out the adult-mileven shippers (not all of them but the ones) who are obsessed with their kiss scenes - creepy AF. The duffers never even wrote for mileven to kiss in s2- but Millie said they “had to for the fans”. And so the Duffers conceded and put in a song about a bad-breakup during the mileven kiss - and their backup-song-choice was even about a divorce. XD

So the 2 mileven make-out scenes were supposed to make you uncomfortable- because not only are they kids (who are making out on a bed , but the way they were framed).

So that 3rd and last kiss. Was 100% supposed to make you uncomfortable (but just for a different reason).

Like it or not Mike either forgot that he said he “loved her”. Or just LIED to El (despite this being the reason they broke up in the first place)- and pretends he didn’t confess to her . He has never said “ I love you’, once to her face! He even tries to take the words back (before the kiss) and says about the prior love confession “ Oh! Oh, yeah that.Man, that was so long ago. Um…” and starts to scratch his head and says everything he said at the cabin was “in the heat of the moment stuff and we were arguing… I don’t really remember. What did I say exactly?”

And , after that discussion, they frame El (before she says “I love you”), strangely. They make El look large and imposing, as she approaches the motionless Mike (who feels both physically & emotionally cornered) .You the viewer, subconsciously are feeling claustrophobic/trapped/and stuck along with Mike. Which is why you are so uncomfortable watching this scene, unfold.

(x)

When she says “I love you”, he looks genuinely confused- or just uncomfortable ( his eyebrows are still scrunched-up).

And then… cue the most awkward kiss in the history as Mike doesn’t kiss her back and keeps his eyes open the whole time… it’s just weird/awkward (sorry).

(x)

We even see El’s reaction , after the kiss (happy, smiling and giddy). But then we blur the screen to see Mike’s opposing expression. He looks confused, bewildered and even furrows his brows again.

And In s2 they insulted the young-girls who are obsessed with mileven (since they can frankly, be the most toxic of the milevens).

In the Montauk pitch (later named Stranger things) they describe the Mike and El dynamic by saying “ If Mike is the Eliot of our show,Eleven is our Et.” (AKA they’re from different planets)

And In s2 , Erica is forcing He-man and barbie to make out. Lucas angrily separates the two. And then this discussion happens.

Erica: “Hey , They’re in love!”

Lucas (livid- and standing right next to a rainbow): “No, actually, they’re not. They don’t even exist on the same planet.”

And again the Duffers have described El in multiple interviews as “similar to ET”, and “like an alien” (even after s3). And in s1, they alluded to El being like “an alien from another planet” by comparing her to ET (with the Reese’s pieces vs eggos moments, the bike-scene, and the makeover).

S3 portrayed mileven as toxic in a myriad of ways. And these other examples, might be stretches, but Mike saying to Max in s2 “How can I hate you, I don’t know you.” could also be a ‘dig’ at mileven.(Because: he knew Max for a week, just as long as El- so how could he hate or love either of them?)

And Mike saying to Dustin incredulously “ You have a bond? Just cause he likes nougat (eggos)?” Could be another subtle jab.

Especially since it’s cannon Mike isn’t the biggest fan of eggos to begin with.

Don’t even get me started at how much the st writing staff- makes fun of mileven - more details about it here. But just one example is when the ‘Stranger writers’ ( the official account of the ST writing staff ) got into a huge text-chain with ‘Stranger Things’ (the official account of the show) where they just low-key dragged mileven together.

Mileven was never meant to be end game-they planned for her to die in season 1 (which I’m glad didn’t happen). But, regardless, it was always supposed to be a simple fleeting crush … but the viewers decided to take it way too seriously. After s3, the Duffers reiterate that mileven is just that.

And the Duffers are smart guys, I bet they’re are 100% aware of how toxic the milevens are to bylers (and how they can also be creepy and harass Finn). Not to mention, as writers, who put so much effort into the show- having people hyper-fixate on mileven (which they don’t even like), instead of the plot must drive them insane.Especially when those shippers can be toxic, homophobic, and entitled. The fact people don’t realize the Duffers hate mileven- is honestly hilarious XD.

#byler #byeler #anti mileven

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ambthecreative · 4 years ago

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DESTIEL RANT! Unpopular Opinion Time - The Scene was NOT Homophobic

Wow. It’s BEEN YEARS! And yet here I am again! I have returned to my Tumblr roots, rambling about Supernatural again! I have come full circle! Summoned by three words spoken by the Angel of the Lord we all knew and loved. But lets get down to business. Everyone’s going crazy. They either loved it, hated it, loved/hated it, hated/loved it, etc. Even people who never watched an episode felt the need to add their two cents without any context or with extreme bias. So here’s the observations from a former Supernatural Fan and intense DESTIEL SHIPPER, but also one who has stopped watching it cause omfg it sucks so bad now. My bias comes from both angles and thus neutralizes each other out xD Obviously, spoilers for Episode 18 of Season 15 of Supernatural lay ahead. ~~~

(TL;DR: The scene wasn’t bad because it was forced or homophobic. It was neither. The scene was bad because of long term poor plotting, repetitive character arcs and horrendous timing and execution. That said, my shipping heart is just happy that it happened at all. <3 ) ONWARDS! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lets just get to the point. At first glance, that scene looks extremely homophobic and when it was first described to me (I haven’t watched the show since Season 9), it appears that is indeed the case. And you can make a STRONG case for it to, if you watched that scene and knew of all the fucking queer bait we had to live through before getting here. But I watched the entire episode. And I think this is key. Cause while it’s easy to say its all homophobic, that’s not actually what was happening. The truth is, the episode is a set up for the ending. Sure it seems to be framed that Castiel is sent to the Empty for being gay, but that’s the bias talking. Contextually, Castiel is sent to the Empty for being Truly Happy. Also EVERYONE dies. Funny how no one is up in arms that Charlie’s GF got poofed at the very start of the episode. Not gay enough for it to count? Like she literally made her girlfriend breakfast and they were flirting, and boom she was gone FOREVER, not sent to a place where people have come back from before, but with NO EVIDENCE of them being alive at all. Dead. Gone. But no one says a damn thing. And then EVERYONE died. THEN Cas died. And yet everyone got like temporary amnesia and its like, “CASTIEL WAS KILLED FOR BEING GAY!!!” That’s...not what happened tho. What’s really sad is the moment with Castiel was actually a GREAT plot point/twist, if only they had done it better. NO ONE would be saying SHIT if Castiel had been a woman. NO ONE. Or at least, they would mostly see it as tragic than anything else. But because Castiel is making a homosexual love confession, it must BE because he’s GAY! It’s really ironic. Judging that scene as homophobic is ACTUALLY homophobic* (not really, but i can’t think of a better word). Or at least you’re judging the scene by their sexuality and not by what is actually going on. Now I remembered something after thinking about this scene for a while. THIS PLOT POINT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE IN ANOTHER EVEN MORE ICONIC SHOW!!! Now bear with me cause I never watched the whole thing, only the bits and pieces my roommate shared with me. But the whole “I am cursed to suffer a terrible fate if I ever experience true happiness” has been done before. And where was that?

Spoilers for Buffy by the way. SO! To all those who are still trying to spin this as platonic, you need to watch more shitty afterschool 90s supernatural TV shows. In season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Buffy’s good vampire boyfriend, wakes up evil because he had a moment of true happiness. And this dooms the couple. NOW. Do you call this...heterophobia???? Oh I hear you! “But Angel didn’t die and he and Buffy got to be romantic and actually have sex before that shit went down! Not the same thing!” TRUE. I didn’t really bring this up to make an argument that the scene/show isn’t homophobic (or at least they are very uncomfortable with it), but rather I wanted to make a point that the PLOT POINT is not at all homophobic and is actually really awesome. The issue with the scene is the execution. That moment between Cas and Dean should have happened SEASONS ago or at the VERY LEAST earlier in this FINAL season, and not right at the very end. The other reason why it worked so well with Buffy is that they had plenty of episodes afterwards to go into it, have Buffy react to it, and deal with it and such. Meanwhile SPN, still BLATANTLY uncomfortable with handling this sort of thing, decided to put Castiel away in a dark closet and then put forth an end the world plotline by killing EVERYONE so Dean is too busy to actually think and talk about it for any real length of time XD. I wouldn’t use the word homophobic for it, because it wasn’t used as a joke, it wasn’t used to demean gay people, it wasn’t meant to say “if you are homosexual, you go to hell.”

That’s not it at all. The only reason people think that is because they’ve been hurt in the past so many times, by religion and government and truly homophobic media, and this scene triggers that hurt. HOWEVER, if you look at that scene without that lens, it’s more cowardly and insecure, than homophobic. Cause at the end of the day, that’s the whole problem with Supernatural. They never commit. Their writing is lazy and weak because they don’t have the writing chops to actually GO FOR IT.

They are constantly at war with the writing, the ratings/money, and the general public views. They constantly add poc and homosexual characters, but are too afraid to actually do anything with them in fear of doing it poorly and upsetting people (and honestly, it’s a valid fear XD). I stopped watching Supernatural cause the writing is HORRIBLE. It has nothing to do with homophobia and everything to do with the fact its all over the place, there’s no stakes, the power escalation is shot to hell, they keep saying SIKE when they do kill people, no changes last forever, and it should have ended SEASONS ago. Its BAD. But in regards to homosexuality, the fact that they used a plot point that the legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer used but used it on two characters of the same sex is actually AMAZING. YES it was CRINGY. The handprint was cringy! They were trying WAY too hard to make it different than the other 1000000 times Castiel died for Dean. But it was their poor plotting, their overuse of killing and bringing back people, the fact Dean and Cas never actually even toyed with the idea of romance openly in the entire show, that caused this scene to not shine as brightly as it could have.

THAT SAID.

HOLY SHIT CASTIEL LOVES DEAN! THATS AMAZING!!!! Ahem. Another reason why people get this scene so wrong is because they think writers are actual Gods. We are not. They are flawed and they are many and this show had WAY too many showrunners. AND IT SHOWS. But you know whos constant? The actors. Dean has never really changed. Jensen played him exactly as he’s always played him. ALWAYS. Any person who got mad that Dean didn’t sob or kiss Castiel needs to take off their gay fucking glasses and respect the fact that THAT ISN’T DEAN. HE’S NEVER BEEN THAT WAY. EVEN IF CASTIEL WAS A WOMAN HE WOULDNT HAVE ACTED THAT WAY.

Also Dean has been so BLATANTLY straight this WHOLE time. Now I’m not saying that the romantic feelings were not reciprocal. I’m saying we don’t fucking know XD Hell DEAN might not know, and honestly that would be the most realistic and best way to handle that. Do you know how FUCKED UP it would have been if Dean broke character and suddenly came out as Gay and totally fine with that and just acted like he’s been gay this WHOLE time even when it’s so obvious that he was not?!! Its like - Respect Homosexuality, but Disrespect all other sexualities. You can’t just force Dean to be Gay and Comfortable With That Fact (tm).

You can’t. And to expect and force Jensen Ackles to play his character, that he’s played for years that way, to tell him to fuck off how he’s BEEN playing him cause it’s not good enough anymore even though everyone ATE IT UP before Castiel came on screen, is an INSULT to him. I do think he can realize it. I think he can lean into it. I really do think it’s possible to do it in a way that’s realistic and still in character with how Jensen has played him all these years. But now, you’re all fucking entitled little nutcases if you think that Dean should bend to your fanfic fantasy as being head over heels in love with a man without any issue at all when there’s absolutely nothing in his backstory, childhood, or ANYTHING that would explain why he would be that way. I’m old as fuck, but you know how Dean SHOULD play it? Like Heath Ledger’s character in Brokeback Mountain. He didn’t exactly showed his emotions regarding the love of his fucking life immediately, now did he? BUT THAT SAID THIS ISNT BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN YOU HORNY FUCKS XDD Ahem. That’s also a reminder for myself XD ANYWAYS!!!

TL;DR: The scene wasn’t bad because it was forced or homophobic.

It was neither.

The scene was bad because of long term poor plotting, repetitive character arcs and horrendous timing and execution.

That said, my shipping heart is just happy that it happened at all. <3 The End. That is all

#supernatural #destiel #castiel #dean winchester #season 15 episode 18 #s15e18 #despair #spn #spoilers

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irrevocably-delicious · 6 years ago

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A Brief History of LGBT+ Characters and Why the Death of Adam in Voltron is Worth Being Upset About

So uh.... Good morning.

So I think it’s pretty obvious by now that the reception to season 7 has been less than... good. The fan base has been shattered. People are upset, angry, and abandoning this series in droves (I’ve lost over 50 followers as I write this, just from people no longer wanting anything to do with this show) and have been incredibly vocal as to the reason why.

They killed Adam.

After two weeks of receiving praise for the relationship that was revealed at San Diego Comic Con, fans discovered on Friday night that Adam’s existence would be short lived, further contributing to this popular “Bury Your Gays” trope.

And I’ve seen people confused at this outcry. They don’t understand why people are so upset at this tiny side character’s death. What’s the big deal, right? It’s war! There’s supposed to be casualties!

And to that kind of response I have to narrow my eyes and go:

“Oh.... maybe you understand the history of this.”

Because it is a history. A rich one. “Bury your gays” isn’t a trope in the same why that “Fake dating” is a trope. It’s not popular out of coincidence and I feel like many people are ignorant of that, which is FAIR! Because most voltron fans are young, most tumblr users are young, so I don’t expect you to be watching documentaries on LGBT+ cinema in between studying for your chemistry exams.

So that’s where I come in. Buckle in children as I take you on a journey on why the “Bury your gays” trope exists, and the harmful ramifications that it has had on the LGBT+ community since its inception.

So lets go back. Way back to the 1920′s when homosexuality, or at least homosexuality adjacent themes were seen on screen.

A time where a bro could kiss his bro, and it was seen as heart wrenching and realistic (Wings, 1927). A time where Marlene Dietrich could wear a suit better than a man, and flirt and kiss a lady just because she fucking could (Morocco, 1930). A time where gender roles were a bit looser, and there wouldn’t be an outcry over such imagery.

But as the great depression continued, and film producers became desperate to get butts in seats at the cinema, these LGBT+ themes became outright explicit. Raunchy even. Used for titillation and shock value.

“Have you seen that new picture, Doris? The one where the roman emperor has the hot male sex slave?? Mmmmm scandalous!”

But with this rise of LGBT+ characters and interactions used for shock value, also came the rise of public outcry. The catholic church (those debbie downers) started boycotting films. This lead to the formation of the PRODUCTION CODE, which is a fancy way to say THE CODE THAT WILL NOW CENSOR THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR FILMS in 1934.

Backed by catholic activists, the code made it impossible for LGBT+ representation to exist on film.

But did they?? See, this is actually were we start to see the development of “Queer coding”. Where actors and directors got savvy, and let you know a character was gay, whilst never explicitly stating so. It was subtle enough that it got past censors, but clear enough that audience members, especially LGBT+ people, got clued in.

Yeah Peter Lorre, you put that phallus shaped object next to your mouth a lot. They’ll get what your implying, don’t you worry.

Oh, I’m sorry.... did i say you couldn’t have LGBT+ characters?? My mistake, you totally fucking could. Explicitly even.... if they were the villain. Religious people were totally cool if the villain in your film was LGBT+, because to them, that’s what LGBT+ people were.... villains.

Film’s like Rebecca, Dracula’s Daughter, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope all centre around truly horrifying and despicable villains... who are all gay. LGBT+ villains became such a staple in horror films during this time that it lead to a whole near character archetype! We have the damsel in distress, the heroic soldier, the wise old man, now welcome the rise of the:

PSYCHO QUEER.

Yikes.

But why I’m talking about this so much is because this popularity in LGBT+ villains is what creates the “Bury your Gays” trope.

Because the villains.... always die.

It’s their comeuppance. Their karma. Of course bad people will die and the heroes will go one to live a happy life! But what crime are we punishing these villains for?

The message these movies gets across to their audiences is that “If you are gay, you are a bad person... and bad people deserve to die”. Because Gay and villain were so synonymous with each other, they become one in the same, and as we all know by now REPRESENTATION MATTERS.

This influences how society views LGBT+ people, so that in 1952, when the PRODUCTION CODE of YOU BETTER NOT CONDONE ANYTHING SINFUL IN HERE BECAUSE JESUS DOESN’T LIKE THAT is torn down, things still don’t get much better for LGBT+ representation.

LGBT+ characters no longer have to be villains, but society is still not super cool with LGBT+ people, so now we get a new archetype: The self hating tragic gay character. And often? These characters kill themselves, such as in 1961′s The Children’s Hour. Because this is palatable to audiences who do not condone homosexuality in any way, but watching an LGBT+ struggle with themselves? Watching them become overwhelmed by guilt and hatred until they decide that death is the only way out? How tragic! How cursed they are! How pitiful! How... marketable.

But to see LGBT+ characters end up happy? Audiences at this time would not have stomached it, because to them, being LGBT was immoral and these characters were not deserving of happiness. A good analogy might be how modern audiences would view a film with a drug addict character in it. The addict either succumbs to their addiction and dies tragically, or they “Go straight” and have a happy ending. For these audiences in the 50s and 60s the only happy ending was a straight ending.

Then in 1969 we get the Stonewall Riots, and in the 1970s things actually look alright.

That is until the 1980s and society finds a new reason to hate, fear and vilify LGBT+ people. The AIDS crisis wipes out lives and almost all positive representation in the media. This fear is echoed in film as LGBT+ people become villains again. Sleepaway Camp and Cruising are such examples.

The 90′s are better. Whilst mainstream cinema is still vilifying LGBT+ in the 80s, more positive independent films still exist, and the success of the 1991 documentary Paris is Burning prompts Hollywood to go “Hey... maybe we can get some money if we pander to these LGBT+ folks”.

There is a brief period in the 90s where gay comedies like The Birdcage, In and Out, and To Wong Foo are allowed to exist. They’re comedies. The stereotypes are played for laughs, but there is a level of joy and care with these movies where even though these characters are making us laugh... for once we’re not laughing at them. We love these characters. We want them to succeed. No. One. Dies.

It smells like progress. Finally.

Or at least it would. Because these films also exist in the same decade that Philadelphia wins Oscars and the musical Rent is winning Tonys. Both of these deal with the tragedy of the AIDS crisis and have main characters die from the disease. Am I going to point out that Rent has four characters suffering from AIDS, but the only one to die is the Trans-coded poc gay man? Yes. Yes I am. Meanwhile the heterosexual couple suffering from AIDS gets a happy ending.

Interesting.

I hate you Rent. I hate you so goddamned much.

Also the 90s sees a good return to queer-coding villains. It’s always been there. It’s never really gone away, but I need to talk about the queer coding of 90′s villains because I’m sure all of you will actually recognise them.

Ah. There They are. Queer coding and Disney have a very rich history, which MANY articles have been written on. One might even say that it’s a... tale as old as time.

Mmmm no thank you.

But why it is so rampant, particularly in animated films, is because the films have a limited run time.

“We need to convince the audience that these characters are villains IMMEDIATELY. We don’t really have the time to waste on developing them and showing all their evil actions. We need audiences to believe when we tell them that these characters are bad. how do we do that?”

“.... make them kinda gay??”

That’s not actually how the conversation went in the board room, I’m sure, but it’s a very reduced down version. Because of the history of LGBT+ villains in the early years of cinema, animation relies on the stereotypes of villainous characters... well unfortunately those villains of old were LGBT+, so now we have LGBT+ stereotypes being passed on to new villains.

Anyway, my point is that almost all Disney villains die. Sorry that’s where I was going with this. Most of them die. The “Bury your Gays” trope is repeated here because of the villain’s queer coding. It’s not obvious, but the subtext is “Hey, if you’re a bit effeminate or do things outside of your strict gender role? Mmmmmm you deserve to die.”

“Bury your Gays” continues in modern media. Despite the importance of Brokeback Mountain, which explicitly shows a romance and intimacy between two men... Jake Gyllenhaal’s character still dies, and it’s implied that it may be due to a hate crime.

We see it in television. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Downton Abbey, Arrow, there was a massive outcry over the trope in The 100 when a female character, after just entering an intimate relationship with another female character, is killed off seemingly senselessly.

The LGBT+ community is tired of only seeing themselves killed for shock value, character growth, or tragedy. Even Ru Paul’s Drag Race has come under fire in recent years for seemingly exploiting its contestants traumatic histories for ratings.

This is why this year’s Love, Simon was so important. The film portrays an adolescent gay character as he struggles with being open with his sexuality and finding a meaningful relationship. Simon is portrayed as a sympathetic character. He’s the hero.

And he gets a happy ending.

This is why Korrasami, a same-sex relationship in children’s media, is so important. It shows two girls achieving their happy ending together.

It’s why in the same year that Steven Universe portrays a same sex wedding, Adam’s death feels like such a step backwards.

The producers have stated that Adam’s death was supposed to raise the stakes of the season, it was supposed to make viewers realise the severity of the situation and overcome them with a feeling of loss, but Adam’s death doesn’t just fail the LGBT+ fans... it fails to effect viewers emotionally.

Because audiences can’t mourn a character that they have no connection with.

Most of Adam’s character was developed in interviews and not in the show, where he only spoke for one scene. The creators talked about the deep relationship between Adam and Shiro, but none of that is actually visible in the series. Taking the season at face value, Adam is just some guy who’s connected to Shiro that is killed off unceremoniously. He wasn’t even given the dignity of hero’s death, taking out even one enemy before he died. That’s what hurts the most.

His death is meaningless. It does nothing. It’s pointless.

But of course “There’s still Shiro, right?”, which is true. Shiro still exists and is confirmed a mlm, which is important, but it’s understandable why fans may not be satisfied with this. Let’s take a closer look at Shiro.

I often joke with my friends that Voltron should be renamed Shiro Suffers: The Series, because out of all the characters in the show, Shiro has definitely endured and been subjected to the worst (you could argue that Allura has, but Shiro has the joy of being tortured emotionally and physically, so I feel he wins).

The writers have tried to kill him numerous times, with only toy sales saving him. He’s been beaten, tortured, terminally ill, killed, revived, possessed and used... it’s a lot. In the old days, I used to ship shallura, not really out of feeling a real romantic connection between the characters, but just because I wanted Shiro to have someone. Someone to help support him. Someone he could open up about his struggles with. The paladins mean a lot to Shiro, but because he is their surrogate guardian, he cannot open up to them like this. He cannot show the paladins weakness, and we see this in how he keeps his disease a secret from Keith, because he does not want to burden Keith with his struggle.

The introduction of Adam wasn’t just exciting because of the potential of seeing a caring LGBT+ relationship, but because it gave fans hope that Shiro would have someone. There was the potential that Shiro might finally gain some kind of supportive relationship outside of his strict roles of “leader” and “guardian”.

Adam’s death removes that possibility. Despite how caring, generous, strong, intelligent, kind, patient and capable Shiro is written... his life is fucking awful. It’s very telling that in the final scene of the season, when every other paladin is in the hospital surrounded by their family and loved ones, Shiro is alone. He’s on a stage, giving a rousing speech to a crowd, still trapped in this role as an inspirational leader.

God, they don’t even let Shiro mourn Adam. Does he feel guilty that he was the one who supposed to die, whilst Adam lived, but now their roles are reversed?We’ll never know. Adam’s death doesn’t even give some insight into Shiro’s character. It’s truly pointless.

Season 7 of Voltron has made it clear that this is not a kids show. This is a serious show with dark themes. The writers want it to be taken more seriously.

Then I will critique it more seriously.

While I strongly doubt it was intentional, season 7 perpetuates the age old message “If you are LGBT+, you will not achieve a happy ending.” The “Bury your Gays” trope is steeped in a history of oppression, censorship, and vilification. When Adam dies, you’re not just seeing a character die, but you’re seeing the series make a conscious decision to participate in this oppressive trope. And it stings even more because the series sets two heterosexual relationships to potentially end in happiness, whilst the LGBT+ relationships have already ended in tragedy.

Why Adam? Why not literally anyone else? We had no connection to him, so it’s not like they could have used a handful of other characters for the same effect. (Kill James. Fuck that guy. And he’s young so it really would have hurt.)

And that’s what you have to question. This is why fans are upset.

I’m not writing this to convince anyone to boycott the show, or plead with you to stop watching. That’s up to you and your own belief system. I definitely do not condone harassing the writers or voice actors.

I just want people to understand why fans are so upset over season 7, and that they have every right to be. To state that the outcry is just because ��fans didn’t see their ships become canon” is dismissive and cruel. Adam and Shiro’s relationship was heavily used in marketing by Netflix, so much so that you could call it queer-baiting. It was hyped at SDCC and explained as this deep and meaningful relationship, whilst the producers knew what Adam’s fate would be the whole time.

I know producers have to answer to higher ups. I know the crew were largely on edge about what would get approved and what would not.

But the point remains... they still made this conscious choice. Fans don’t have to be happy about it. They shouldn’t be.

I have no idea what season 8 will bring, and at this point I feel like it might be a mess. But I encourage fans to support each other and be vocal about why you’re upset. You can’t change this show, but there’s hope that another series could learn from this.

History repeats. Until we don’t let it.

#voltron #vld #voltron spoilers #adashi #shadam #discourse #negativity #q slur #takashi shirogane #this took a while

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heeres-suffering · 4 years ago

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Be More Alluring: a Personality Swap AU

[pic description and source will be at the bottom of this post, under the read more]

Start of summary:

“You need to be more alluring.”

"... don’t you mean attractive?”

“I do not. Your attractiveness is adequate, Brooke; if you want to mask your apparently latent queerness, you have to make them want you straight. Isn’t that why your step-father defended you?”

Brooke Lohst is a loser.

But you know what? That was okay.

She always knew she was a weird one. The intensity of her affection for puppies, picture books, and near-constant daydreaming has lasted well-past a normalcy she can’t seem to grasp; when coupled with her inability to befriend anyone (besides the similarly self-identified loser Michael Mell), it’s not a surprise the rest of her peers have left her behind.

However, there were... ah, worse things in her life to worry about then some mild bullying. She liked her passion well enough, and all of her true insecurities went largely unnoticed, so any insults or weird looks rarely lingered in her mind. It’s not like she was a constant target either, which helped a lot. All in all, she just planned to hunker down, wait out the awkwardness of High School like everyone else, and move on to the rest of her life...

Except.

When Brooke develops a crush on a girl she’s never talked to, after years of avoiding fairy tale romance and trying not to think about the inevitability of marriage (or how finicky her attraction to boys is in the first place), it feels like her whole world is about to cave in. She’d do anything to make sure her parents, especially daddy, never find out... including buying an edible super computer from the loudest, tiniest guy in school.

End of summary.

Alright!

Hi, hello, it’s Mod Seb, and here’s an AU I’ve been rolling around for a few days! You are free to do with this concept whatever you want, but I wanted to introduce it with a good chunk of the info I’ve already worked out in my head.

So. As the CWs are... too numerous, I’m going to go with a blanket “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” label and encourage you not to read the rest of this if you have any big darkfic triggers that could be upset by mere mention; this isn’t a fic tho, so descriptions of anything awful won’t last long.

Although, I will mention upfront that Brooke isn’t a binary lesbian. I know the description might read like I’m setting her up to be 100% homosexual; she’s bi with a strong preference for girls, and anyone who presents soft enough in gender or appearance. If it wasn’t for the end-game pairings, her unfamiliarity with smaller details/history of the LGBTQ+ community, and general “gay newb” status, she’d likely ID as a bi lesbian!

(ships and everything else under the Read More)

Okay. That out of the way, there’s quite a number of pairings; I’m pretty sure it’s a super polyamorous and sexual AU, though you’re free to change this list as much as you’d like:

[bolded are end-game ships. italics physically hook up at least once. strike-through means they were in a relationship but break-up in some way before the ending. (H) stands for healthy, while (T) is toxic and/or noncon. underlined characters are pining for the other and may never confess their true feelings]

Brooke/Christine (H), Brooke/Rich (H), Brooke/Jenna (H), Brooke/Michael (H), Brooke/Chloe (T), Brooke/her Daddy (T), Brooke/Squip (H), Brooke/Jeremy (soft T at first bc of mirrored canon-compliant manipulation, H later on), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy (H), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy/Rich (H), Rich/Moses (H), [insert every form of Rich/Mo/Squip/Jeremy here] (H), Jeremy/Chloe (T), Jeremy/Michael (H), Michael/Christine (H), Michael/Christine/Mr. Heere (H; no, seriously), Madeline/Brooke (H)

This is, of course, a role swap AU where Brooke and Jeremy trade places based on my personal lore for their home lives. I always have some pretty fucked ideas as I don’t imagine MB is a great place with great adults, and I pick and choose which parts of canons I use and which I don’t.

There is no definite ending planned in mind as this isn’t an outline; it’s meta (or an imagine or w/e) for an AU that you’re free to do whatever with.

So,

The big difference is that Brooke was picked by Michael, while Jeremy was picked by Chloe. Jeremy is trans and hadn’t come out yet; if Chloe had known he was a boy, she wouldn’t have grabbed him. In contrast, Michael’s never gave a shit about potential friends genders.

Jer and B’s personalities... are altered some. Not ALL the way, but kiiinda fusing into their roles, kinda tweaked (I'll get back to that).

The main point of this for me was Brooke/Squip/Jeremy, with B/Jer having a MUCH stronger focus than in canon, and a really bad Chloe acting as one of the major villains.

Michael gets roped into Chloe’s shit, even tho he's still generally a good guy here, bc he's worried about B and thinks she can't properly take care of herself.

While B DOES have a strong crush on Christine, she’s the opposite of the Squip’s “goal”; that’s (obvs) masking, or making passably digestible, her queerness.

Her Mom and step-’Daddy’ have reacted to her friendship w/ ‘openly gay moms, also very flamboyant and GNC’ Michael... poorly.

Michael thinks the solution has to be “act as aggressively yourself as you can, and if they reject you, you know me and the mom’s have a space for you”. This works for him bc he’s permanently hyper-visible, what with all of his own marginalized identities. But, not only has she flied under the radar in comparison to him for years, he doesn’t know everything about her life.

In fact, he doesn’t know most of it. She’s very good at hiding things.

Meanwhile, Jeremy, one of the more popular ‘boy... ish’ (we’ll get to this, too) people in school, is mid-psychosis and self-destruction. He actually has schizo-affective disorder--as is the case with all of my versions of Jeremy--which he needs medication for. Combined that with so many bad influences and trauma, he can no longer fully control himself or his life.

The way he handles this (badly) is to ‘whore around’--which, besides being Chloe’s pet, is kinda why he’s so popular. Nobody respects him, but he’s viewed some form of favorably.

Jeremy is in a relationship with Rich, but he won't let him get as close/protective as Rich wants; Mo and Rich were doing their own man-whoring (but healthy, just droppin’ panties and making dudes and chicks swoon--yeah, Rich is out as bisexual, this is a very ‘the Squips are a good thing’ AU) to gain their standard reputation, but in the course of that, they got together with Jeremy and it became... complicated. Both of them are very "nnn" about how bad his life is for Jer.

The way that their personalities are altered is... okay. To explain this, I have to talk about my characterization of canon-Brooke and Jeremy in relation to this, starting with Brooke:

I imagine B as just a liiittle below the line of "all the way there" for sorta-similar reasons to Jeremy here: trauma, and Chloe (which is why that’s what Jeremy gets in this, it’s just WAY worse when compounded by everything else). She’s also--like me, and like almost every character I write as a result--autistic, in a near-permanent state of “not enough accommodations” and over-stimulation. This leads to a lot of dissociation and a very wandering mind, as well as being perceived as a bimbo or dumb blonde or w/e misogynistic bullshit is projected onto her by the boys she dates (she’s also much more down the middle bi outside this AU).

So, going back to how she is for this AU: she's actually not super nerdy, despite the close connection she and Michael have. Honestly, it’s their general neurodivergent weirdness that bring them together, and so she’s mostly adopted her nerdy interests through him, whether directly a thing he likes, or finding a whimsical variant that fits her tastes.

Obviously, unlike Jeremy, she doesn’t mind being called a loser. She does any insinuation she might be queer. This including anyone who calls her gay or a dyke.

She has too much Cis Male Trauma (unlike canon, where it comes from both cis angles) to really entertain the idea of a Traditionally Male Partner. This means she skews HEAVILY towards hard GNC guys at the very least, and generally finds herself most interested in the idea of enbies and women. she's also not super into butches tho, bc her trauma mixing with her sexuality has latched on to Strong Masc People Are A Threat.

An expansion on her interests, in canon and otherwise: animals, ASMR/sensual service work (including massages and stuff), spending hours just sorta sitting by herself and letting her imagination wander, fairy tales, and YA-and-under fantasy books.

(Here, she tries to avoid het or f/f romance... except that, this past year or two, she’s started really like m/m stuff--esp after getting REALLY into drag shows, which she could enjoy safely since girls like Chloe have gotten into them too; in canon, she’s a romance fanatic)

Now... this is one of the really darkfic element; she's fucking her step-dad.

She does this so that he doesn't walk out on her, her mom, and her little sister*. Her mom has a good-enough job as a standard office woman, but he makes enough to pay the rent on their nice townhouse and all the bills she can’t. So, after he expressed interest in Brooke and then casually mentioned he could always just leave if she wasn’t comfortable, she reluctantly entered a relationship with him

(* = her sister is currently know as her brother; he’s like 12 or 13, and started showing signs of trans/queerness which have been Heavily Discouraged. Brooke worries about him a lot)

((I didn’t use she/her pronouns bc I’m not entirely sure he would change them? This is an OC Oli created at the beginning of our interest in BMC, and we haven’t worked on him at all since, so how his characterization will be is up in the air))

Canonically, Brooke's "in love" with her daddy, which is a self-imposed delusion; if she actually addressed it, she’d says she’s well aware that’s not true, but it's so much easier to pretend when you’re cornered like that. Brooke’s life blows.

She’s a lot more honest to herself about hating him here; still, she tries to be as polite and generally-friendly as she can, doing what he says whenever he wants.

OKAY, THAT’S BROOKE. If any of that is badly described or potentially-offensive, it’s just bc I glossed over SO MUCH DETAIL, even in that amount of it!

So. Jeremy.

I don’t have to go over him much and we’re all mostly aware of how I feel about him and also I don’t have the energy to do this again--

(just... read my fics The Devil at your Door or hello yesterday or something... eyyy actually do that, my ao3 username is Sedusa, blah blah blah ANYWAY)

--but basically: He's still very nerdy, like, he’s super into film as well as video games (which is another constant for me), but after being largely ignored in elementary, he's been trailing behind Chloe at her orders since they were in 6th grade. As a result he isn't very open about... any of his interests.

In 7th grade, he came out as trans to everyone. Chloe was furious, but at the same time, intrigued; this was around the time Chloe gets her own... ah shit I gotta go into that too--

--yet another hc of mine is that Chloe gets a Squip on accident around this time at a party (there was one in a “”candy bowl””), and from there, she claws her way up the ladder. I... will not go into that much, but her Squip was crippled by the drugs and alcohol in her system, and therefore largely at her mercy. She’s used his power to manipulate certain things about herself and to sharpen her focus on popularity to the point she’s full-blown Alpha Bitch.

Man, I’ve had to go on so many tangents, I apologize.

Anyway, she drags Jeremy around as a punching bag. She constantly mocks Jeremy's transness, even though she usually calls him by his correct name and pronouns.

This has made the rest of the school follow her lead, hence why I said “boy-ish”; he’s popular, he’s technically ‘well liked’, but nobody really takes him seriously. This is compounded by Chloe’s refusal to let him dress in 'dorky' casual clothes, and, as he’s both too poor to afford designer clothes and also generally hates popular guy fashion, he has to wear the hyper femme clothing Chloe specifically tells him too/

As such, people call him a boy but largely see him as either an idiot, a slut, an attention seeker, or all of the above.

So of course, in Brooke's place, his neurodivergence is more prominent than ever; every day he slips further into this psychosis and self-infantilization haze, as his his mom leaving, his dad severely depressed, Chloe's sexual violence, and other repressed trauma (see: my fic hello yesterday on ao3) all weighing on him. This makes him INCREDIBLY regressed, like, all the time by Junior year.

And then Brooke's Squip (IE: canon Squip) falls in love with Jeremy extremely fucking hard. He pushes her to date him as a way to compromise on her queer desires, since Jeremy is technically a boy, and certainly a few other straight-ish girls have hooked up with him in the past.

WHEW. That is a fucking lot. To wrap this up, lemme go over the interpersonal relationships not already mentioned, and what directions I think it takes.

First off, Madeline has a more prominent role, as I quite like her tbh; she’s a sex worker, she has her own Squip, she’s one of Chloe’s most hated enemies, and she gravitates towards both Brooke and Jeremy. She’s also Actually French, Chloe’s just weird.

(Anyway she prolly sees through Brooke’s straight act and asks her why she’s pretending to be a good little cishet. It rattles Brooke.)

Chloe is scum. This bears repeating. She DEFINITELY rapes Brooke at the Halloween party, and becomes obsessed with her, along with already being obsessed with Jeremy and Jake.

Jake, by the way, has a lot of regressive behavior and impulsiveness bc he’s been in an abusive relationship off and on with Chloe for years now.

Speaking of Jake, moving on to his best bro: Rich doesn’t set himself on fire. He’s having a good time with his Squip.

But.

He IS set on fire at the Halloween party.

Instead of the Smartphone Hour being about Rich's instability, it's actually about the mystery of Someone Did It To Him But No One Saw Who It Was, They Were Disguised.

The answer relates to the fact that Rich and Brooke are ALSO hooking up, after she’s already with Jeremy, bc he Properly introduces her to him and the three of them hit it off really well.

(She initially wasn’t interested, but while Rich is loud and still kinda abrasive, his Squip doesn’t drive him to act like a bully--and in private, his nerdiness is really obvious and he’s extremely gentle with her and Jeremy. Add to that that he’s bi and trans*, when Brooke connects best w/ queer men over cishet one, and it off-sets his masc-ness enough to make him an Exception.

* = I always imagine him as trans. See: all of Vanceypants fics.)

Sooo... the culprit is actually Brooke's daddy, who sees her with this obvious heartthrob and Cannot let that be.

Chloe convinces Michael that the Squips are Very Very Bad and has him team up with her to force Brooke into drinking Red, with the intention to convince him to kill himself after to get him out of the way, bc she’s really going nuts at this point.

Eventually, he snaps out of it when he and Christine get together (he’s thought he was Full Homo all of his life, but Christine’s prolly genderqueer-ness makes him realize “oh shit, I’m bisexual”) and she starts to question why he’s acting the way he is towards Christine.

He also definitely has a crush on Jeremy and during his time with Chloe he kinda tried to flirt a little but couldn’t really... he’s not up for dating someone as sexually active and a push-over as Jeremy is in this.

However, when he snaps out of Chloe’s manipulation, he and Christine approach Mr. Heere to convince him to straighten up and help Jeremy and also bc they really need an adult to successfully fight Chloe.

This requires a month+ of Christine getting him to see her psychiatrist (the one who prescribes her ADHD meds). Jeremy spends the majority of his time staying with Chloe, and very rarely comes home to gather things or to make sure his dad is eating/still alive, as much as he can remember to in his own haze of mental illness. Anyway, point is, he doesn’t know Christine and Michael are there often... not that, in the course of growing close to Mr. H, they both fall for him hard and it becomes one of my stranger OT3s.

(God, Jeremy goes through a lot of shit in this, tho.)

Pre-Squip, Jenna was kinda-sorta Brooke’s friend--or, well, friendly. However, she’s actually full blown “oh my God she’s wonderful” in love with Brooke.

Brooke isn't aware of that, esp since Jenna tries her not to be around her a lot. She's also trying to hide her own queerness, bc she’s a trans woman and she knows Chloe finding that out would be extremely dangerous.

Eventually, Chloe succeeds in making Brooke take the Red months after canon usually ends, w/o Michael’s help. If you’re curious, Red doesn’t affect her normal Squip bc she’s had him too long and a lot of his receptors and stuff are damaged, so it’s the second one she gets in canon that turns off.

This plan backfires, however, as Brooke’s Squip comes back with a physical body w/ help from Rich and also-bodied-now Moses.

With a body, and shenanigans, Mo and Squip take out Brooke’s daddy too. His life insurance more than makes up for the loss of his income, as it’s a sizable amount. Now that Brooke feels more empowered and strong, she overrides her mother’s neglectfulness and takes control of the household w/ her boyfriends*, comes out as queer, helps her sister transition, and begin to heal from all of this trauma.

(* = Rich and Mo move in, as does Jeremy eventually, after graduation; Jeremy gets a psychiatrist and a therapist and prolly has to go through some intense outpatient care and possibly a stay in the hospital, before finally making major breakthroughs and looking like himself again. The five of them are now happy and in love.)

Chloe, after her arm gets twisted by the Squip’s protective presence so thoroughly, gives up on Jeremy and Brooke to focus on Jake. This too gets abandoned when Rich and Mo help him cut her off, and so she stays in her own popularity bubble, bitter, until graduating and going to a community college in a different state.

All in all, things work out well in the end, but getting there is a long, difficult process. This AU fascinates me immensely and feels like a great way to examine some of my really dark headcanons about MB, as I think it’s a town similar to Derry in Stephen King’s IT--as in, just chronically The Worst Place Ever, with this, like, miasma of low-key despair around it. People adjust and don’t question it, which is why so much of BMC is this flippant dark humor in the face of some highly questionable shit.

I’m so sorry this post is so long (I’ll be uploading it to AU under my usual Sedusa account, as metas like this are more than allowed), but I really adore these characters and the way they can be twisted around, so I had a lot to say!

Thank you for reading <3

-mod Seb

image description: virtual-like stairs pointed forward and bathed in neon yellow and blue to represent Brook and Jeremy, which I’ve modified from the original blue-only design.

source: x (link description: a free Wallpaper Flare image that I found off Google Image’s “filtered by ‘labeled and reuse with modification” feature)

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nezclaw · 5 years ago

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i’m not particularly eloquent except on rare occasions, and it’s been said before by others much clearly, but Good Omens? Amazing.

I am an asexual possibly aromantic person. I roll my eyes at romantic depictions in media. They’re (almost) always so cliched and forced. There’s no good reason for these people to be together, usually. There’s no chemistry. The relationship is extremely shallow (and white, and straight, and ‘conventionally attractive’). Or it’s like, okay, here are the two leads and over the course of the seasons they end up falling in love and having sex. Which isn’t bad, per say, but it’s treated as the pinnacle of the relationship and i just wonder “why”.

And the same goes for shipping. The vast majority of the time I see ships and go “huh. Okay.” because I don’t really see anything different about the way the characters involved interact with each other. I’m not saying shipping is bad, mind you. You can ship whoever you want and I won’t stop you (although I may give you a hard side-eye if you’re shipping a literal child (ie 16 and under) and adult or someone with their abuser). It’s not my job to stop you.

Good Omens, though... Good Omens is the standard we should hold romantic depictions to. There is no question that they are in love, despite the fact that they never outright say it. (Really, the musical score makes sure of that.) It’s the little gestures, the way Aziraphale’s face lights up, the Arrangement, the way Crowley keeps trying to get Aziraphale to go away with him, and then gets upset when he thinks Aziraphale died, how they threaten to not talk to or think about each other when something goes wrong, and the threat actually works (At least for Aziraphale). The fact that they even make that threat speaks volumes to what they mean to each other.

And yet. There’s no sex between them. No gratuitous making out. None of the usual shorthands used to indicate to the audience that “yes these two are in love, really.” It’s very much a reverse of the typical approach, and it’s so nice to see. It’s extremely affirming. It’s no wonder so many people on my dashboard are posting Good Omens. It’s exactly the queer romance we needed to see. Because it is queer. Neil has said that they don’t have human gender, since they are divine beings. They present as male, but they’re as male as the Gems from Steven Universe are female. Maybe less, even, since Crowley has presented as female before and I don’t remember any gems presenting male although I could be wrong. And I’m not talking just about the scenes with the nanny, which some have tried to argue is transphobic because man in a dress (even though I didn’t really see that as the joke, it read more as “Evil Mary Poppins”.) (If he had tried to seduce someone while dressed like that that would be a different story) but it’s been confirmed that he was wearing women’s clothing while watching the crucifixion.

I uh.... kinda forgot where i was going with this, but Good Omens is important. It has touched so many queer folk, and particularly those for whom representation is nonexistent. Asexuals, aromantics, and anyone who falls under that umbrella; people who are genderfluid, nonbinary, agender, transgender, intersex; they don’t get even the scant representation that lesbian and gay people get. (at least i don’t think so. and i’m not sure where bisexuals and pansexuals fall on that range) And, as an aroace myself, we need that representation too. People need to see what a loving, non-sexual relationship looks like.

#long post #good omens

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artistshadow · 5 years ago

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Supergirl 5x11 "Back To The Future - Part 1" My Thoughts and Opinions. *Spoilers on the last episode so of*

Now that I have watched the Supergirl 5x11 episode and have had time to collect my thoughts I'm ready to give my opinions on the "queer-baiting" and the *SPOILER* whole William asking Kara out on a date in the next episode.

Okay so first off I really enjoyed the episode! So happy to see my boy/child Winn!! Jeremy Jordan killed it in this episode playing both Winn and Toyman and David Harewood directed this episode and he did an incredible job!!

Now on to the "queer-baiting" of the show. Now queer-baiting is defined online as "a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then not actually depict, same-sex romance. They do so to attract ("bait") a queer audience with the suggestion of relationships that appeal to them, while at the same time attempting to avoid alienating other consumers." Now I can see how SuperCorp (the ship name for Lena and Kara) is coming off as queer-baiting. I joined the fandom of Supergirl back in season 3. I was watching all the Arrowverse shows on Netflix and when I tell you Lena became my favorite character after Kara I MEAN IT!!! Now a lot of people want Kara and Lena to get together because come on, they would be the ultimate power couple and I myself would love to see Lex's ugly face when he finds out his sister is dating the cousin of his number one enemy!😂😂 But here's the thing: I think the original plan was for Lena to become Kara's best friend (beside Winn and Alex). There would be rough times where everybody would be against Lena because she's a Luthor but Kara would stand by her and have her back and believe in her. They wanted to portray a strong, incredible, unbreakable friendship/bond between these two powerful, strong, smart, independent, successful, bad-A women. They can rely on each other, be there for one another, lean on each other when needed, but somewhere down the line, it sort of slipped a bit and instead of it coming off as true friendship it's coming off as there is a mutual attraction between them. It doesn't help the situation that the actresses (both VERY talented) have some major on screen chemistry.

Okay so in my opinion, MY OPINION, I don't think they are purposely trying to "queer-bait." I think that the writers of Supergirl are trying to give us a healthy friendship between two women that doesn't involve one doing something bad to the other or have them doing some dumb fight crap over some guy. None of that, just a good friendship. But in defense, when you try to write a good, loving friendship between two females, two males, and/or a female and a male (especially that one) it's going to be hard to write and portray it as "friendly" cause along the way it might start slipping and it's going to come off as romantic and people are going to think that they are attracted to each other. Especially if the friends are a boy and a girl cause God forbid a girl and guy be best friends without one having a crush on the other or one of them have to be gay in order for them to be friends.

Do I condone queer-baiting? No. Absolutely not. I think it's a disgusting, awful, horrible, and manipulative way to reel in LGBT fans in a sense they are going to see themselves represented in the media and get their hopes up just to watch them crash hard on the ground. Do I think Supergirl is queer-baiting? I believe that they're trying not to, but since they're writing for female/female friendship it's coming off that way and we're so far into that it's hard to back up on it because there such a big fandom for it. Cause I know some people are concerned whether of not if they do get together if it's because the writers want them to or if it's just fanservice.

Now onto the William and Kara thing. Guys, calm down. It's literally one date. We haven't even seen the episode yet and already everyone's losing their crap over something we haven't had a chance to watch. For all we know the date might go horribly wrong or they will try it out but realize they're better off as friends. Wait till the episode premieres before we start throwing toxic hate around. Put your pitchforks and torches away and let's find out what happens first. Dang. I guessed that William was maybe probably going to be a love interest for Kara back in the first half of the season. That they would develop feelings for each other over the course of the season. BTW I don't think you need to have chemistry with someone to go out a date with them. The first date is to stroke the fire and see if there's anything there. So let's at least give it a chance. Because at the end of the day, what’s more important: Kara being with Lena or Kara being happy (not saying Kara wouldn't be happy with Lena)? And God knows she needs some happiness with all the hell and high water she's been through over the past couple of seasons. Especially this season so far. Her whole freaking universe was wiped out of existence and there was nothing she could do about it and then had it merged with other earths and now she has to work with the person she hates the most (not to mention he's also considered a hero by the people of the new earth) and lost a close friend (Oliver), plus on top of alllllllllll that her best friend (Lena) hates her for lying to her about being Supergirl and y'all want to make a big deal over a date? That we saw in a promo? For an episode that doesn't air for 2 weeks? Good Lord.

Look for all we know, two things could be happening here: William's secretly evil and is trying to get close to Kara by tricking her or he's just a stand in until Kara and Lena do get together. I could use Shadowhunters as an example. Alec had feelings for Magnus but he agreed to marry Lydia to help his family but then at the wedding he realized that he couldn't hide his deep feelings for Magnus and called it all off, Lydia understood (she even encouraged him to go to Magnus), and then him and Magnus got together. It might not be the exact same thing as what's going on in Supergirl, but something similar like that could be the case. Plus think about it: SuperCorp could happen eventually. It might not be that fast to some of you'd liking, but it could happen. Heck it took them 3 seasons before Brainy finally looked accurate to his comic book character version. Good things come to those who wait and patience is a virtue.

Look, all I'm saying is that I get why you guys might be mad and it's understandable but I just urge you to please wait and see what happens the rest of the season. You might be mad now but you might not be come the end of the season. And it's okay to be upset and to voice your opinions but let's do it in a calm and kind way. There is no need to spread hate. Especially to the cast. They don't write the show so there is no reason on earth that they should be receiving your anger because you're unhappy. Voice your complaints but do it in the right way and to the right people. Otherwise nothing is going to get solved. Make noise but don't make chaos. I heard other people call the Supergirl fandom (as well as the SuperCorp shippers) toxic and I don’t want that to be true.

These are just my opinions. If Kara does end up with William and her and Lena reconnect and go back to being best friends, I won’t be mad. Will I be sad that SuperCorp's not happening? Yes. Will I be angry? No because I'll be happy that Kara's happy. Don't consider Kara and Lena being best friends a loss, consider it a win all its own. I don't want to disrespect anyone else's opinions and if you don't agree with mine, that's okay. Its not going to hurt my feelings. If I'm proven wrong, I won't try to argue over it. I can admit when I'm wrong. If you have any comments on this, your opinions on the whole thing all together or what I had to say about it, please fill free to comment. Just know that I will not be responding to hateful comments and if it comes to the point that people keep coming into my comment sections with noting but hate, I will delete them and/or block the users. Again, just my opinions and I hope you all see where I'm coming from and I have nice day.😀😊

#supergirl #kara danvers #lena luthor #you need to calm down #calm down #supercorp #season 5 #supergirl season 5 #lgbtq

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dgcatanisiri · 5 years ago

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*writes up a half page ranting response*

*closes window*

No. I’m not going to get anywhere by doing that. But... GAH...

So, yeah, I’m gonna rant on my own instead of responding to a confession.

So, I’m not making value judgments on other people. I’m not telling them they can or can not like certain characters, certain stories, whatever. I’m not attempting to police people’s way of thinking. All I do with my various rants and ravings, which I try to tag appropriately, is express my views and opinions and at the least try to explain why it is that I am approaching things the way that I do.

So, my opinion: Dorian Pavus is a lousy, reductive character that brought nothing to the table that hadn’t been provided by no less than a dozen, and I’m underselling that point, characters in other media. To say nothing of my dislike of him on a personal level, finding him arrogant and obnoxious. And if this is the quality that BioWare approaches their gay characters, which, based on what happened with both Steve Cortez and Gil Brodie, seems like the case, I DON’T. want them to be writing more gay characters, because they SUCK at it.

My reasoning for this is based on the fact that all these characters have yet to be a character who the player seems expected to walk away from the game, if they must remember one fact about them, is the fact that they’re gay. It’s all that they’re there to be. The gay character. At most, you might be able to argue Steve, that he’s “the widower,” and not necessarily “the gay widower,” but still. What EXISTS about these characters beyond their sexuality? What do they provide, on a character, on a story level, that is not directly tied to their sexuality, to who they are banging and the fact that it happens to be another man?

Dorian? His entire personal quest revolves around his father not accepting him for being gay. Gil? Reduced to his straight best friend accessory and turkey baster. Steve? Exists to be in mourning for his husband, and possibly for Shepard to catch on the rebound. THIS is the caliber of BioWare’s writing for gay men.

I mean, take a look through my “another angry queer rant” tag. This is something I have LONG gone in on, because that’s their portrayal of gay characters. That’s the approach they take - make these characters have their character and characterization depend on them being gay. Write them in a way that makes it such a big deal that it’s the driving force of their portrayal in the game.

This is, I’ll be fair, something that I see as being born of generation gap - the writers at BioWare, the people who wrote these stories, came of age in a different era that queer people my age and younger. They grow up with the looming specter of the AIDS crisis. Being gay was something to hide, because it quickly led to a death sentence, either from the disease itself or because the straight people would decide to kill you before you had a chance to “infect” them. While the world today is still a massive work in progress on this front, it is still better than that.

So to a writer who lived through that, even while in the closet, when they do what I tend to think writers do and write to the child they were, the child in need of a role model, they are writing characters who are open and upfront about being gay. Who are making it a core part of their identity to reach back to that child and say “it’s okay.

BUT - there’s always a but - but, to MY generation, to the generations who are coming after that period, instead of coming across as trying to be revolutionary, of having gay characters who exist openly as gay... To these younger generations, it instead just comes off as reducing these characters to no more than their gayness, that ‘being gay’ is all the identity and story and existence they need. Because when you take away the time spent on highlighting their gayness, what story are you left with? What character are you left with? Does this character EXIST in the narrative as a person, or as a walking demand to be seen as a gay character?

And, y’know, to some, that demand is ignored anyway - witness the bi!Dorian mods. Witness the fact that there are mods that make Gil romanceable by Sis!Ryder - like, what are you getting out of that? I say this as someone who romances Gil, but... Really, WHAT do you get out of a mod like that? And the only answer I can come to on that question is that it is this group of straight women who are upset about ANY content they are locked out of on the basis of gender.

But that’s a separate issue for a separate rant. Just bringing it up because it points out that trying to use characters to demand that they are viewed as a gay person... It doesn’t have any effect on someone who is being homophobic. They will disregard that if they so choose. So using these characters as an anvil on the issues of gay people? Not exactly doing much. Meanwhile, as I said, to a new generation, this is reductive.

Like, I see a character like Dorian, I think about what would have happened if he’d been in the media for my teenage “struggling with my sexuality” self. And the answer I reach, the conclusion I come up to, is that, at most, he wouldn’t be a help. At worst, he’d be a dagger - THIS is the example he would have of what it is to be gay... And that’s not him. So does that mean he’s not actually gay? Well, he’s attracted to other guys, so he doesn’t think so. But then... who does he get to look up to? Who is his role model? Because it’s not Dorian.

That’s what gets to me with BioWare’s portrayal of gay men. In Dragon Age, gay men consist of Dorian, who I just went over, Wade and Herren (by way only of word of god...), who... That’s worse, in my opinion, considering the abuse they hurl at each other on the job, on top of being side characters we are meant to laugh at, and... That’s really about it. In Mass Effect, we have Steve Cortez and Gil Brodie, who, okay, in terms of personality might be better examples, but... Their portrayal in the game basically reduces them to a single element - “my dead husband” or “my best friend wants me to be her turkey baster” - and doesn’t explore them AS INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE, just as “messages” to be delivered.

That’s my representation as a gay person. Joke, reductive, or The Message™. That’s not a good track record.

So this leads me to advocate for the romances to be all bisexual. Because at least then, the characters are not defined by their sexuality. Because at least then, BioWare can’t restrict their Prince Charming style romance to women. Like, stop and consider for a moment. In the last seven BioWare games, not counting Anthem, the four Mass Effects and the three Dragon Ages, how many characters would you say really repeat a single, primary archetype? Like, if you were to reduce a character to a single trope on their TVTropes character bio, which would you pull out to describe a character to someone else so they got the core idea of who this character is? What it is like going through their character arc? Through their romance arc?

Because at least for me, “Knight in Shining Armor” could be applied to AT LEAST three characters, based on their portrayal in their respective games: Alistair, Cullen, and Cassandra. All three are straight romances. Two are from the same game. Two are the same gender.

I cannot think of a SINGLE gay - or bi - character who I would use that term with. This is a PROBLEM.

Because, again, as I’ve said repeatedly, BioWare TAPS. THE SAME. WELLS. with their same-sex options. Gay/bi men are sketchy, suspicious, someone on the outside of the dominant society of the places we are playing in. And I’m not saying that this is intentionally done on BioWare’s part, but it’s a pattern of behavior that they are perpetuating. The gay/bi options they offer are variations of the bad boy, and just about ONLY the bad boy - the exceptions are Kaidan and Jaal, who it took fan demand to get them as bi options, and then Cortez and Gil, who, as I’ve already said, don’t get enough characterization to qualify either way - sure, Gil’s probably not a bad boy in the traditional sense, particularly in comparison to Reyes, but... We come back to the issue of “what else IS there to him in the first place?”

BioWare’s portrayal of gay men is flawed at best. I don’t have FAITH in their ability to provide solid queer representation when they are giving us characters of a single set sexuality, because they fall back into these patterns that are painful, are reductive, are... just not reaching the audience that needs more to their representation.

And, as I’ve gone into elsewhere, the romances are ALWAYS playersexual, so that’s really no excuse either, because why would Alistair romance someone who sacrifices Isolde and Connor, his adoptive family? Would Morrigan REALLY come to love a goodie-two shoes who stops to pull kittens out of a tree? No, really, WHY is Liara devoting herself to a racist, xenophobic bastard? The romance options are playersexual by definition, so stop deluding yourself that it only comes into play when the romances are all bisexual.

#dg rants #another angry queer rant #bioware critical

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geekinthejeep · 6 years ago

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I needed to do a bit of an info dump and get all of my very personal thoughts about The Magicians’ season finale down in words. Or, why the season finale sent me into a goddamn fucking tailspin the likes of which I haven’t seen in years.

Under a cut because we’re talking some good triggers here, folks. (We’re also talking some good spoilers, but, you know.)

I came into The Magicians as a fan of the books already, and as a fan of Quentin Coldwater’s story in particular. Here was a character, in both book and show, who saw the world very similarly to how I did! He’s depressed, openly, and has been since he was a teenager. He’s also, as I had always thought of it, casually suicidal. Not like, “hey I would like to die right this particular moment,” but rather “if I could just sleep and not wake up for a few millennia that would be a-okay with me” and also “I have a list of appropriate locations and ways to make this happen if the need arises.”

It turns out this was called suicidal ideation, and I probably should have been getting help way back in junior high school when it started, but I just thought “casually suicidal” and plotting hanging myself in my closet was normal. That my cat was the only thing keeping me going? Normal.

Anyway.

He was also a super-nerd who had a difficult time connecting to the people around him because he was constantly filtering them through his worldview of fantasy and fandom. And every time he found something that he thought he wanted? The thing that matched every single one of his dreams and fantasies? He was still that depressed kid underneath it all who couldn’t find total happiness. His own brain was there to find something wrong with it, some way to mess it up for him. Even in the world he had fantasized about his entire life, he wasn’t happy - because depression is a fucking monster that eats away at your hopes even when you’re at your highest, sometimes.

For a version of me who was going through psychotherapy, on two different antidepressants, recently diagnosed with PTSD... The books, and then the show, were everything I could have hoped for.

The show! God this show never glossed over his struggles. He was still depressed, he was still taking antidepressants, and he was still searching for the things that made him happy. But then they did the one thing that made my connection with Quentin Coldwater even deeper - they made him queer. Where he was unabashedly bisexual, I have never strayed away from being open about my biromanticism, and it meant everything to see that played out on screen. And his romances didn’t cure his depression! They actively let him love and express interest in both men and women.

Quentin Coldwater was me, but with magic added. The dream, honestly. The super-nerd whose brain breaks sometimes. And Quentin’s story is one of overcoming his own odds. But he was safe where maybe my own brain was not, because this show had always gone for emotional realism but with that safety net of magic attached to it. After all, we’ve proven on this show over and over again how impermanent death is.

For characters good and bad.

That’s why, and here is where I admit something I have told very few people outside of my psychotherapist, I kept going with this show, even when it threatened to legitimately trigger flashbacks in me every time it insisted on bringing back an unashamed child molester: the character that will not die, Christopher Plover. I am a child sexual assault survivor who only in the last few years has really started to come to terms with what that means, and watching scenes with Plover in them was a struggle each and every time, but the overall story always made it worth it. Quentin, Eliot, Margo, Julia - all of them made the story worth watching. Hell, Quentin himself experienced multiple instances of nonconsensual sexual encounters, and was hinted at having trauma from early on in his own life, so I really just connected with him more.

And then the finale happened.

And then this show killed off Quentin, their depressed, queer super-nerd. The character who has been my avatar for years: they let him sacrifice himself to save his friends, and left him pondering if he had really died for a good reason, or if this had just finally been his chance to kill himself. They let him see all of his friends mourning his beautiful death, and he’s told that it’s all okay now, because he won’t feel depressed once he’s in The Underworld!

And oh, by the way, Jason Ralph, the actor who plays Quentin, is leaving the show by “mutual” agreement, so that’s it, goodbye Quentin. But that’s okay, the writers say, because Quentin really did die to save his friends. And he was the white male protagonist, so it’s revolutionary, really. Subverting and deconstructing tropes. And, by the way, that he never got to speak to the character we’d been hinting at a romance with all season? Meh, that’s just real life for you, folks. You don’t always get to say goodbye, because realism. Just forget that we’re a show about magic with talking bunnies and centaurs and werewolves.

And in simplifying him down to the “while male protagonist,” the writers forgot everything else that he is, too. Queer. Depressed. The main character in a show that just by it’s very nature attracts viewers who identify similarly. And the writers said that their story doesn’t matter. Their story is to die young and tragically, but it’s okay, because the pain is gone after death and there will be people to mourn beautifully around a bonfire, after.

(That’s to say nothing of the fact that the unabashed child molester I mentioned above is still alive in the show and out wandering the world, half the time used as comedic relief. Just to add some salt to the wound. That’s a personal anger that I won’t soon get over in all of this.)

It all sent me into a tailspin that I hadn’t experienced the likes of in years. I had been doing well, all things considered: I was down to one antidepressant, at least. Now... Now I’m in a not-so-great headspace, to say nothing of the hell that it’s played on my chronic illness and the related flareups. I didn’t know it was possible to lose three pounds in two days before this, but enough stomach pain makes it possible, I suppose. I reached a weight I haven’t seen since elementary school this past week, going through this merciless cycle of stomach pain and “if I could just sleep for a few decades...”

The problem is that the writers don’t care. They’ll pat themselves on the back and call this revolutionary. It’s the rest of us who are left to pull ourselves back together. Us, and the actors, who have been tasked with being customer service representatives, seeing and hearing fans who are upset, or concerned for the actors’ own health. The actors, who had no clue what was happening until just two days before the finale aired, and didn’t even know that they were offering their fans false hope that they themselves had also been given by the writers. Everyone is left to somehow keep going with this Quentin-shaped hole in our souls, left there by irresponsible writers who were given a depressed, queer super-nerd to work with and decided to see him as nothing more than a “white male lead.” We’re the ones left to pick up the pieces in our fandom.

And I’ll be picking up the pieces of my own life for the foreseeable future. Just not with this show in it.

#the magicians #trigger warning ///#content warning ///#i'll clean this up later #in the meantime i am here for anyone who needs to talk because i love you all #it's cool for you to interact with this post - i'm putting my secrets out there today.#this is super personal but whatever whatever if it ends up on sera gamble's desk and/or timeline somehow i won't mind

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kingofthewilderwest · 6 years ago

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Hey.. thanks for your long VLD S8 positivity post. Seriously. It's one of the only positive posts out there that share my feelings about the final season, and its helped me with accepting the end of Voltron. It honestly means a lot that you put it all out there because I feel like we all need to take a step back and stop thinking about ships this and writing that and fully appreciate the amazing reboot that we've been blessed with. Best of wishes to you and your love for this amazing show :)

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for hopping in with this message! It means a lot to me to wake up in the morning to an ask like this in my inbox. Sending best wishes to you as well, fellow VLD lover!

I’m really happy to bond with other VLD fans who enjoyed the season. I want to keep finding all the people out there who enjoyed it so we can talk about what we enjoyed together. While there’s lots of salt out there on my dash right now, I also know many friends, irl and url, who’ve liked the season. There are fans who share in this love of the full series; we are not alone; we can create a more positive and energetic climate for S8. I think that what we do is take things into our own volition rather than sitting in others’ salt! :D

We have the ability and the agency to write our own posts that are positive-focused. We can all sit down and write these positivity posts together!

You’re right - this is an amazing reboot that we have been blessed with. An absolutely amazing reboot.

The first thing I notice… is that people go into each new season with a specific preconception of what they want. If you become so attached to this prediction of yours, then you set yourself up for disappointment. The creators can’t read your mind and they aren’t your mind. The story will often go differently than what you expected. That’s simply the nature of being an audience member. But if you formulate in your mind that this prediction you made is “what you want,” then you’re going to be upset when what you artificially set your hopes and dreams upon doesn’t get fulfilled. It can take some training to teach yourself not to go into something with such preconceptions, but to take and enjoy what you do get… but I think that learning it makes you a lot happier with anything and everything you watch. If you go in with a simple desire to have fun and find positives (rather than expect perfection or specific end game ships or story elements), then you’re going in with an attitude that will be positively reaffirmed with the adventure you watch.

The second thing I notice… is that people can be quick to presume rather than waiting out the long end game. To give one example: S7 met with backlash because people called it queerbaiting and killing off the gays. Zethrid and Ezor were presumed to have died; I saw people lash out at killing the Galra space lesbians and Adam. But Zethrid and Ezor were going to end up happy and alive. People presumed rather than waiting for following seasons to explain what the story intended. Neither Zethrid nor Ezor nor (most importantly, really) Takashi Shirogane had died; Shiro is the queer representative role model and he’s the man who seems impossible to actually kill. The fact that he’s gay but doesn’t have a story focused in him finding a romance isn’t queerbaiting. The fact that Shiro and Keith are close but don’t end up together isn’t queerbaiting, either; there was nothing in their interactions that was specifically, explicitly romantic throughout the entire series (reminder: I’m queer and a Sheith shipper ^.^ ). Unfortunately, because lots of people presumed they knew what the story said rather than acknowledging that the story still had more to develop… they got angry over things that would be addressed and developed again in later seasons.

And you’re right that shipping is something that people can get caught up in and emotional about in particular. I’ve been watching lots of analyses blogs through the seasons (up to the premiering of S8) post discussions on what their predicted end game pairs were. They were all so confident they were right… and all these analyses were predicting different pairs. Plance, Klance, Kallura, Allurance, Sheith… I couldn’t help but sit there thinking that lots of these analysts were so gungho on their theories that they were setting themselves up for disappointment.

I’ve seen people adamantly, angrily post things like, “They didn’t make it canon, but I’m still shipping [X].” I think that’s a little bit of a skewed perspective of what shipping is. Shipping isn’t about trying to WILL it into canon. Shipping isn’t about accepting only canon relationships. Shipping is about enjoying two characters’ interactions and imagining it as romantic, regardless of whether or not it becomes canon in the story itself. Shipping is a recreational activity in fandom meant to celebrate how two (or more) characters bond or could conceivably bond. If a ship becomes canonical, that’s icing on the cake - a bonus, not an essential thing that the story “demands.” The writers have their own directions, and just because they write a different romantic pairing than what you enjoy imagining doesn’t mean that they’ve written a bad story. I don’t think we should ever be so caught up in our imaginations and ships that we get angry if the writers don’t align with what’s inside our heads. And there’s no WAY for writers to read our minds and write what’s inside our heads - and we all have different heads with different ships we like, to boot.

Canon romantic developments might not be the relationship you prefer, but I don’t think it’s healthy for anyone to get so caught up in believing their romance must be The One that they can’t enjoy a story when it doesn’t go their preconceived way.

As far as writing elements as a whole are considered… I could write an extremely lengthy constructively critical essay over areas in VLD I think could have been improved narratively. I could. I’m someone who adores narrative structure in story so it’s something I pick up on when I watch anything. S8 is a season that I think has a lot of imperfect writing points. I can see why some people are unhappy about certain things. But I can both acknowledge something as imperfect and not focus on those imperfections - both when I watch something, and after I’ve viewed it. It makes life more fun to focus on the things you liked rather than the things you didn’t.

I like your attitude - find the things to love. There may be things that disappoint us, or writing elements that aren’t anywhere near perfect, but that’s okay, and that doesn’t make a story horrible or worthless or awful or unenjoyable. We can go in to watching something to have fun rather than to expect perfection.

Of course it’s okay if we end up not liking something, and of course it’s okay to not like something because of bad narrative structures or something. It’s okay to not like something for ANY reason - we all have different tastes and that’s okay. No one should be forced to like something. We’re all different humans with different preferences. It also makes sense to call out certain things if writers really drop the ball on important things.

But I also think it’s good to internally acknowledge when something is legitimately *BAD* or offensive… versus when it’s simply not perfect or not your personal taste, and I’d say VLD falls into the latter whenever there’s a constructively critical element to be had. And again, it’s not a bad ability to be had of being able to recognize things that weren’t your cup of tea, but also look to the things they were!

I hope this doesn’t come off as pedantic or holier-than-thou or anything like that because that’s not what I’m thinking here! I hope the full complexity of my thoughts comes out rather than sounding like I’m condemning, because I’m really not meaning to. I’m just concerned when I see people going into a show with such an unyielding set of preconceived notions for how they want plot, romance, etc. to go… which sets themselves up for maybe avoidable disappointment and outrage. But anywayyyy. Let’s not focus on that. XD

If anyone has more fun VLD S8 things they want to share, toss me asks! Let’s get convos going about about all the awesome things of this season! I’m here to keep the convo going about all the bright things, and I’d rather talk about that! XD

#blabbing Haddock #vld #vld fandom #Voltron: Legendary Defender #Voltron Legendary Defender #non-dragons #Voltron #ask #ask me #awesome anonymous friend #Anonymous

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