#just say that you can’t confirm two gays in one episode

[thedeadestmeme]

i’m screeching. i am forever going to be losing my mind about Alexei. it’s NOT FAIR. not only were we were robbed, but what do you MEANNNN that it had to happen at the FAIR. and what do you mEANNN that it had to happen RIGHT AFTER he and Murray became FRIENDS. WHAT THE ACTUAL fUCKKKK. THEY WERE ESSENTIALLY ON A CUTEASS DATE AT A FAIR AND YOU DECIDED THAT *NOW* WAS THE PERFECT TIME TO END HIM??? aAAAAAAAAAAA

[thepunkmuppet]

approaching The Confession Scene and what the fuck. this is genuinely tragic like I’ve always seen it as a meme, a joke, an iconic moment in fandom history, whatever, I’m a tumblr user, but now that I’m actually here it’s just fucking SAD

season 15 as a whole is NOT bad. it’s really not. but there’s zero destiel. they rarely speak at all unless it’s plot-related, one (1) episode pairs them together, frankly season seven was ten times more focused on their friendship and that’s INSANE because cas is only in like five fucking episodes of that one. they have a mini arc midway through the season which is very gorgeous and well-done, but it then goes absolutely nowhere and nothing at all is done to make it textually romantic.

by which I mean: no episodes have dean or cas reacting personally to sam and eileen’s relationship, or any other romantic relationship they come across. we’re never shown anything even remotely romantic even in an unrequited sense (no post-realisation awkwardness, no lingering shots of cas pining from afar, etc etc). it reads like a normal season of the show, which, yeah, I think those two are pretty fucking gay regardless, but they’re always textually written as a friendship, with no explicit cues to clue the audience in that there are canon romantic feelings. and that doesn’t change here, at all.

so I guess what I’m saying is the confession scene is purely just a moment of fan service. as stunning as the speech itself is, and as well as it fits cas’s character, the writers throughout the season didn’t actually give a fuck to make destiel ROMANTIC even in a one-sided way. film is a language and as much as misha does in his acting, even from castiel’s perspective they’re still framed as a friendship within the show itself RIGHT up until he says the words I love you. they weren’t interested in actually depicting a (even one-sided) queer love story, just wanted to give fans their “okay here it is we did it guys!” moment at the end, so that way they didn’t have to actually show an explicitly romantic gay love story, they could just say some words, kill cas off and boom it’s canon! here you go people we’ve been leading on, mocking and low-key gaslighting for eleven years!

idk man it’s just so disappointing. I knew it was and I know everyone has been talking about it for years now but my GOD it’s so bad 😭 I can’t even tell you how bizzare it is to have seen destiel confession meme on here and in various fandom video essays EVERY DAY FOR FOUR PLUS YEARS and now here I am, watching it go down in real time with full context, having watched over 300 episodes of this show, invested, obsessed, and REALLY FUCKING UPSET AAAAHHH

EDIT: forgot to mention this originally. the actual concept of cas’s moment of perfect happiness killing him, while kind of stolen from buffy, is AMAZING. and the literal perfect opportunity to have a building textual confirmation of his feelings throughout the season, where he realises what that moment will be, and it ends in the tragic confession of his love. like that’s insane that’s perfect. but no it just comes out of nowhere so oh fucking well whatever I guess! they’re canon so we should all be happy! I hate this stupid bumhole show AUGH no one talk to me ever :(

[songforten]

Just so you know, you can’t ship NineRose romantically. Nine is canonically Aromantic.

sorry i don’t take things as canon if they’re written by the same guy who wrote river song sexually assaulting five.

partly joking but not really. the way big finish wrote this story has one episode call the doctor aro (by john dorney, mentioned above), and have him solve the problem of the episode with his lack of romantic attraction, and two episodes later (by tim foley, who i also have beef with) basically has nine and river call their relationship romantic.

i know being aromantic is a spectrum and something complicated and different to each individual, and i would love it if the show (or surrounding media) made an effort to explore this with the doctor, but i. don't think it's done super well here. like. on one hand it could be saying nine didn't love rose*, which i dislike and also goes against what we see in the show, or it could be saying he needed to just Meet The Right Person, which i also dislike for very obvious reasons. and either way you slice it, it confirms the doctor has feelings in the future for river (which i agree with) but it basically says the only reason the doctor doesn’t have those feelings Now is because he’s aro (with the implication of “aro For Now”). not because he. yknow. just met her. or he just got out of the time war and he hates himself. dorney just kind of bungles it, which is very disappointing because nineriver could be such an interesting dynamic, romantic or not.

i guess i just do fundamentally disagree that the doctor’s sexuality really changes all that much body to body so it really ends up feeling like “he just hasn’t Met The Right Person Yet”.

*if you personally don't think this love is romantic then that's totally fine! if you prefer to read them as queerplatonic partners or what have you then you absolutely should. personally i do think it's romantic love -- specifically allegorical queer romantic love, given how it's written in the show -- and i don't think it's a moral wrong to read it that way.

tl;dr i dislike this writer and how he handled nine and river's relationship and i think how he handled nine's romantic attraction (or lack thereof) specifically in Swipe Right really kind of sucks. that story alone contradicts the doctor being aromantic by saying that they feel romantic attraction in the future, and then the third episode in the set by foley also contradicts the doctor being aro in the present. i know stuff with sexuality can change over time, but that doesn't really feel like what was being done here. it feels more like the stereotypical thing a lot of media does that basically says aromanticism has to be fixed or is a temporary thing.

i also think telling people they can't say two characters were in gay love because of a pseudocanon side story most people have not listened to and costs a lot of money is a weird way to interact with people you don't know on the internet. i like romantic readings of doctorrose and doctorriver, sue me.

[foggyfanfic]

Train of thought:

Drawing Julieta for the first time and I am honestly shocked by how light she actually is, like I went through and color picked from a few scenes and even in the darkest one she just wasn’t as dark as I remember. Probably because she’s always next to one of the lighter people in her family like Agustín and/or Pepa. At the same time her skin tone is so warm and it really puts things into perspective like how Agustín and Pepa are lighter than Julieta, but Bruno is paler. And that got me thinking about how one of the advantages of having such a big cast is that they can show off the diversity of skin tones, especially in the case of a Latino family.

And that got me thinking about that one interview Stephanie Beatriz did where she said when she got cast for Brooklyn Nine Nine, she hadn’t been expecting it because they had already cast a Latina actress and it’s sort of unheard of to cast two actors of the same gender and color unless the story requires it or that color is white. But because Brooklyn Nine Nine had two Latina women they had more freedom to characterize both because they weren’t saying something about Latinas as a whole if Rosa is angry while Amy is anxious, they were saying something about just those characters as individuals.

And that got me thinking about how there being so many Madrigals means there’s technically room for so many different forms of representation. You can headcanon that Camilo and Antonio have completely different relationships with their race, because there being two black boys who have mixed race parents means there’s room to tell more stories about those experiences. You can headcanon Bruno and Pepa as having varying anxiety disorders whether they be OCD or something else, because there’s room for that. You can headcanon that multiple Madrigals are bi or demi or gay and they all have very different experiences when it comes to exploring their sexualities because there’s room for that. And you can headcanon that these characters are dealing with the way their race, their sexualities, and their potential mental health disorders all mesh together to form small parts of their complicated identities because that’s realistic to people’s lived experiences there’s room for that too.

And that got me thinking that Disney probably won’t get into any of that if we get more canon content, because they’re motivated by profit margins. I can sit here and think about how being GNC in a small catholic village would affect Luisa’s relationship to her gender, but Disney definitely isn’t going to give us an episode about how racism and sexism blend together to tell WOC they’re not feminine enough. That won’t sell well in conservative markets. I can sit here and wonder how long it took Camilo to notice that the difference between transforming into a man and transforming into a woman is way less distinct than he thought it’d be, but Disney definitely isn’t going to give us a Pride month special about how biological sex is more of a spectrum than we think and gender is a cultural construct. That won’t sell well in conservative markets. And I can play around with a fic idea about Luisa and Camilo eventually comparing their relationships with gender, but I know Disney is never going to show that sorta discussion happening in one of their IP’s. Because that won’t sell well in conservative markets.

(Wait, my dog needs to go out. Seriously? It’s almost 3 am? If I get murdered taking you on a walk at 3am then you’re grounded from milkbones for a week. Not enough stars out tonight. Hold on, let me pick it up, you might be an animal but I’m not, can’t just leave your mess where somebody might step on it. Ok, let’s go back. No, you don’t get another chicken jerky just because we’re doing bedtime again, the bag says a dog your size should only have one a day. Ready for lights out? I love you too, sleep well.)

And that got me thinking that I sorta hope Disney never confirms any of the Madrigals genders or sexuality. Would it be awesome if Disney took advantage of this giant cast to introduce kids to the sheer variety of experiences life holds? Of course! Do I believe for one second that’s what’s going to happen? Not with the current leadership. If we’re lucky, they’ll give Bruno a “friend” who happens to be a man, and Bruno will hold his hand once right before the show gets canceled because it “isn’t doing well with its target audience”. Then because they won’t have confirmed if he’s bi, gay, sexually fluid, ace and gay-romantic, demi and pan-romantic, or any one of the many sexual identities a person can be when they hold hands with somebody the same gender as them, there’ll be fandom wars over it. I will once again have to see somebody say that saying a character is bi is LGBT erasure because it means you can ship that character in a het ship. And I don’t want to deal with that.

And that got me thinking about all the people that are “not marginalized enough to count”. People who supposedly have passing privilege, people whose gender or sexuality is considered trendy, people whose disabilities are invisible. I’m hungry for discussions about those folks, about people like myself. I don’t think I’m going to find a nuanced discussion about identity on the Disney channel, but I wish that when I was a kid there had been a Saturday morning cartoon that sat me down and said “Someday people might tell you there ain’t a place for you in the mainstream, so you’ll go find other folks who don’t fit, but they’ll tell you you’re too mainstream to belong with them. All of those people will be wrong, almost nobody gets a full privilege bingo, life isn’t a dichotomy between mainstream and weirdos. We’re all shades of gray”. But that’s an incredibly complex thing to teach a kid, and again, it doesn’t sell well.

And now I am thinking about how incredibly nuanced the original movie is, and maybe I shouldn’t be so pessimistic, maybe Disney will let the original creative team take the helm. Sure, it’s still doubtful that we would get to see all the shades of queer on a Disney show, but we might get good representation for mental illness. And if the original creative team is in charge it will definitely have a plethora of fleshed out, complex female characters. Not to mention, while I may not be qualified to judge whether or not they’re giving accurate representation to people of color and folks from Colombia, I did read a lot of happy reviews from people who are qualified to judge that. I wouldn’t have gotten so invested in the movie if the writing team hadn’t done such a good job making believable characters, maybe I should trust them.

My dog is snoring, can’t see her but it sounds like she settled in the bed next to her water. I should sleep too. Good night.

[showtoonzfan]

Ganna be honest the only reason I’m sticking around Helluva right now is because I’m waiting for the Fizz and Ozzie episode, as well as seeing Fizz’s backstory. I don’t give a shit about Barbie’s episode, (REALLY hope that’s not the next one, if it is I’m not watching it, I can’t stand another fucking poor pity me Blitz episode) nor the episodes that come after since we already know by the leaks how this shit is ganna end, so I really think I’m going to drop the Stolitz show after the Fizz and Ozzie one.

Season 1 was bad but season 2 is just worse. It’s retconning fucking everything, flip flopping it’s character motivations and can’t stay fucking consistent for the life of it, the female characters are still pushed to the back and have no thought or care written into them compared to the males, the humor is absolute dogshit because the creator only sticks to one fucking form of comedy every single time and can’t focus on the serious aspects without an unfunny shitty gag or distraction, the constant push of everyone wanting you to ship Stolitz and care about them despite them still having no chemistry or reason why they should end up together, (and being horrible people themselves) the constant dangling of future plot threads only for it to have an underwhelming “conclusion”, and introducing new threats when we STILL haven’t gotten to know our main fucking characters well and their dynamics/relationships, the show tries so hard to be deep and compelling but fails every time because in reality the writers have no idea how to write trauma and abuse and it’s just a fetish show for people who sexualize gay men to the maxes and get off to sex, the obvious fact that Viv has NO idea where this story will end or what her end goal is for the show, so she keeps pulling ideas at the top of her head without planning what will come after, causing everything we watch to not have any build up, proper time and dedication, or feel earned.

The show CONSTANTLY goes back to the status quo every episode and barley acknowledges the previous one that happened or existed, the characters stay the same and are never going through actual fucking development, learn from their mistakes or past, and when the writers aren’t retconning things, the characters are exactly the same as they were in the beginning of the show. The only characters I slightly care about at this point are Via, Striker, Fizz, and maybe Ozzie, but Striker clearly is a tool that Viv seems to have no sympathy for, and Octavia? Well…fuck Octavia, who cares about her feelings, lol, she’s a meanie for being upset with her father and needs to suck up to him just because he’s nicer, and when I say I “like” Fizz and Ozzie, that’s not saying much. We barley know them and I hate that Fizz is tied to Blitz in the first place, because you know Viv is going to end up sucking Blitz’s dick for every shitty action he did and have the end work in his favor. It’s so predictable, Fizz and Blitz are going to make amends, even if it’s not this season, I know it’ll happen, cause every fucking episode that focuses on Blitz wants you to feel bad for him and side with him, even when he’s being called out for being a dick, especially if you’ve seen the leaks. Speaking of those, with Viv mentioning that this season has 12 episodes and episode 12 was ALSO leaked, it gives me no hope or interest for the show. This show wants you to hate anyone and anything who doesn’t side with Stolas and I don’t give a shit about him and Blitz, since this is literally confirmed to be the Stolitz show, and these are two awful unfunny characters who should have never been main characters in the first place.

There are tons of better shows out there right now, as well as old shows I haven’t watched yet, and I need to stop wasting my breath repeating the same thing over and over. Tearing the show apart IS fun, but at the same time, it’s the same case with every episode. Fast pacing, unfunny humor, tonal problems, filler, favoritism in writing, lack of buildup, retconning, and the main point that certain characters suck and others deserve better. It’s legit the same issue every time so that’s why it’s starting to get so tiring critiquing the show and watching it, especially since I don’t give a shit about the characters or story, cause the characters I actually care about get thrown in the dust while the characters that fucking suck get focus constantly and idolized, and whenever an upcoming plot for an episode SEEMS like it’ll intrigue me, the potential is swept out the window because no one on this writing team is a good writer, not Adam, not Brandon, and especially not Viv, who hasn’t learned anything or improved, and doesn’t realize that she just doesn’t have the writing chops for what she’s TRYING to accomplish, and the show will never improve because the creator is a stuck up brat who can’t take criticism and treats it like acid rain.

[canonically47]

review pls!

disventure camp all-stars episode 20: review!

spoilers!!! (no duh.)

i despise how emily was turned into a villain and betrayed trevor. absolutely dogshit, poor writing

ally and jake not being petty??? LMFAOAOAOAOAOOO

riya you did NOT work your ass off you got plot armour. KYS.

oh NOW jally are friends?? now they bond? oh my god fuck you. literally fuck you. such cheap writing to make them bond just in the second to last episode, out of NEED rather than WANT. my god.

“i’m glad you’re still here, jake, we all are” first tom says jake sees the best in people and now this? ONC stop mischaracterizing your characters lmaoaoao

ALLY SAID SUS LMFAOAOAOAO

why did ally INSTANTLY agree to this. the fuck.

oh this is cheap. this is just cheap. not only is ally fucking stupid, but didn’t she just say she saw season one? like? she wouldve seen how jake cried at his grandmas death?? the fuck?? do the writers think we are stupid?????

thank you kristal for putting an end to that cheer

why didn’t they make yul’s scar permanent ://

what the fuck is that flashback sequence

“can’t get caught lacking” killing myself

why did they stop mining while they talked bro

why is ally using minecraft logic in real life i despise her actually i’m so sorry 😭

YAY YUL DIED oh nvm ://

and james fell in love right then and there yay!

this emily plot is so annoying i despise how they wrote her, why are the writers so fucking stupid

why are yul and riya so stupid also

i love how alec is rooting for ally because fiore is helping her. they’re so family-coded <3

jake protecting fiore awwwww :((( <333

JAMES SAID WHAT.

THEY’RE DATING

“riya #screenhog” I LOVE YOU JAMES

JAMES SOUNDED SO SCARED FOR JAKE OMG

why did he put his whole body on his to listen to his pulse omg thats crazy gay people are insane

ew why are these two here

im with emily on this why do you care for him trevor

derek why are you acting surprised he kissed you the fuck 😭⁉️

yeah i hate how they treated emily. it’s actually so bad how they made her this super likable character then ruined her for shock value, god forbid a woman gets between the no-chemistry yaoi right? such cheap writing is crazyyy

like they know the fans love her so much to the point where they confirmed her as queer because in ONC’s eyes queer characters > non-queer characters,, i guess, and then they gave her. this treatment. wow

for once im with yul on this !

yo riya if you want to win you should like. keep going???

yas ally your feelings matter! i wish i cared for you, or that the show was good, or that the writing wasn’t trash, so this moment meant something to me!

PARDONNNNN??????????

JAKE IS OUT WHAT????????

oh WAIT?? WAIT??????

OH MY GOD??????????????

HELLLLLLLLL YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS

JAAAAAAAKEEEEEEEE RAHHHHHHHHHHHH

man fuck your emotional moment ally idgaf JAKEEEEEEEEEE WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO 🗣️🗣️🗣️‼️‼️‼️🔥🔥🔥

if riya wins i am KILLING MYSELF !!!!!!!!!!

LETS GO JAKE YOU CAN WIN

why are we panning back to trevek eurgrhrhhr ew

thank you so much for ruining that kiss kristal i owe you my whole life

uhhh this episode was dogshit for the first ten minutes, and then for the most part was just mediocre if not just bad. the audio mixing was bad, the voice acting & delivery horribly mid, especially for the high stakes here, like cmon ally a little more emotion would be nice i refuse to hype up yul but my god his actor is the best of all; and then just. i realized how much this finale fucking sucks and how i genuinely do not care for these characters and how badly the show WANTS me to care for them. they’re trying SO HARD. it’s SO FUNNY

i believe emily is the worst written on the show, and she deserved so much better. she was hyped up for nothing and her villain arc came out of nowhere. my theory is, ONC knew how little chemistry trevek actually have, and how much better tremily is, so they decided to make emily a villain so she wouldn’t get between the ship. which is laughable, and such cheap writing.

i say ‘cheap writing’ a lot sorry :(( unfortunately thats all ONC can do! so yea

uhh idk man this is like.. a 4/10 maybe? if i wanna be nice about it. cuz theres some good stuff in it (alec has a speaking line) (james is gay for jake) (ally loses) but otherwise idrk.

i am so so SOOOO happy this show is almost over i am counting down the days until its done 😭🙏🏼 yall are not catching me watching season 4 or rewatching anything. im gone the moment i put out the review for ep 21. like a dad going for milk. perchance

[ragingstillness]

Ok so I just finished the episodes and by a cruel twist of fate I once again have to work in the morning so here’s my quick thoughts:

Calypso’s bday was clearly a pride celebration and I love that for them

I actually picked up on it surprisingly fast, like literally when Frenchie left the galley to go prepare for the party

Izzy’s voice is of course always tops, we knew Con could sing but man he really belted it this episode

Ned Low is a dick and deserved what he got

I now stan Hellcat Maggie

Not surprised murder turns Stede on, frankly it was smtg I was always expecting

While their previous two kisses have been sweet and romantic I was happy to see one with some passion

Izzy, Jim, and Wee John in drag mean everything to me

Poor Roach, he seemed to be enjoying his torture

Wish we’d seen whatever torture there was that “turned Izzy on” lol

Can confirm, people who play violin are assholes (source: I am a violinist) /jk

Ngl the episode felt a tiny bit rushed idk if that was just me

Ricky’s a dick and his speech immediately made me think of a gay priest who is denying himself and condemning homosexuality (for which specific priest, just take your pick there are a lot of them)

As much as I like Ed trying to encourage Stede not to “kill in cold blood” I think that ship has totally sailed on both their parts. Even if you don’t claim Stede’s killing of the Badmintons as “cold blood” he did totally set that ship of French aristocrats on fire

I like that the show’s acknowledging that jumping right into sex especially after trauma is not necessarily a good idea no matter how much some part of my shipper heart is like ugh why are they fighting again let them be happy

The second episode in particular Stede spends kind of acting like a dick and knowing Djenks and his team this is on purpose but it’s still unpleasant to watch

I feel like Stede’s fallen into the trap of now that he’s back with Ed he thinks everything is going to be fine and he’s turned Ed into this idealized figure again and is ignoring the actual things that Ed says

That being said, I do agree with him that Ed is being a coward by running off to become a fisherman as if he wasn’t a bloodthirsty pirate who still hasn’t made up for his actions to the crew.

Ed becoming a fisherman is clearly a “I was happy fishing for the first time in a long time I want to hold onto that feeling” decision

Essentially both Ed and Stede are running from their faults and pasts and I think they need to talk it out

Ed seems to be trying to say to Stede that he wants to have time to love himself before falling headlong into a relationship but he missed the mark a bit

Izzy briefly plays Lucius’ role in congratulating them on sleeping together and giving Stede advise

It fits him like an over large suit but I understand they needed a character to fill that role and Lucius has his own plotline now

I do think Izzy is being remarkably calm and that might not last, he’s probably bottling it up

Has the Jim/Olu/Archie polycule expanded to include Zheng? I’m so confused by it all. I don’t disapprove in any way I just feel like some of the relationships in that square are qpps and some are romantic and I can’t really nail down which is which

Fang and Roach bonding I kind of ship them a little

The Paper-azzi hysterical

Jackie’s new outfit: yes queen

The Swede’s new look: bitchin’

I feel like most of the cast have gotten hotter over the season. Shows what a few modifications in costuming can do (note, I said in costuming not in body or face or anything I’m not shaming anyone)

At one point I straight up thought Izzy was a ghost the way he kept popping up near Stede and Ed and giving commentary, idk if that was intentional

Izzy is still dealing with his alcoholism and I’m glad they didn’t pretend that’d be solved in a few days

RIP Ed’s leathers, you were hot

I knew there was smtg up with those clocks but I thought there was some sort of secret message in them not that they’d explode. That might be just because I considered it an anachronism. The earliest I can find evidence of a time bomb with a little googling is 1776 but that may be wrong

Who was firing on the republic? Was it Ricky or did the bombs somehow set off the canons on Zheng’s ships?

Stede deserved the beat down he got he was being a misogynistic dick

Also, it’s about time Stede detached from Ed long enough to realize that he hasn’t spent enough quality time with his crew to get them to stay with him when there are other options

Not surprised Ed didn’t kill Ned Low but a little surprised Izzy didn’t, as Izzy’s canonically killed everyone Ed couldn’t

Izzy mentioning how Ed shot him when he told him he loved him and Stede responding as if he’d heard that before I would have loved to see that scene

In general these two episodes felt a little rushed but idk if I’m perceiving that correctly I’m too tired

[livvyofthelake]

ok. as promised i will now update everyone on the cobra kai gay race. given this a lot of thought. (lie. this is like 80% vibe based) like genuinely i’m more invested in the hypothetical concept of cobra kai making one of their characters gay than i am in several aspects of my own life. anyway

i have to preface by saying i fear any odds have dwindled significantly of cobra kai pulling the Established Character Goes Canon Gay move that i feel like one million other shows have pulled this year. there are five episodes left there’s not much time to do anything at all let alone a gay reveal. however i wouldn’t put it past them just yet hence why i’m still making this list

first of all let’s get all the ones with no chance out of our way. sam, miguel, tory, daniel, johnny, amanda, carmen, demetri (even having his gf dump him does not give him this shot. he has never been gay i’m SORRY), that iron dragons guy who likes sam, kwon (rip… i’d give him a posthumous chance but i just can’t see it), kim, chozen, and again UNFORTUNATELY for our man tanner buchanan, robby.

one character has done something so huge and unheard of and frankly, i thought impossible. and made it off the No Chance Of Going Gay List i made after part one… major congratulations are in order for anthony larusso who gave himself one final low probability shot… give it up for anthony you’ll be seeing him on the ranked list <3 anthony look at us… who would’ve thought!

again kreese and silver do not get to appear on this list at all for a multitude of reasons. the end

11) shawn’s odds have gone down because given how little he actually appears it would hardly be significant to mention even if he was gay. but i just can’t put him on the initial list of no-chance-havers…

10) zara. odds are low but never zero.

9) tolya shadow and bone. we all know he fucked that old man. come on

8) kenny. hard to explain. i think his odds are about. 30%. but it’s not nothing…

7) eli

6) kyler. again don’t ask me to explain this i just really believe in it. ok

5) mike barnes. never too late to pull a ben chang!

4) chris or mitch getting ranked as one because they’re basically the same character anyway. they weren’t even in part two though. where are chris and mitch… anyway as they say it’s never too late to pull a ben chang. it would be funny but not homophobic because they’re on the good team. you understand!

3) i know i’m about to sound crazy. anthony. buddy made it from not a chance to number THREE. dude just trust me omg

2) i’ve said it many times. dyke devon is basically already confirmed to me. it doesn’t need to be a Reveal or even a Thing she can just have a little moment and it will count and still be just as significant as anything else…

1) never. EVER. too late for aisha robinson to come back with the steel chair. finale appearance where she references her gf she’s going to nyu with or something… let me dream my beautiful dream ok

this list took me one million years btw because i sat here for days not knowing where to place eli. he is so fucking complicated to me i can’t leave him off the list because the odds are literally never zero. please remember that i got the station 19 jack andy endgame this year and it has made me overconfident and i don’t think i can believe anything with certainty anymore… but i can’t put him high on the list because if it were going to happen his girlfriend would have dumped him by now. you understand. anyway. y’all take it easy <3

[straightbaittournament]

only the option with the lowest percentage will be eliminated! propaganda under the cut (and more is always welcome!):

tim drake and stephanie brown:

Tim and Steph are a thing for most of their history. Then stuff happens and they break up and soon after that Tim is confirmed to be bi and starts dating Bernard (former random side character who nobody thought would ever be relevant again)

lisa cuddy and gregory house:

The show spends 7 seasons hinting that House is going to end up with Cuddy, and then writes her out in season 7. In the finale, he has a flashback of people who impacted his life and she doesn’t even show If House and Wilson can’t be together, then House and Cuddy should

nell serrano and edward:

Not Dead Yet? More like Not Together Yet

ash ketchum and misty:

They’re basically set up as a kind of enemies to friends story and they make recurring jokes about how she clearly has a big crush on him, but nothing ever happens My childhood, i shipped them when I was 10

matthew and mary crawley:

They spend multiple seasons full of tension to get their happy ever after. There are so many tropes used between these two. They finally get their shit together and get married, and then have a beautiful child together. Matthew is so happy about his child being born that he doesn't pay attention to the road and fucking DIES IN A CAR CRASH. And that's how their story ends. It makes me so livid every time I think about it lol they really killed him off like that right after and I mean RIGHT AFTER his child is born. It's so foul and every man that they set Mary up with after that doesn't feel nearly the same

maka albarn and soul evans:

Throughout the series, they have a deep friendship with each other which is consistently extremely important to the story's narrative. In order for them to be able to fight, they must get along and resonate with each other, and due to the mechanics of their world, fighting independently of each other is extremely difficult. In multiple instances, they are shown to be willing to put themselves in harm's way to extreme degrees to keep each other safe. They are even shown to live together. They are The Singular Straight Ship I have ever shipped and I love them. Also they are really cool and Soul can turn into an awesome scythe weapon that like only Maka can wield. And they fight really awesomely together.

grace blackthorn and christopher lightwood:

Okay so basically in Shadowhunters there was this family tree, and on it it stated that Christopher and Grace got married and had a kid. And in the book series they were just good friends. Cassandra Clare (the author) has said it’s inaccurate. But like cmon you said they were going to get married 😭😭

kipo oak and benson mekler:

It only lasts a few episodes, but this is a very clear INTENTIONAL straight bait from the writers, as it's a female main character with a male major supporting character, and Benson even takes Kipo to a carnival, which Kipo interprets as a date, until she confesses attraction to him, where he tells her he's gay and just wants to be friends.

cali and flynn:

It starts off as a one-sided crush on Flynn’s side, and later becomes mutual when Cali develops feelings for him in the Skylanders IDW spin-off comics, their romantic tension lasts for most of the franchise (five games, a chapter of a spin-off comic, and a few bits and pieces in the spin-off books and mobile games), so far they’ve never gotten together as the franchise is currently still in hiatus mode (says this while on extreme copium) I think we need to appreciate the tropes in Calynn: Opposites Attract, Tough Girl x Himbo, Smart x Dumb, “You’re stupid, I like that in a man” vibes all over this ship! Seven year old me didn’t see Cali calling Flynn her guy in the sky whilst Flynn looked at her with heart eyes to lose to some other pairing!

good luck everyone! now go vote!

[uncaught-coolfish]

ok ok imo there was defo some planning to the bees becoming canon and to deny that is kinda silly to me. that doesn’t mean that planning and eventual execution was good.

•Yang losing her arm is apparently a “sign of her love for Blake” because of that line Adam had in V3? …I thought y’all despised his ass, when did we start believing a word that came out of his mouth??

•On that note, paralleling the two, when the latter was literally the abuser of the former’s current gf, is…..😬

•Also on that note, the objective infantilizing of Blake. All she really does now is whimper and be meek around Yang until another “bee moment” or until the plot remembers to use her for something. Yes, because turning this once feisty character into this shy nervous little meow meow who can’t even fight on her own anymore after she’s revealed to have been an abuse victim is totally not gross.

•Yang prioritizes her new GF over her little sister who is clearly in a horrible headspace, and when she finally breaks down, instead of attempting to calm her down or console her she steps in front of a COWERING BLAKE and just says “Hey!”. YOU TWO ARE BOTH OLDER THAN HER WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE THIS

•The scene in which they finally confess was literally forced out of them by a storm. I…I thought we learned to not do this? Guys? Um…

•The 10 year queerbaiting smugly disguised as “planned from the start uwu” that Voltron Legendary Fucking Defender wishes it could have achieved. Does that mean it was always planned that you’d write your hatesink character to have been a branded child slave? Does that mean it was always planned that you’d write the confession of these two’s love for each other to have been forced out of them? Does that mean it was always planned that you’d confirm your main queer couple two episodes before said couple did nothing to save their 17 year old leader from taking her own life on screen?

•Saying the quiet part out loud when an employee tweeted that “The bee kiss alone hopefully green lights V10.”

•Also, the immediate merchandising of it. Ugh.

Before I go on, no I do not believe the bees were “forced diversity”. No I do not believe Adam was killed to push it (he was killed because the writers wanted a quick way for people to forget how abhorrently racist this show fucking got anyways). No I do not believe this is a bad pairing, and if you accuse me of being an [insert hetero Blake/Yang ship here], I ship fucking Monochrome and Thundercats, dude. But what about the rest of this show’s LGBT representation? Is it any b

No.

•Our first on screen rep is in the form of Ilia. I really like Ilia, genuinely, she’s honestly one of my favorite characters. But why did they write their first lesbian character in the “psycho lesbian” trope? Also, why did their first indigenous character start out as a villain who had to be redeemed by learning violent protest bad all lives matter and ANYWAYS—

•Coco leers at women and her allusion is a fucking Nazi. She sucks. •The wives from V6 (Terracotta-Arcs??) are fine. Probably the most decent rep we’ve got, even if they were just a one off thing. They’re cute and I’m happy for em. Slay.

•We’ve got a single gay man in the entire cast (Scarlet) and he’s confirmed in a book. A single gay dude in a show infamous for its character bloat. Obviously we know why but man.

•3 non-binary characters. 1 is in a spin-off, 2 are animals. In this latest volume in which the last two are present, one is revealed to be a villain, and the other goes out Green Mile style. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay….

•And lastly, May. I also do like May! However, her character is not the problem.

What is the problem with all of this, no mater what, is the people, company, making this show.

Rooster Teeth is not your friend. Rooster Teeth does not care about you, or putting that loving care into representation.

Why are half of the villains disabled? Why are half of the villains in universe minorities? Why are half of the villains POC? Why are half of the villains a combination of two or all three of those traits?

Why is the only freedom fighting, minority rights organization terrorists? Why does their WOC leader die the scene we meet her? And why is her killer revealed to have been in fucking slavery the same episode he dies on screen in? And why is this organization taken as a serious threat, while two openly racist antagonists are portrayed as goofy and comical?

Why are any and all plus-sized characters portrayed as jokes? Why does the disabled-coded girl get her disability ripped away from her so she can “truly be human”? Why does another disabled character have him losing an arm to mean he’s lost his humanity? Why does this show portray so many misandristic tropes? Why does this show portray so many misogynistic tropes?

Why was this show’s first LGBT character a villain? Why was the next based off a Nazi? Why are two out of their three non-binary characters animals, and why have those two either been “killed” or turned into villains? Why is there only one gay man in this huge cast?

And why is it so many just let it slide that, while before and during the production of the volumes featuring the show’s first transgender character, Rooster Teeth treated and abused that character’s VA like absolute garbage?

Are the lives of those real people less important than those sweet, sweet “bee moments”?

In conclusion, the bees were not forced. I am glad they are canon. But I am not glad that it has nearly managed to conceal all the deplorable shit the racist, homophobic and awful company behind it has done.

[disventure-rewrite-takes]

mod, this is not a rewrite idea, but I was curious as to what ships from this show you do and don't care for?

ahh thanks for the ask!!! out of everyone i literally just care for gabellie and jaiden. jaiden were done so well (probably because ONC have a. thing. for mlm romance) and even though gabellie did not have the perfect execution, oh man do i miss them.

i also used to really like tomjake. like, a lot. i found the show back when season 1 was still airing, i think episode 8 had just come out, and i was rooting for these two like crazy. ellie splitting them apart made me dislike her but ultimately, after seeing them continue to bitch and moan long after ellie did her thing, i realized it was a them problem, not a her problem.

conriya is an age gap ship i never understood why we were going for since they always had zero chemistry, in season 2 i saw it as connor just being his genuine kind self; grul is. grul. huntally is so boring and everything could have been fixed if huntessally happened LIKE IT WAS SET UP!!!!!! vut just as vivziepop cannot confirm an aro character neither can ONC poly ones. because its too risky to step out of the amatonormative norm, so they just stick to gays, lesbians and bisexuals. whom like obviously could use the rep but atp im happy ONC covered neither aro or poly people because they do a horrible job with the aforementioned already.

wishley happened off-screen for the sake of wishley fans being satisfied, they’re the forced token straight couple, why would i care for them?

trevek is... a mess. i used to say i shipped them to blend in with other fans but i really never cared for them. i’ve always thought derek treated trevor like shit and saw no appeal for this ship. i am so mad at ONC for making it canon because it’s so obviously just fan service, there is no canon reason for trevor to like derek, it’s just shoved in our faces because hey!! remember them!! background characters can’t have a meaningful story without romance right!! let’s make trevor pine!! and it’s so annoying because he was such a lovely character outside of derek. but now he’s just jake 2.0 and i am so afraid that krystrevek will just become tomjakeden 2.0 because god forbid we don’t have a forced mlm love triangle. everyone loves that right!!!!! right!!!!!!!!!!!

if i say i ship anything else besides gabellie or jaiden especially ships i am actively hating here,, i have either rewritten them really well in my head or gone crazy. and given that i hc half the cast as arospec either option is possible.

i’ve been tempted lately to start a commentary youtube channel (funky frog bait, danny gonzalez, kurtis conner, chad chad type of thing yk) and i have so many (negative) video ideas about disventure camp. i would be too powerful for the small screens. and so i remain here

[mindflayerapologist]

Just posted one rant gonna post another that doesn’t even fucking matter but this has stayed with me since 2016 and it still pisses me off especially given Noah Schnapp coming out earlier this year…

I remember when Stranger Things first came out in ye olden days of 2016 a pretty sizable portion of the fandom was already married to the idea that Will was gay (and like, obviously, it was implied from the very beginning and now we have actual confirmation), and although he had less of an active fan base given his admittedly small role acting wise (even though the entire season/show revolves around him) people who latched on latched on hard. Anyways, all this is to say that Noah saw this online and made an instagram post saying he didn’t know why people had to make Will gay and couldn’t he just be a sensitive kid and yadda yadda, yadda… now I have my own thoughts about how a 10 almost 11 year old was given an incredibly large platform from a young age and how that was probably incredibly scary and maybe we shouldn’t force kids to be spokespersons even if it is about their own character, but the thing that was insane to me is that people were getting genuinely pissed at him. Like, it’s unfortunate but you can’t really expect an 11 year old to be comfortable with most romantic stuff (does anyone remember the jimmy fallon or whatever episode where Millie Bobby brown described how after kissing Finn Wolfhard she got up and yelled “kissing sucks!” Or whatever), let alone speculation about sexuality even if it’s their character. It’s not like he was mean about it anything either, but he was, again, literally 10 years old when season 1 started filming.

I remember in particular this one tumblr user who has since deactivated I’m pretty sure essentially berate him on their blog for not being open-minded enough, and at the time they had their age as 20 in their bio! I know that Noah came out with a somewhat jokey video but he also did say in it that had been scared to come out for years, and I can’t help but wonder if shit like that, not the headcanons or theories ofc, but the confronting him or at least posting about him in a mean tone, made him more scared to come out. And this is just one example of adult fans being awful to the ST kids when they were younger. Finn Wolfhard was sexualized for years by adults before he turned 18, which he was open about being uncomfortable with. I was 14 when the show first came out and I fucking remember that people had to make memes/put on their blog that they don’t sexualize the cast because it was such a prevalent issue. God. I miss the feeling of the first two seasons but I do not at all miss the way the fandom used to be.

[winderlylandchime]

Just want to send you guys little moments that have happened in the last few days that for sure wouldn’t have without qaf. Just in case if you guys thought that maybe he has even one normal day/moment in his life. I am here to show you that you’re wrong. Anyway:

Our mom called him like 4 times which he didn’t answer. Finally when he called her back, she asked why didn’t he answer before to which he said ‘sorry mom, i was playing with Brian’ and my mom went dead silent and had the most scared look on her face and then just slowly went ‘please, please say you mean the cat.’

He went on a walk with the neighbor that watched qaf and he mentioned to him that he saw Gale on Criminal Minds. And the guy, i guess told him that Gale was on Desperate Housewives and the next thing I see out the window is a grown man trying to speed walk back home. And he barges in and goes ‘we gotta watch Desperate Housewives! Right now! Brian is there!’ And when I told him that he’s only in a few episodes in a later season, he went ‘fuck. So now I gotta watch that whole thing for a bit of Brian? That’s rude but I guess I gotta do what I gotta do’ so now he put DH on his watch list next.

Then he had a call with his therapist and I don’t know what they talked about but whatever it was, it lead to him bursting into my room going ‘do YOU think Brian would fuck me if given the chance?’ We got into an argument because I refused to answer. I mean what do i even say to that? But also i want to know what he asked his therapist with the way he emphasized the word ‘you’.

I was in a “meeting” (more like a catch up) like 2 days ago with my boss and a coworker (who thankfully have met my brother and are both cool) when this dude burst into my office to ask ‘when do you think Brian fell in love?’ He thinks it was before prom, he can’t make his mind up between 1x16, 1x18 or 1x20 he wants to say it was sooner but he doesn’t think so. But he thinks prom solidified it, which btw he said all that while still in the room and then when he noticed my laptop, he very, very slowly walked backwards and closed the door behind him.

Then I went to our local store (it’s like a tiny corner store or whatever) and when I was at the check out ready to pay, the guy working there goes ‘hey, i thought you only had one brother?’ And i confirm that yes, i onky got one, thank god. And then he goes ‘so who the fuck are Brian and Justin?’ And i felt like a deer caught in headlights. Turns out he’s been talking about them like they’re normal people, so the poor guy thought Justin was our little brother and Brian is his boyfriend/my brothers friend.

And my all time favorite one this week was the one that even made our mom laugh so hard she cried: an old lady that went to PT with him (after pt they have him on like some lasers or whatever to help the pain, so he’s laying on one of the beds and she’s on the other) she has heard him talk about Brian to the nurse(!!!) so many times that she actually thought Brian was his boyfriend. And he didn’t even realize it until she left her last session yesterday and before she left she went ‘sweetheart, leave that man, you deserve much better than what he gives you plus by the sound of it, he’s still hung up on his ex’ and my dumb brother sighed and went ‘yeah, i know- wait what’ and she waved and left. He couldn’t figure out if he gave off a certain vibe or was it how he talked/moved and she was just being a little ignorant about it or if all this Brian talk made an old lady think he’s gay. And when I didn’t answer bc idk what to say, he got into an argument with me again because and I quote ‘how dare you not know if I’m gay or not to other people.’ Oh and he texted our mom ‘do I seem gay?’ But he fucked up and wrote ‘seam’ so it changed the whole thing to ‘Am i gay?’ Mom’s response was ‘i don’t know hunny, maybe. Who knows at this point anymore’ it took him TWO HOURS to realize the typo/autocorrect and by then it was too late to fix it so he just gave up.

So i’d say living with my brother at the hight of his Qaf obsession has been going great.

Dear sweet anon! This has made me laugh so hard. Your brother is really in the mix of it all, isn't he?

my mom went dead silent and had the most scared look on her face and then just slowly went ‘please, please say you mean the cat.’ LOL. Because let's not have an adult man with a new imaginary friend who's a character on a long ago TV show.

I am so terrified of what he asked his therapist. I wish your brother was my client because I would just discuss the show for a session and get paid but now I'm imagining this happening to a therapist who has never seen QAF and how confusing it must be and how this therapist is probably consulting with other therapists to figure out how much to indulge this. (Btw has QAF come up in my own therapy? Yes, yes it has.)

As for when Brian fell in love - that is such a good question. I think I had an anon who asked me that. I think there's a meta post in your brother that is dying to be posted to tumblr.

Also everyone thinking Brian and Justin are other brothers or your brother's boyfriend or... the fact that your brother is not prefacing all of this with "this is a tv show and these are characters on the show" is just fandom brain. And it's hilarious. And the little old lady telling him to leave Brian? DEAD.

Mom’s response was ‘i don’t know hunny, maybe. Who knows at this point anymore’ is a great response to "am I gay" but also brother not realizing the typo/autocorrect is killing me.

You are a saint. Thank you for your service. This is incredible.

[avese23]

//toh spoilers

CRYING

Literally grew up with Luz what the fuck

Everyone looks so gay

Darius dad figure confirmed!!

Omg Darius and the Blight dad 😳

How do they keep delivering

Blue bird <3

I need all the fanfiction please and thank you

OHMYGOD

and the morals!!!!

The collector was never a new big bad

And that sequence where the collector keeps trying to win at games and gets frustrated and you can tell the issue is that it’s a fight and they’re getting frustrated

And the conflict resolution

Cuz they’re just a kid

A really fucked up godly child

But just a kid

The pacing is so good on that end even with limitations

Kind of wanna cosplay them cuz the makeup look

Kings dad 😭😭😭

The journey of Luz’s magic omgg

Luz gets to keep both parts of her family 🫂

AMITYS HAIR WTF 😳

I want Gus’s hair highkey

I stole Sonja’s haircut and everytime I get braids I get closer to saying fuck it and starting dreads dear lord

They get to stomp on Belos hell to the yes

Skulls are so cool

Ooo I want to paint king

Bruh king as a teenager is giving Chameleon vibes

Awkward middle stage

But wholesome

FINALLY Raine gets to be happy

I was scared they were gonna die

They go through so much dear lord

Them and Hunter through the ringer dear lord

Dana why

They did a good main character revival plot

I know it’s a trope but it’s a good one

Cuz it’s about how they change!! Their arc!

It’s not about being a plot device it’s a character device

I have a friend who likes the trope a lot and we were talking about it before this episode came out so it felt special

Bruh the conversation about Belos between Luz and the titan

Reminded me of the conversation in TLOU where Ellie asks a question and Joel is like “no, {adult wisdom about trauma}” no spoilies, it’s near the end, you know the one 🦒.

Anywho I like those kinds of moments because it shows how young the protagonist is but doesn’t take agency away and it feels very genuine

Also bruh the symbolism of Luz and Belos as the two main humans in this story. But Luz came to the Isles as an immigrant and Belos as a colonizer. And Luz learning over the course of the show that that makes them very different things and not to feel shame in association to him. They are not the same. Stomp on that skull!

Bruh the Titan gave off Technodad vibes. Can’t proper explain it but he did 🫶🏽

So much exciting happened but again what got me was the ending. Like the end credits voice over with music shit. And right before that. Just. She’s going to wizard university. She’s grown up srygghjggh

We fucking came of age together what the fuck I’m not okay

@decentturtles help 😭

How can I do environmental science hw in this economy

Edit: and the way the show makes dance fighting delightful! Casting as a team is joyous even in danger

It’s like that here and it was like that for Grom 🫶🏽

[happyduckierevived]

*laughter and shuffling stack of imaginary papers that make up an imaginary essay concerning this subject

Yes, and no. Here is why:

Supernatural is very long. It ran from 2005–2020. The style, fashion, and writing of the earlier-mid seasons are definitely 2000s/early 2010s. So it can be dated or nostalgic depending on how you look at it.

Supernatural is tv. It’s not a film, it’s not a contained limited series story. It is an ongoing thing that has lots of filler episodes (season 7 is kind of joked about as the filler season), different arcs, character development and un—development (for plot reasons), characters that come and go, etc. If you’re looking for a linear story with a satisfying beginning middle and end with little to no filler, Supernatural is not that. It’s got a sort of monster of the week structure that leads into a larger plot, but as the show progresses, the monster of the week and larger plot intersect less and less/often not at all. It’s a fun show, but it is not a full on epic. If you’re fine with that, and can accept that’s it’s a soap opera-esque show but with monsters—you’ll probably like watching most of Supernatural. (Watching a few seasons to finish with a good ending is also great way to enjoy the show.)

How women are written. It gets better in later seasons, but in the beginning it is a lot of one-episode female characters who are objectified and/or fit into tropes. It just feels weird. It’s not appalling or cancelable, considering the time. I don’t exactly remember the earlier parts of Supernatural where this was the most present—so forgive me if my language is wrong or if I am making over generalizations over a few scenes with multiple seasons. I am going off of memory for this, and Supernatural is long. Okay, back to the subject….Not all of the women on Supernatural are written poorly, and there are great characters that are female. A few 1 or 2 episode characters, a few characters who are temporarily in the main group, awesome side characters, a villain or two, etc.

4. The fandom is…interesting. The lines between actors and characters is blurred for some, and this leads to some very choice works. (Not trying to shame anyone—but personally, I can’t unsee some of these things and I really do not agree with them)

Okay partial Spoilers Beyond This Point—they aren’t plot specific, but if you wanted to go into Supernatural completely blind, this is your chance to go do that.

5. Destiel- In season 4, a character named Castiel appears. Yada, yada, yada, the rest of the show, yada, yada, subtle/not so subtle queerness, yada, yada, yada, him and one of the main characters are both queer coded. Based off different factors, it seems that the two characters share romantic feelings for each other. Then, in season 15, we get to that meme where it’s a guy saying “I love you” and then another guy staring at him with text inserted that informs people on tumblr about local events/news. That’s between Castiel and Dean, aka Destiel. Now, what’s important to understand is that Dean does not say it back to Castiel. He says “don’t do this” because Castiel is going to go sacrifice himself to save someone/something/the world, idk, etc. After this confession Castile dies, we never get verbal confirmation that Dean reciprocated those feelings and loved him back (I think. I haven’t gotten here in the show yet but I’m 99.99% sure). Nor do we ever get a kiss or any explicitly romantic things or statements within the show to tell us that they are gay for each other. Now I’m sure you’re wondering why this one queer-bating ship matters, but stay with me here. Destiel is a big part of this fandom. There’s all sorts of things about the Spanish dub (where Dean says I love you back to Cas before sacrifices himself—it was in the script), the actors of Dean and Cas and how they feel about Destiel, the actor for Dean not feeling like “I love you” was the best line for his character to say in that situation, people shipping the actors and characters as one (which is weird because the actors both have wives and children, I’m pretty sure), and probably more. But there are also people who just like this ship and are normal about it. Generally though, it’s a pretty messy part of the fandom. Some people hate Destiel with a burning passion, some people have lives, some people like it or love it as a ship, and others…go off the deep end.

6. Death. I’ll keep this final one short and sweet. Main characters (and sometimes others) die and come back to life all the time in Supernatural. It is joked about in the show, in the fandom, and who knows where else. Death sometimes is a one time thing, but for the main two characters (Dean and Sam—who you meet on the first episode) death is more of a temporary annoyance than an extremely serious, high buildup affair (of course there are exceptions to this, but the amount of time people die and come back in Supernatural is truly not something to be underestimated).

And that’s all I can think of. I personally like Supernatural and Destiel, so that is my bias. I think Supernatural can be something good to have on in the background, watch with a friend, or binge (it has its moments). There’s definitely some weird stuff in and around the show—but I would say most of it is pretty avoidable. There is also a huge fandom full of really talented people who make great art, fan fiction, point out beautiful shots from the show, and more.

Hope this helped!

feel like this is a good question to ask tumblr

but uhhh

is supernatural any good?

[k-s-morgan]

The Story of How Hannigram Became Canon to Those Who Are in Doubt: Part 2

I actually don't think that many people are in doubt, but it was the title of Part 1 that I created years ago, so I don't have much choice but to repeat it)) That first part covers romantic & sexual subtext/text + related interviews, and you can find it here.  (The text should be under “read more”, but for some reason, it doesn’t always work, so sorry if you see a wall of endless text!) It got too long, so I had to create another one. This one focuses only on the interviews and comments from Bryan, Mads, Hugh, and other people involved in the making of ‘Hannibal.’ I’ll keep expanding it over time.

Tweet from Tom Deville, one of the show writers:

This is an astonishing piece of writing on Hannibal's queer legacy from @themeatispeople. I can confirm that in the season 3 writers' room we were absolutely certain that the beating heart of the show was a gay love story. I'm very proud to have been a small part of that.

Bryan replying to why they decided to add the “Is Hannibal in love with me?” scene:

It felt like he would ask that question. It wasn’t a strategy of “let’s wait and reveal this now,” it just felt, as we were writing those scenes, Will would ask that question because Hannibal’s behavior is indicative of someone who is obsessed and it seemed that Will would not be terribly bright if he hadn’t figured out there was some romance going on there. For me, Hannibal has always been a romantic horror story. Even from the get go of the series.

From the same interview:

I knew that the ending had to be Hannibal and Will gleefully killing Dolarhyde side by side as murder husbands

Bryan answering the same question about Hannibal being in love with Will:

After everything that has happened, if anything, we asked the question a little too late — when everything he's been doing has been Glenn Close-caliber obsession.

Bryan on Alana in the first two seasons:

Yes, there wasn't a lot of room for [her] to be much more than the third corner of the triangle between Will and Hannibal.

Bryan on S2 ortolans scene:

The scene has a very bizarre sexuality to it, because it’s all of these close-up shots of things going in men’s mouths and then swallowing and eye rolling, so it’s hard not to think of the sexual subtext of what’s happening between these two guys at the same time. It felt like a lot was going on in the scene, not only just the communion but the exchange of body fluids, in a way, and swallowing for God’s sake … So we can’t claim innocence on that scene.

Mads Mikkelsen on whether Hannibal was really crying in S2 finale:

Will Graham is the dearest thing I have. Will Graham to Hannibal is the thing in life that he has loved the most. And unfortunately he didn’t go down the path I want him to go down. So I have to finish the story right there and it breaks his heart. So Hannibal is actually really sad.

Bryan on Hannibal in the early S3:

He's gone through this whole experience, and he's been on the lam with Bedelia thinking about the context of his relationships with others. And what he comes out the other end with is missing Will Graham and wanting to send him a valentine and draw him near. Gideon performed a certain role. Gideon even says that Hannibal, like a snail, enjoys eating in company. We see him enjoying being with Bedelia. So, he is a social creature in many ways, but neither Gideon nor Bedelia can be substitutes for the one who captured his heart, and that's Will Graham.

Hugh answering if he’s surprised at the reaction Hannigram has gotten and how it’s romanticized by the fans:

No, because I think Bryan is fully engaged in romanticizing it. I think it comes from #1, in that respect. I don’t think that Bryan set out to write that. I don’t think that he necessarily envisioned it. Whether it came from his subconscious, or whether it’s there, sitting in the novels, or whether it’s something we created when we came together to make the first episode, but he ran with it, and we all ran with it. It is now about these two men who are completely alone in a big, bleak world, and then see, coming across the horizon, the other person who reminds them of themselves, somehow. That, to me, is endlessly fascinating.

Hugh when asked if the romance between Will and Hannibal is dead after Hannibal trying to saw his head open:

Oh, it’s just starting. It’s just getting started. I mean, if a bit of a kind of awful violence was gonna end it between us, we would’ve tapered it off a long time ago. It’s just bringing us closer.

Bryan on whether he revamped the romantic relationship between Clarice and Hannibal into the relationship between Will and Hannibal:

Yeah, absolutely. The idea of shifting it into a queer perspective felt like a natural extension of the material. It’s not necessarily what the material intended, but it’s certainly gay-friendly… I think it’s also the casting of it. I think there is something interesting about sexualizing characters through the actors that they play … But I think there is something in the work between Graham and Hannibal Lecter in the television series, where it was already kind of embracing a strange queerness, that perhaps made it more plausible for some viewers to buy the burgeoning romance between them, more so than they did with Clarice Starling and Hannibal in the novel. … [F]ortunately for us and the television series … [romantic interpretation] was relatively untried cinematically. So we had something that we could do that nobody had done yet.

Bryan on sexual attraction between Will and Hannibal:

I think there’s a sexual attraction for Hannibal to Will ... What was fascinating as the storytelling evolved and the actors inhabited their roles more fully, there became a fluidity and authenticity to the attraction that on Will Graham’s side was sort of puzzling but a slippery slope that he could slide down. And for Hannibal’s side it was, here’s this man who can understand me in a way that no other human being can, and therefore I don’t feel as lonely, and it’s very easy to eroticize those feelings from a sexually fluid point of view ... Whether that could ultimately become willingly sexual became much grayer territory than I originally thought it was going to be.

Bryan on Will and Bedelia’s interactions:

And when we got to the Will and Bedelia scenes, they were just delightful. Because there were, in a sense, two spurned lovers, sniping at each other over the man that they were obsessed with.

Tom Deville, one of ‘Hannibal’ writers:

In the writers' room we were pretty certain that Will and Hannibal's relationship was a romantic affair, and I certainly think that by the end of season three, Bryan had made that very clear. I suppose what interests me is the nature of that romance. Would they be lovers? Yes, I think so. But their love for one another is bigger than that - romance in the grand, classical sense. They recognize the capacity for horror and passion in each other and the way they inspire each other to greater heights of both humanity and inhumanity.

Bryan on unused TWOTL footage:

In the unused footage, it was definitely Hannibal moving in for smooches.

Bryan’s tweet “Happy Pride” and the image of Will and Hannibal he attached to it.

Bryan (non)teasing Hannigram before S1 aired:

Filming a beautiful, sexy kiss between two beautiful, sexy actors on #HANNIBAL -- and it's not Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy.

Bryan on how he would describe his show to people who haven’t watched it:

You know, it sounds so corny to say, but really, it’s a love story. But the genre is horror, so the love story is perverse and skewed and unhealthy and not recommended for the viewing audience to practice in reality.

Bryan on his attitude to sex and how it affects ‘Hannibal.’ Those who feel frustrated by Bryan’s comments that make it seem like he thinks sex lessens relationships and by his vagueness about the sexual side of Hannigram will probably find this answer as insightful as I did.

Something in my work in seeking romantic relationships that don't necessarily hinge on sexual expression is something that comes from being a gay man whose testicles dropped in the middle of the AIDS crisis. And therefore, sex and sexuality were dangerous ... I can see how like oh, I was really informed by going through puberty during the AIDS crisis and feeling like ... having sex is deadly. ... I feel like that informs a lot of stuff, and it's certainly informed ... the romance in 'Hannibal.'

Bryan on how the romance came to be:

They really helped kind of leach that romance out of the page into something that was actionable that became writing dialogue that was, 'Is Hannibal in love with me?' and 'do you ache for him? I was just following the lead of the actors, as opposed to having a gay agenda. The gay agenda came later ... One of the things that I think was the key in terms of turning it into a romance was this idea of Will and Hannibal being the only person in each other's life that truly understood them and could truly see who they are and accept them on those terms.

Bryan on parallels between Avatar and Hannigram:

I actually thought about Avatar quite a bit when Hannibal and Will would say to each other that they see each other and they have shown each other things about themselves that no one else can see. Thus, Hannibal telling Will, "I let you know me — see me" is "the greatest declaration of love that that Hannibal could make.

Bryan on S3 and Will and Hannibal being in love:

When I wrote in one of the scripts, 'is Hannibal in love with me?' and sent it to the writing staff, Don immediately called and was squealing with glee that it had finally happened. It was finally in text and it was no longer in the realm of metaphor or suggestion. It was literal and it was spoken. That was probably the time that everybody really sort of went like, 'Oh, that's what we're doing.’ It really wasn't agenda oriented, in a glorious way, because I love when a story and when characters tell you who they are and what they want to be. That was absolutely the case with Hannibal and Will, is that those characters and their story told us that they were in love.

Another comment of Bryan on Hannigram:

I love how Mads plays Hannibal as this broken-hearted anti-hero. And that makes the romance of season 3 so powerful, because his broken heart gets to heal and in a great way where they're sharing scenes and meals and murders together that is a culmination of sexual energy funneled into a physical act that is covered with body fluids and so it's... yeah, that's pretty gay.

Bryan on almost-kiss takes in TWOTL:

There were several takes and there was never any actual lip locking. But there was a lingering [in one take] where Mads's lips parted, hovering over Will's mouth in a way that went on... For a while. When I was watching dailies, it seemed like an eternity. The issue for me was always, I didn't want to make their love story expectational or artificial or forced. I always wanted it to be organic. I didn't know in that moment if it would cross over into that level of physicality beyond holding each other, and there was something about holding each other and leaning in to each other and looking deeply into each other's eyes that felt more authentic and more romantic to me than a kiss ever would. But if I had to do it again, I might suggest to kiss and see how it played. But neither of the actors were ever afraid of going there. If there were any concerns, it was always just about the remaining authentic. That certainly was my goal because, yes, I absolutely wanted to see them kiss.