#matt i'm watching you

[andreawritesit]

For Tashigi's birthday, I decided to rewatch Logue Town and parts of Punk Hazard in which she is and then I went down a rabbit hole of ZoTash fanfics and art...

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Matt's finally unlocked the secret to GMing: just create a situation where your table's old party has to help their new party and then tell them they have to RP both sides and then you can just sit back and you won't have to do anything for three hours.

[your-turn-to-role]

in celebration of the ripley fight most likely showing up in tlovm this week, i wanna share my favourite clip from the original fight that i know can't be translated into animation

after a whole fight of taliesin being able to rules lawyer ripley's combat choices because she runs on the same mechanics as percy, matt's amazing evil grin as taliesin realises far too late she runs on the same mechanics as percy

[msue0027]

Matt Smith would make a terrific and terrifying Master.

[jesncin]

I'm upset with this knowledge I have

the perfect Golden Boy/Mage casting already exists unfortunately,,,,, I've been the only one who knows and I can't keep it to myself anymore

[deramin2]

I don't know how to really express this except to come across as a "kids these days" scold, but so much of the criticism of queerness in Good Omens would simply not be a thing if kids these days watched more 20th century queer media. Or more complex indie queer media in general.

People seem to want a show that's like the straight stories they grew up with but gay. Or the gay fanfiction they grew up with. But that's not really the tradition it's coming from. First off the novel was released in 1990. Queer film classics of the time are Dead Poet's Society (1989) and Torch Song Trilogy (1988). The TV miniseries Tales of the City (1993) wasn't made until 3 years later and it was so far out there it never had a huge audience. Philadelphia (1993) is also 3 years out and was basically the first big studio queer film. The first fluffy queer Hallmark-style romcom wasn't until Big Eden in 2000, a full 10 years after publication.

Queer stories from the time it was written were about complex and often fraught relationships between people who the world was trying to force apart. There is an incredibly strong tradition in queer films of relationships with no guarantees they will work out both in the face of their personal baggage and the weight of the world. Take a film like Torch Song Trilogy that's about the two great loves of Arnold Beckoff's life over 9 years and how homophobia shapes them. Both externally (especially Allen) and internally like Ed struggling with his bisexuality and being terrified of being publicly out. Written and starred in by Harvey Fierstein, who identified as a gay man at the time and only came out as nonbinary last year.

The Boys In The Band (1968 play, filmed 1970 and 2020) was a monumental moment in Broadway history where finally there was a play about gay men in their own words where no one died and very strongly showed that homosexuality doesn't make people miserable but homophobia sure does. But that homophobia also throws their personal lives into constant turmoil and none of them are in happy relationships, although Hank and Larry are devoted to each other in their own fucked up way.

"Relationships are complicated and hard to make work and sometimes a struggle against the odds" is an aesthetic of classic queer film making. Partly it was influenced by the Hays Code (although independent films were not bound to it), partly influenced by the rampant queerphobia in society at the time that was inescapable. But it's also an aesthetic choice to resist the banal and unrealistic relationship depictions of straight media. There are actual stakes to the relationship. Queer people were actively resisting a world that said "Romance is seeing someone across the room and instantly falling in love with each other and little conflicts happen along the way but ultimately they're destined to be together and everything is happily ever after." Recall that "stalking as romance" was a completely inescapable trope in 1980s straight romance films, and every goddamn movie was being turned into a romance film.

So queer people in film and television when they can make what they please have a long tradition of saying instead "People don't always realize the feelings they've developed for a queer partner right away. They may have reasons for denying those feelings that are both a reflection of the cruelty in society and of their own insecurities. People struggle with where they belong and their relationships reflect that. Loving someone doesn't mean they don't also drive you crazy and you might fight with them constantly. But that doesn't negate the love or that feeling that even if things aren't okay, they're better with that person around. But maybe that person can't stay around. The world may be against you. And also maybe you don't just want that one person in your life. Soulmates is a very flawed model. Sometimes the strongest love is a struggle with yourself and the world and your person. You have to overcome yourself first. Happily ever after is a lie. You may be happy for a while, and hopefully for a long while, but everything ends. And you have to be ready to love again. Also your platonic bonds are just as important and life-altering as your romantic ones. Sometimes those platonic bonds include fucking if you want them to. Real life isn't a bunch of platitudes and world-altering moments, it's daily work to better yourself and the world around you. Especially when things just fucking suck. But also remember to have fun and fuck the haters. People who don't support you can eat rocks and you should yell at them more to shut the fuck up."

That is a fundamentally different outlook on what a "good relationship depiction" looks like. Personally, I thought I hated romance movies and then I started watching queer romance movies and discovered I love them and watch them all the time. Because it turns out what I hated was relationships being shown that had nothing at all to do with reality and privileged incredibly toxic ideals. Finally there was complexity, there were stakes, and there were people who had to truly want to be together enough to fight the world for it and not because they happened to be there. There were people actually talking out their problems and looking for resolutions. (And sometimes that resolutions was "I can't fucking deal with this bullshit anymore and I'm out.") For the first time it felt real.

I'm an aroace trans gay man. Nothing about relationships or being in relationships has come easy to me, and the whole paradigm of straight patriarchal romance depictions makes absolutely no sense to me. It's completely alien. Queer romance stories actually feel human.

And that's the tradition Good Omens is coming from, even as it's being retold in 2019-2023 and hopefully beyond. Gaiman's work has always been based in that queer media paradigm. (I've been remiss and daunted and haven't read Pratchett but from what I do know his work also seems to sit more in that world view.) It's a beautiful cinematic tradition and it's baffling to me that people would resist it instead of embracing it for being honest.

And that's when I turn into a crotchety old man complaining about the youth not connecting with the history of their beautiful culture and instead begging for assimilation into a shithole allocishet media landscape that doesn't actually want them except for their money and has nothing at all interesting or valuable to say. But it's very funny (annoying) to me when people claim Good Omens is someone against queer culture when it's so thoroughly bathed in the best of queer media's storytelling traditions and what people are asking for is straight media with the serial numbers filed off. Like, stop being boring please and know literally anything about the culture the adults in the room lived through and were influenced by. The world didn't begin in 2015.

EDIT: I also want to add that in straight media arcs are linear. Traditionally in queer media arcs are cyclical. Queer media very often depicts people going around in circles relearning the same lesson over and over as they inch towards it sinking in. But every time they go through the cycle they gain just a little bit more enlightenment and slowly move towards a better place. From the comments this is an immensely important distinction. People don't actually have cathartic moments where suddenly all their past bad programming is shed and they saunter forward a new person with none of their old baggage. In reality people fall into the same patterns over and over even though they have had every opportunity to learn better. "People magically get better" is a trope of straight media that's an outright and frankly dangerous lie. Again, Good Omens follows the queer tradition not the straight one and it's depicted 6,000 years of that cycle. The world didn't end, and the wheel keeps turning, as it always has and always will. That's so fundamental to queer storytelling traditions I forgot to even mention it.

[earnthecorruptor]

what was the conversation like with matt when you first decided that laudna was going to be a body on the sun tree? critical role fireside chat & cast q&a -- san diego comic con 2023

link to panel: clicky clicky

[ilkkawhat]

no one will survive

[theoryandahalf]

I love the first fortnite episode Tom and Santi did together, it was so wholesome! It felt like an episode of a cartoon.

Also it gave me the vibe of: “Fellas, is it gay that your favorite thing to do is waste your best friend’s time?” I AM NOT SHIPPING THEM-but ye I wanna hear your thoughts since you’re really the only person i know that is a fan of the new theorist here on tumblr :’>

I mean, when the two of them do THIS:

What are we supposed to think?!

Personally I adore Santi's entire dynamic with the entire team. I think one of the first posts I ever did on this blog called him the "Markiplier" of the Team, the pretty man with a masochistic edge, which I think is marketing genius. If you think about it, he's the newest host coming in with the least audience familiarity/screen time (Lee and Amy are Theorist old timers and Tom has his own audience since he's a streamer). He had to make a big impression pretty quickly and coming in hot as the disaster of a man that he is was just perfection.

Tom is unfairly hard on himself regarding his improv skills because I think he does GREAT with Santi. I think he's most comfortable with verbal jokes and innuendos because he teases Santi all the damn time on insta--which is the only reason I'll recommend following any influencer there. They both appear incredibly comfortable with each other and that dynamic is what's gonna save the channels honestly. I think it sets Game Theory up to be the older highly intellectual one, and Food Theory is that frat bro who you see doing keg stands on the weekend and yet still comes in Monday morning to ace the organic chemistry test. You want to see them interact because they're such opposites. The audience yearns for the bromance.

For the record shipping doesn't bother me--but if it bothers anyone, you too can block #theoristshipping because I don't want to hear someone whine about it later (*fingerguns*).

[discordiansamba]

actually a mental time travel fic involving Matt only mentally traveling back to the past before Kerberos has the potential to be really funny like, if you tell it exclusively from an outsider POV.

Pidge loves her brother dearly. But also he's gone kind of insane ever since he joined the Garrison? All of a sudden he's interested in taking martial arts classes? He's learning staff fighting? Sometimes she catches him muttering in a language that she doesn't know. He's growing out his hair? Did her brother get taken over by some kind of alien?

Wait no, he's still obsessed with terrible sci-fi movies. That's definitely Matt.

(Matt's not sure if he can change the fate of the Kerberos mission. In fact, they kind of need it if they're going to get the paladins back up there. But he can be more prepared.)

(also can he have that space growth spurt early. please? he got so used to being tall. oh well. at least he can have the Garrison fix his eyes early.)

[icewindandboringhorror]

I have found a beautiful perfect humble rock specimen that is light yellow with a weird dark yellowy brown lining, somewhat resembling a chunk of smoked gouda cheese... effervescent

[destiel-wings]

I've been rewatching daredevil and oh my my, it's even better than i remembered, this show is so criminally underrated

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Sometimes I try to write down thoughts about this campaign but I admittedly have not been paying enough attention to feel confident in my character analysis so I write an incoherent text post and then delete it because I don't know if I'm actually making the correct judgments.

[whatsagirltoblogabout]

I'm watching the flashback sequence at the start of 4.11 Family Business for research purposes (yep, research, mhm) and I paused to write some stuff down, then discovered that this was the frame I paused on:

I've been staring at it for an entirely unreasonable amount of time. The way you can see the shattered shards of his heart in his eyes... Matt Bomer is powerful as hell.

[ghost-bison]

I just watched Day Of The Moon and the ending had me throwing a tantrum

Like Doctor, how can someone so smart as you be such a fuckwit?

He KNOWS, he freaking KNOWS his firsts are River's lasts, yet when she kissed him, without hesitation he was like "There's a first for everything am I right lol byyyye see ya"

Fuck. You. You should have kissed her again. You should have given her the kiss of her life, swept her off her feet.

But no, he said bye instead

[echoofheartbeats]

I seem to be always searching for something to lose myself in completely. … It's like we say in seminary - beyond measure.

~

I have loved you my whole life. I've never loved anyone but you. You were my great, consuming love. And most people don't get one of those. I did. I have no regrets.

~

He was the man I loved.

Timothy David Laughlin and Hawkins Zebediah Fuller warming and breaking my heart for the entirety of FELLOW TRAVELERS.