#one thing doesn't negate the other

[sirlancenotalot]

[wolves-in-the-world]

the thing about eliot spencer as a character, right. the thing about him.

(and as always your mileage may vary on my analyses so if we disagree that's cool actually)

is that he is in fact a somewhat emotionally constipated idiot who is occasionally sensitive about his perceived masculinity and gets defensive about emotional intimacy around other men (largely hardison, who's much more comfortable expressing affection and embracing a softer kind of masculinity), but eliot displays enough emotional awareness and sensitivity and respect for women etc etc that anyone who's been subjected to that era of television will put on rose-tinted glasses without even looking twice.

(and he is, don't get me wrong, incredibly emotionally aware for a professionally punchy guy with enough trauma to sink the titanic. it still startles me to see.)

on top of which we have the layers and the accessories and the excellent hair with the secret braids and the way he barely has an ego and he's good with kids and protective of his team without taking it too far, and some of us never stood a fucking chance.

[fayevalcntine]

The whole framing of Lestat as the sole symbol of patriarchy that fandom is so desperate to put him in doesn't work unless you deliberately ignore how he was also a victim of rape and abuse before he was turned. People want him to be fit into this strict role of "father figure/violent husband/perpetrator" that is only that and not even a whole person, and in doing so they need to push aside the fact that despite being his family's provider, he was also pushed into that role when his father forbid him from joining a monastery or gaining an education that he wanted. Lestat wanted to run away with a theater group as a kid, and actually managed to do so once Gabrielle gave him her blessing and monetary support in order to go to Paris. He didn't always want to be the provider, he was forced into that role and became despondent when he thought he would never get a chance to leave his home.

His new life prior to being turned is pretty much the antithesis to the whole "Lestat is a manly man who would sooner throw up than be compared to a woman" spiel: he lived with another man in Paris while also being an actor, having left his family and "responsibility" to them. The only family member he was ever close to was his mother, all the other male members shunned or ridiculed him. Add onto that the fact that his turning firmly placed him within the role of the damsel/victim: he's kidnapped from his bed by a stranger, taken into a tower and left to rot while being fed on for a week, before then being raped and violently turned all while never even being asked if he would consent to it in any normal circumstance. But you of course have to ignore all of this if you want him to only represent the aggressor/patriarch while Louis is the helpless unhappy matriarch of the family.

My issue isn't that I think Louis isn't a victim, it's that it's not unrealistic for Lestat to be an aggressor/abuser while also displaying traits that aren't regularly assigned to stereotypical depictions of male characters. He's abusive to Claudia while also having been a victim of abuse from his own family. He's not a good maker/teacher, but he also didn't even have one when he was turned. He's the provider/attempted protector of the family and seemed to like being that, while also having run away from his own family prior to this to act in a theater in Paris. He's a rich white man while also being obviously effeminate in public spaces, even to Tom's own bigoted humor.

Like Louis' own complicated story with being his family's benefactor and provider, you can't firmly place Lestat as being one thing or another in terms of gender ideals without deliberately ignoring parts about him that don't fit this. And I don't think it's an absolute necessity, when even in Louis' own story, Lestat isn't stripped of his effeminate mannerisms or behavior while also being the abusive maker/father/lover.

[billykcplan]

so been seeing some wild takes on twitter today and also around here so lets be clear on a couple things:

if you reblog my posts and insult the thing i giffed or the people in the gifs appearance, or the gifs i worked hard on, i'm going to block you. like full stop. i don't just waste my time giffing things i don't love. and no one hates a buzzkill like me. this isn't a safe space for you.

secondly, yes, the show is called agatha all along and agatha harkness is the lead character. also - joe was cast as the "male lead" nearly two years ago and we've known ever since. billy being arguably the biggest gay comic superhero ever introduced and being introduced nearly 20 years ago means it's going to be a big deal to bring him to the screen. yes, he's going to get special moments. yes, he's probably going to get a backstory episode next week. clearly agatha and rio are getting backstories too. anyone with a brain knows this.

i can't help but feel like a lot of the comments associated with joe / teen / billy are dripping with casual homophobia. calling him "twink" in place of f*g. it's not funny. and no one should be shamed for being excited to see him.

i understand being frustrated by the out magazine coverage of the show, but it is ONE trade fucking up their coverage doesn't warrant the onslaught of shit coming at billy. especially when every other marvel project that's introduced important character who wasn't the titular character hasn't had to deal with this insane behavior.

agathario is coming and taking center stage as we near the end of the show. anyone with any media literacy can tell that. anyone who's seen the trailers knows that. anyone who has seen scarlet witch updates reassurances knows it. and that's why the nastiness about a three minute scene at the end of episode 5/9 seems to be incredibly in bad faith.

anyway, billy episodic set will probably come tomorrow. might be a little longer than usual.

[and-his-hands-were-24-crows]

Wednesday nights are my usual designated art nights and I can't manage excitement about it. What do I even want to work on.

I dunno, man, the joy just feels sucked out for me.

[eisthenameofme]

'those stupid *marginalized (but also Priviliged i've decided based on vibes) group facing an increase in political pushback and violence* thinking they have it worse than Anyone Else In The World. they should just shut up about how scared they are.' is not the reasanable take some people seem to think it is.

If you can't recognise something as an issue without deciding it's the Only and Worst issue that has or will ever matter, then that is a Skill Issue and also pathetic.

'Some people have it worse than you so you should shut up' has never been and will never be a good argument, no matter who's trying to use it, whether it's parents alluding to 'children starving in africa' to arbitrarily guilt their own children into eating more food than they comfortably can or anti feminists telling people to shut up about misogyny in one country because people in another country further away have it worse or anyone else doing it

[dravidious]

You're more amazing than catchphrases

90% of all Yugioh card effects are either "move a card from one zone to another" or "negate an effect" so I made a bunch of combat keywords so that monsters can actually be interesting on the field.

[bombshellsandbluebells]

now that I’m dragging my mental health back to a semi-decent place and feel like I might have the energy to like....write literally anything again, at some point I’m going to write about the importance of critiquing within the context of a written story

as in, critiquing narrative points completely without any consideration of how they are contextualized in the story is a bit unfair.

as in, I continue to see things about the Ted Lasso finale that annoy me. not because people had a different read of the finale or disliked different things than I did - or that they’re critiquing it at all; there’s plenty I will critique or would have done differently - but like, saying things like “Ted going back home to Kansas is bad because he’s clearly miserable about it” is an unfair reading when, within the CONTEXT of the story, it’s not framed that way. regardless of whether it was a choice you liked or how you would have wanted things to end, it’s not framed in the story as a) a bad thing, b) a miserable sacrifice, or c) a thing that Ted is upset about. so there’s a difference between saying “I don’t like Ted going back home to Kansas at the end because to me that doesn’t read as a happy ending’ and “the finale objectively frames Ted going back as a bad thing because it makes him unhappy” 

and this isn’t JUST a critique on criticism in regards to Ted Lasso. it’s the nature of fandom criticism in general. “I didn’t like this thing” becoming “this thing is objectively bad in the story” or even “this thing is portrayed as objectively bad bc of this, this, and this” despite that contradicting how the story actually frames it.

[justonefeather]

My friend like. Really likes to harp on, oh i know YOU like the holidays because YOU see your family and YOU get gifts, but **I** don't so **I** don't like Christmas..

I actually don't like Christmas. I hate getting gifts because i feel like they're wasted on me. I feel like any effort or dollar or cent put towards me is just bad judgement. I feel like a burden for existing and i hate people buying things for me - whether it's for help or for a gift - because they should be using their resources on better things. Things that actually matter. Things that improve their lives. Not me.

And i hate the whole season because everyone's so happy and I'm not and people are just like, why aren't you happy, it's a happy time of year, there's the holidays and there's snow and your birthday is soon.. somehow the expectation that i should be happy, makes it hurt even more. I feel ungrateful, like you have no right to feel sad or upset, it's all your fault, your circumstances and your feelings, so you aren't allowed to feel bad because you're the cause. And idk how to argue with that. People always have told me that my feelings are wrong or bad, in some way. So idk.

[sunsetsover]

i think the reason i like firstkhao so bad is bc they have bangtan energy. don't ask me to explain bc i can't but growing up in borahae village i hear first say some shit like 'suddenly the voices in my head are saying khaotung is so cute' and im just like yeah that sounds about right.

[kurominiiiz]

The amount of incest, noncon, and pedophilic jjk smut content is getting out of hand.

"Just scroll if you don't like it!" - this doesn't negate the fact they're posting disgusting scenarios. They're targeting an audience of people who should seek therapy. That kind of shit is not okay.

It's like saying "scroll part a zoophile account on Twitter if u don't like it." See how stupid it sounds?

This Fandom is slowly becoming one i regret being in because of just how disgusting people are becoming. Come on guys, do better.

It's okay to have kinks and fetishes, but that doesn't mean they're okay. It's not okay to sexualize minors, it's not okay to sexualizw little space, it's not okay to sexualize r//pe! I get dubcon, but noncon? That's literally just nonconsensual sex.

Anyways. Rant over. Do better, people.

---

Edit: I have MUCH more to say on this now that I've read some other inputs:

The problem isn't "block and move on" or "ur arguing for fiction..." it's the fact people are exposing minors and already mentally ill people to VERY REAL and DISGUSTING scenarios. It doesn't matter that they're fictional, what they're writing about is a real issue. Blocking tags doesn't work most of the time, so stop saying to shut up and just use that feature.

Another thing is that people are making these writings so normal that they are making others think it's okay. When I was younger, I had unsupervised internet access and was exposed to smut like this. It messed me up and got me institutionalized because I didn't know it wasn't okay to talk about. Minors nowadays are also very unsupervised and will come across your stuff. I'm worried for the next generation.

Last thing, the excuse "they're just fiction" is flawed because you're ignoring the PSA! You wouldn't say this if it was about something else, right? If someone was saying: "I love lolicon!" You wouldn't block and move on. You would call their asses out and comment bomb them. It's the same concept, except on a broader spectrum. You're enabling the behavior of these vile creatures that need serious help. You're not doing anyone any good by saying "this is so unnecessary" or "they're fictional..."

(Update: read this post about my asks if you plan on sending a hate message or threat lol)

[xcziel]

.

[psychotrenny]

It's interesting how you'll see people (correctly) point out that being oppressed as a trans women doesn't prevent someone from participating in racism, only to then go on and say incredibly transmisogynstic things about "white trans women" and justify it by the racial oppression they personally face. Like on the surface it's an obviously self-defeating argument; if you've already established "suffering from one form of oppression doesn't absolve participation in another" you can't then immediately go ahead and use the bigotry you suffer to negate the bigotry you perform. But I think the key here is that a lot of people don't see "transmisogyny" as a genuine axis of oppression

Like there's a form of rhetoric that's widespread among progressives that (sometimes explicitly but more often implicitly) presents trans women not a type of woman, but in fact a type of degenerate or delusional man that "we" have a moral duty to tolerate and play along with. The second a trans woman does something sufficiently immoral, that obligation of tolerance vanishes and you're free to treat him (I mean them) as the predatory weirdo he (I mean they) is. And even "the good ones" aren't entitled to full respect and humanity; well-behaved trannies just get fewer reminders of how fake their womanhood is. Like people have trouble grasping that "transmisogyny" is a type of misogyny, a type of bigotry as serious as any other, because they don't see "trans woman" as a type of woman

And yes, all this transmisogynistic talk around "white trans women" rhetorically erases the existence of trans women of colour and in material terms does significantly more harm to them than to actual white transfems. That aspect is very important to talk about. But the primary contradiction here is around transmisogyny itself; even if trans women of colour were magically exempt or non-existent it's still a very harmful and reactionary line of thinking. It's not as though misogyny suddenly becomes good when the targets are white women; why should that change because you've pre-fixed it with a "trans"

[tiredandoptimistic]

One of the things that's deeply important to me about Margaret Houlihan as a character is that even as she grows past the "she's horny but also military" jokes, neither aspect of her personality is actually diminished. Throughout the entire run of the show she displays both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine traits, and despite the apparent contradiction neither of them actually need to override the other. She wants to get married and be taken care of while also maintaining her career and a dominant role in her relationships, she wears lingere and boxers, she dances and punches, she can do both. I feel like it would have been really easy to make her settle into just one characterization, either supportive and feminine or dominant and masculine, but that never happens. I think that's what makes her such a good and well-rounded female character, because she actually feels like a person with depth who happens to have wants and interests that don't all come in a prepackaged set of tropes.

Additionally, I really like that the two main things she was mocked for in the early seasons (liking the army and having lots of sex) are never negated, they're just given more empathy. Even though the show is largely anti-military, Margaret grew up in the army and very strongly values discipline. That's not a bad thing! The bad thing was when she would attempt to bully other characters who don't live up to her standards, and the show actively addresses those outbursts in a more sympathetic light with episodes like "The Nurses." Same goes for her sexuality; even as the show goes more into her desire for a meaningful romance, she never stops having one-night stands. There's nothing wrong with being a woman who likes sex! She can be hot and enjoy feeling hot and enjoy seeking out purely physical relationships, and that doesn't make her a shallow person; the shallow people are the ones who judge her for her sexuality without knowing anything else about her. I really love the scene in "Are You Now, Margaret?" when the guy accusing her of being a Communist tries to slut shame her to the Swamp rats, and they're all basically like "yes, she enjoys sex and has a lot of it. So fucking what?" that's such a good and mature take to have!

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going here, I just love Margaret and that she gets to exist in this nebulous zone of both masculine and feminine. She can be the manliest one of the main characters and that doesn't make her any less of a woman. Neither of these images are a facade, they're just different facets of who she is; she doesn't need to give one up and settle into being either a major or a mrs.

[risestarkiss]

Strength

Rise Ramblings #565

While watching the show, I realized that we don’t really get to see the boys’ true strength very often. Yes, we see their Ninpo at work, especially towards the end of the series, but I believe that outside of their Ninpo there is so much more to these boys than meets the eye.  

When thinking about raw strength, it’s easy to say something like “Yeah, Raph is the strongest.” And for good reason...

He is the one that works out the most.

His build is the largest and the most intimidating.

Often times we see him picking up, carrying, or tossing his brothers around, no problem.

And that’s why this big guy gives the best hugs.

But the main reason why he's seen as the strongest is because he’s the one generally seen picking up the most impossibly heavy objects.

Although, he does have his limits.

Yes, Raph is the strongest, but that does not negate the strength of the rest of the bros.

The physical abilities of the other three are nothing to sneeze at, especially since they were all originally created to be weapons. (See “What Was Meant To Be” for more on that subject.)

Take Mikey for instance.

Of all of the boys, you wouldn’t think of Mikey as particularly strong, but here he is shoulder pressing one of his brothers for fun.

And flinging the boy in plum.

What about Leo? Sure, we never really see him exert himself, especially when it comes to weightlifting or exercise, but I can’t help but notice how much he tends to carry his little brother.

Furthermore, Leo doesn't just carry Mikey, but throws him around as well.

But I believe the one that low key shows off his strength the most is Purple.

(It might have something to do with his overall lack of restraint, but I digress.)

He easily carries his brother when he needs to.

And more impressively, he throws Mikey like nobody’s business using his bow staff and his own brawn.

Speaking of his staff, if this is true:

Then what do we make of this instance?

Yes, the staff was already semi-broken, but does he go on to completely demolish the titanium staff in frustration with his bare hands? (Kudos to @theaphaeon for pointing this out!)

You be the judge.

Nonetheless, for me, what really proves Donatello’s strength are these scenes:

Donnie doesn’t just carry out this feat once, but twice!

Not only does Donnie hold up the combined weight of ALL of his brothers, but he does it via one leg. For a normal person, if all of that weight was put on one leg they would be severely injured. But for Donnie, this is just a silly mode of travel with his beloved bros. Meanwhile, his jet pack is struggling under the combined weight of all four turtles...

All-in-all, I just wanted to really highlight the turtles' physical strength and remind myself that strength is not just a Raphie thing, but something that stems across all of the turtle teens.

Do you guys have any more examples of the boys being the powerful weapons they were created to be without using their Hamato Ninpo?

All comments and reblogs are welcome! 💜

[moonfireshadow]

Rewatched Saltburn and I'm obsessed with Farleigh and Oliver's tutoring scene. The essay specifically. For those who don't remember: Oliver did his homework and all his assignments and genuinely gave a well thought out essay for their summer assignments. Farleigh shows up hungover and late and didn't even read the books. But the teacher immediately loves Farleigh and is chatting him up with an interest he barely tried to show Oliver. Even after Oliver gives his presentation and shows that he's clearly a much better student than Farleigh. Obviously this is the real start of their rivalry. But it's also such a beautiful look into their characters and how they mirror eachother. Farleigh understands Oliver's essay, I believe. But like the teacher he's bored by it. The knowledge and work is there, but the presentation of it is boring and strange. Academic and correct, but lacking the appeal to the audience. (Which, can we talk about the fact Farleigh was genuinely listening at all? The teacher zoned out and switched channels, but Farleigh was interested and paying enough attention to know the exact number of times Oliver used the word "thus" in his essay. They respect each other truly even if they despise eachother at this point, and refuse to acknowledge the grudging respect.) So Farleigh does what he does best, he gloats over Oliver. He picks apart the style of the essay and it's presentation rather than addressing the central argument or topic. This delights the teacher and frustrates Oliver who is like, "so you're going to critique the style of my essay rather than it's substance? Seems a bit lazy" and that's the core component of these two characters.

Farleigh is ALL about presentation. He knows how fragile his pedistal is placed up and in view for everyone to see. He's a charity project, just like every other rando of the month. Sure he has some familiar connection, and that's given him a leg up in this world. But it's still shakey at best. He always has to give the correct performance, say the right words, keep his audience on HIS side. Unless he wants to get knocked down with the rest of the common rabal that he knows he's belongs with, but can't stand the idea of. So yes, of course he picks apart the one thing he knows Oliver is failing at. He takes his one advantage over Oliver and uses it mercilessly to both entertain and secure his audience on his side. (I wonder if the positions had been different some how, if Farleigh would have had anything to say about the substance of the essay itself. He was paying attention to it, did he want to have a real academic conversation? Did he possibly want to try and connect to Oliver in that way? A real and non performative way with someone who's so similar to him?)

As for Oliver, obviously his character is intelligent. He does the readings. He does the research. He puts the time and effort in to *learn* in the way Farleigh never does. And it must infuriate him that his essay is so easily pushed to the side for a cheep critique that doesn't even address the central argument of his essay. Of course he would hate Farleigh from the start for that. It's such a quick negation of all that Oliver has to offer and give just because it's not wrapped up in a pretty bow. And that's just his character. The substance is there, the intelligence is there. But it's not enough. It will never be enough. Because Oliver doesn't know how to translate it to his audience in a way they'll care about. He learns and tries to mimic, but it always falls short because he just can't seem to figure out the way to blend in and present himself so seamlessly as Farleigh.

And that's why they're such perfect mirrors of each other. They're both intelligent and clever. But they've found different ways of getting what they want and proving themselves. Farleigh is the face and the presentation, Oliver is the substance and body. In another world imagine what these two could have done and been if they hadn't been pitted against each other for the same prize. And the fact Oliver definitely deliberately shoved Farleigh out at the perfect time so he wouldn't get hurt and killed? Oliver and Farleigh respect and admire the other. But their tragedy is they can never be on the same page or team because the world they're in says there is only room for one. And they'd both do anything to get that title.