#seeing characters differently says more about how we're all bringing different things to media

[ilikekidsshows]

I remember years ago when Ladybug the episode airing, there's so many people called Tom and Sabine as a bad parents... for whatever reason, and I was one that keep saying they're a good parents. Now though... it make me wondering if they are really as good as I thought they were if Marinette turned out to be this bad.

I saw some people say the reason why Marinette turned to be this spoiled is because she has one child syndrome, but Adrien is one too and ironically he become a better person than Marinette ever be. And the only one child who become spoiled is Chloé and Felix whose parents is also way too doting that they let the kid do whatever.

Today I found out the term "Helicopter parenting" A helicopter parent (also called a cosseting parent or simply a cosseter) is a term for a parent who is overattentive and overly fearful of a child's experiences and problems, particularly outside the home and at educational institutions. And I feels like its something that Tom would do, especially in Weredad episode. He doesn't want Marinette to feel sad so he will create a situation where she won't be sad, emotion need to be fixed or prevented, which... Track with what Marinette's tend to do.

I know I shouldn't put pshycological aspect into a cartoon, let alone a toddler show, but it just fit. 😅

---

The thing about discussing psychology when it comes to media isn't really about who the media is for, I think. The issue, as I see it, comes from using stereotypes of different conditions to classify characters in a negative way, regardless of what genre a piece of media belongs to. It's kinda how you would go about actually writing a story with these same themes: don't forget there are real people who deal with these things who won't appreciate being demonized or dehumanized, so treat the topic with compassion.

However, sometimes it can be useful for your self discovery to discuss whether or not a character fits similar categories as you yourself do. It can be a fun topic to discuss when it's done in a compassionate way. Sometimes small details just fit together way too well to not bring it up. Sometimes it can be good to be aware that the writers might be codifying their characters a certain way and what kinds of attitudes that codifying enforces.

Those people calling Marinette's problems "only child syndrome" when we can see her parents and their parenting techniques are definitely barking up the wrong tree. Only children aren't naturally spoiled, they might not be spoiled at all. But helicopter parents are common these days. A lot of modern parents are afraid of screwing up because we're more aware than ever of how parents can traumatize their kids, and that makes them easily veer into overprotective territory. I do agree with you that helicopter/cosseting parenting seems to be a far more fitting descriptor for what’s going on with Marinette.

Miraculous does often genuinely hit the nail on the head on what some types of parenting do to kids, which makes it so absolutely bonkers when they claim that it's not on purpose. It’s more likely that some of it was on purpose, but the writers then changed their minds about what they wanted to say about parenting. Like, Chloé’s issues get built up as being the result of being spoiled and neglected by her father and mother respectively, but then season five claims Chloé‘s just an evil hellspawn who was born that way.

The thing about Adrien is that his disposition also makes sense with his upbringing. His only friend growing up was Chloé, the epitome of a spoiled brat lashing out because she doesn’t get actual care from her parents, and sometimes Félix, another emotionally unskilled kid lashing out at others because he doesn’t have friends. Add to this Adrien’s emotionally immature father, who goes on a year-long magical rampage where he purposefully tramples on everyone else’s emotions in a misguided attempt to get his wife back with no consideration towards the son he also loves and who's actually still alive. Gabriel also doesn’t want to shield Adrien from disappointments, he often causes them and seems to have that attitude that it’s character-building.

But yeah, it makes sense that Adrien is emotionally astute, since his own emotional well-being relied on him developing the skills to work around the social bombs he grew up around. And then the series decided that, actually, Adrien being so attentive, often even to his own detriment, is a good thing because Marinette can benefit from it. Suddenly Gabriel’s behavior was claimed to not be abusive or emotionally damaging to Adrien at all and Félix is a caring cousin and a good guy. Considering there are still some throw-away lines in the post-retool episodes about how harmful Adrien’s fawning is to himself, it really seems like either there’s been a change in course or the writers disagreed on what the takeaway over Adrien’s family situation was supposed to be.

As for Marinette, ‘Weredad’ does, just as you pointed out, confirm Tom as an incredibly overprotective parent. I’ve also previously made a post about how Marinette exhibits a lot of signs of being an overly coddled child, which is the same thing as a child with cosseting/helicopter parents. Marinette can’t handle stress, because her parents don’t expect things from her, not wanting to pressure her. The one time her parents asked her to do anything for them in the show was handing off a cake to a customer in ‘Timebreaker’. The rest of the time Marinette seems to almost be a free-range child, with no mention of bedtimes or her parents expecting her to have her homework done. Marinette’s studies barely get mentioned, which is really weird for a middle school teen hero show where the characters spend a lot of time in school and classes. But Marinette’s parents are apparently completely unaware of what Marinette does with her day or what happens at school, outside of the letter/email they received in ‘Simon Says’ about Marinette’s repeated absences. Nobody keeps track of or expects anything from Marinette on a more casual level, so when things actually rely on her performance, she buckles under the pressure.

Marinette also can’t handle setbacks, because her parents refuse to voice out her failures and weaknesses so that she could accept them. In ‘Animaestro’, where Marinette starts badmouthing herself, her parents, instead of dealing with this self-deprecating attitude directly, insist she’s definitely not a klutz and totally gets to be a server. They also completely sideline her reason for wanting to be at the event because of this, which they know is to see Adrien. The instant Marinette’s lip starts wobbling, her parents will lie to make her feel better instead of discussing the situation with her. Basically, they treat her like she’s a toddler incapable of understanding that they have a responsibility to their client to not bring an untrained child to work as a server at a public media event with a lot of celebrities.

This lack of dealing with Marinette’s self-esteem problems is also related to Marinette’s past as a victim of Chloé’s bullying. Marinette’s parents are very unengaged with Marinette’s role as a victim; even when she gets expelled on what they think (rightly so) are false accusations, they leave things to the authorities and just tell Marinette she can work at the bakery. To a child, that preparation for the worst-case-scenario feels like the parents aren’t on her side at all. Of course, we don’t know if the parents are aware of the past bullying Marinette faced; even in ‘Origins’ they merely encouraged her to go to school and bring everyone pastries. In general, Marinette’s parents seem to know very little about her friend group (they think Sabrina is a close friend of Marinette’s in ‘Darkblade’) and social standing in addition to her daily activities, which lends credence to me deeming her a free-range child.

Marinette also can’t handle rejection, because her parents never deny her anything except for a single episode, ‘Simon Says’, where they told her she couldn’t go out with her friends until she stopped skipping class. They were incredibly gentle about this grounding too, and held each other's hands afterwards, like this was an incredibly difficult task they’d just completed, gently telling their teenaged daughter she had to stop skipping class for a week before she could be allowed out whenever she wanted again. Basically, it takes extreme circumstances for Marinette’s parents to give her any boundaries, and they clearly don’t like doing it, which explains perfectly why she has no boundaries when it comes to pursuing her attraction to Adrien.

The problem with all of this is that this should be a good ground for Marinette to grow from. This is a valuable topic to discuss. As I said earlier in the post, overprotective helicopter parents who are afraid that every single disappointment or setback will traumatize their child for life are a thing. As such, this is an important thing to teach to families and especially to kids who wouldn't understand what's going on in their lives unless someone brought it up. But this isn't what the show does, because the head of the showrunners is the most overprotective parent of them all for his fictional creation, so of course he isn't going to criticize himself.

[bloggingboutburgers]

i hope that i'm not making any terrible cultural assumptions here, but i'm curious about your experiences as aro/ace in france in particular. the states are often very culturally conservative but especially when it comes to sex in particular. i don't know if it's just an incorrect cultural assumption on our part but the french are stereotyped as being a lot more open and in your face (?) about sex. is that true? does it make it harder for you to deal with people pushing the expectation of sex on you?

OK, so, I'm not sure I can 100% answer this one accurately because... Well, I've never properly LIVED in the States, only visited for a while each time, so I don't have a proper point of reference.

What I WILL say though is that most of our modern culture comes from us from the US. Movies, series, musicals, songs, social media conversations and stuff... And those ABSOLUTELY push the expectation of sex on people regardless of how conservative the States probably are on a daily basis.

I think it's like... The way I experience it, it kinda feels like the large majority of people regardless of the country or culture ARE kinda obsessed with sex anyway, so it's more about how overtly it's admitted in society or not. French people WILL definitely bring up sex in random conversations including at work or with people they've just literally met from the first time. (Depends on personality of course but... Yeah.) But I dunno. Maybe people in the US do that too. In terms of what I see in the exported culture though? The omnipresence of sex is definitely still felt. Heck, look at fandoms that are for a big part comprised of US people and how quickly they'll gravitate to shipping and sexual shipping or thirsting for a character too. That's definitely not just a thing I've observed in France.

The main difference I see is that most conversations of this type seem to start in the US and my country tends to "behind" in lots of ways, so it's definitely harder to talk about how you're an asexual in France still, at least I'd assume. Here we're still at the point where the odd mainstream media will write an article introducing asexuality as a revolutionary concept in a "can you believe this exists?" and "🫴🦋 is this a new trend?" kinda way. It's... A bit embarrassing, though it's way better than nothing at this point, progress is progress.

PS: The obsession with romance kinda seems to be everywhere in both cultures, so that at least doesn't make much of a difference. Except that I guess France being stereotyped as "the country of love" (read: ROMANTIC love ONLY) doesn't really help at all but meh.

[herejusttosufferalong]

"This made me think about the press tour strategy, which was certainly planned since the beginning, way before January, I would imagine."

Sorry, this might also be long...I don't necessarily disagree completely here, but I do have a rebuttal. Yes, ShondaLand and Netflix knew what they had with Nic and Luke. However, the people who are in with them daily and see their dynamic are not the ones designing the promotional tour. Yes, they might have designed a press tour around a friends to lovers plot, but that doesn't mean they were purposefully exploiting any romantic feelings between them. There have been plenty of costars who don't get along who have had to go promote together and fake it. That's just part of the job. Studios expect them to put in the work, but they don't expect them to (fake) fall in love over the course of the tour. Nic and Luke were given talking points for the press tour. We can see that all the way back in summer 2023 when Nic first brings up the broken furniture. So the repetitive questions everyone complained about as well as saying Nic and Luke were unhinged cause they couldn't stop talking about their intimacy scenes, those were because of the marketing/PR team. HOW Nic and Luke responded was their own. That's why we saw their answers changing and the different levels of comfort between the two of them.

As far as Luke and Nic's behavior, I genuinely don't understand how people say they were purposefully playing up their connection. If anything, I think they interacted on a more surface level than they typically would. To me it has always been clear that Luke was super uncomfortable talking about anything personal. Anytime he was asked something about himself or his relationship with Nic he always brought it back to the show and his character. Seriously, go back and watch their interviews. It drove me crazy haha. This is one of the reasons people have been so frustrated with him. He very rarely shares actual personal details or feelings about Nic. She is willing to share more than him, but even still you know there is a lot more that isn't being said. She has a few key traits of his she'll hit on each time. Neither of them are being disingenuous, just different degrees of guarded. What frustrates people and makes them think they've been played are the times when their guard is dropped or they forget they're being filmed/watched and we see more than they're wanting to share peak out. We aren't owed their actual relationship, but we've seen glimpses of it and it's magical so we're all obsessed. We want to dissect and either put it on a pedestal or rip it down because we can't stand living in this uncomfortable grey space of not actually knowing anything.

Now to my biggest issue, Nic would NEVER exploit her family for show numbers. She doesn't even follow them on social media to keep them protected. You'll notice none of them were in any of the official materials put out. What we got were cell phone videos from fans inside the theater. Nic saw her mom for the first time in months in that theater. They didn't meet up prior. Her hugging her mom was genuine. Her excitement about introducing Luke was genuine. People took a sweet moment and made it weird. Marketing didn't orchestrate that. It's this type of narrative that makes celebrities stop sharing their private lives at all. If this was a marketing ploy, there would have been cameras at that dinner. We would all LOVE to see Nic's brother in law try to get Luke drunk. The teeny bit of footage we got from fan cell phone videos in that theater showed her sister in law, brother and best friend all emotional and loving the moments between Nic and her mom and Luke and her mom. Can't we appreciate and accept this was a real moment of connection? Or are we just too jaded?

Not everything with actors is fake. Not everything that happens while they happen to be on a press tour is PR. Some things are calculated, but it's not as disgusting as people are wanting to make it out to be.

another great perspective

thank you for sharing 💜

[tearwolfe]

I'll borrow a warrior cats book from the library and see how it is before buying a book.. shivers in fear, i did not know that..

yeah for sure do not buy them. there's also a bunch of free PDFs online you can read!! or check them out through libby or whatever online library service your local library uses if you don't mind reading from your phone.

gonna use this chance to highlight issues with warriors under the cut!! because i've spent so much time being with this series i have a lot of thoughts. i want to let you know i am not trying to cancel warriors or anything, there's just a lot of issues and i like talking about it.

CW: misogyny, pedophilia, ablism, racism

Okay, we're going to start with the more annoying aspects. First of all, Warriors is written by a ton of different people. They have the main writers outline the plot, and there's a bunch of other people that fill in all the empty space. Kind of an interesting way to do it, but that's why Warriors is able to publish several books a year. Erin Hunter is just a penname for a group.

INCONSISTENCIES

Why do I bring this up, what's the issue? The inconsistencies, dude. There's so many. Character appearances change between books. Dovewing's eye color changes frequently, for example, to the point where there was an internet war about how she would be represented on the Warriors Wiki. Another example is Mapleshade, a cat that's been prevalent as a villain since Crookedstar's Promise. In that book, she's referred to as a ginger-and-white she-cat, but after that she's been described as a calico (er, tortishelle-and-white, because Erin Hunter is somehow allergic to the word calico). Appearances aren't the only inconsistency. Character personalities are a big issue. After the first arc especially, characters will lose what charm they had in their personalities. Suddenly Spottedleaf is in love with Fireheart/star after she dies, suddenly Yellowfang is unwelcoming towards cats who find themselves breaking the Warrior Code (despite being a codebreaker herself and having compassion toward other cats while she was alive). The authors also seem to have trouble keeping track of characters. On one page Sandstorm leaves camp to go on patrol, and a paragraph later she is seen STILL in camp, talking to someone, despite having been written to leave camp. It's a very bizarre series to read. (Other inconsistencies include miswriting names [Ravepaw incident], using the wrong pronouns, and entirely confusing cats between each other). Heavystep also died a few times because the Erins forgot that he died.

MISOGYNY

Outside of poor writing, we're hit with misogyny. Main female characters, in POV, are written at least a little bit better than any of the other she-cats. However, as soon as the next arc starts and she's put out of the limelight, the authors have to give her a mate, give her kits, and make her a mother. There is only ONE POV she-cat I can think of that didn't die and never had kits. Twigbranch is literally the only one. This isn't a dig at being a mother at all, however whenever the Erins DO make a former main character a mother, that's the only trait they give them. Rarely do these she-cats continue to carry the personalities they were given initially.

It's not even a secret that the fandom dislikes when every she-cat is boiled down to being just a babymaker. The Erins literally killed off a she-cat because the fans didn't like the fact that her only personality trait was mom. Yes, this actually did happen.

There's lots of victim-blaming misogyny with whatever is going on between Squirrelflight and Bramblestar and between Leafpool and StarClan. Bramblestar will literally say the worst things to Squirrelflight and the narrative makes it seem like he's in the right. It's not wrong to display unhealthy relationships in media, but if you're writing a KID'S SERIES, it's extremely irresponsible to constantly write the victim as being wrong. This applies to how StarClan blames Leafpool for everything that's happened to her, despite the fact that Crowfeather was also a part of the equation.

Don't even get me started about Spottedleaf's Heart. In summary, Spottedleaf was groomed by Thisteclaw from when she was a kit (and he was a Warrior), and the narrative only makes Thistleclaw a bad guy because he was training in the Dark Forest, not because he is a predator.

ABLEISM

It's absolutely crazy how ableist this series is. In arc one, we have Brightpaw, an apprentice who gets mauled by dogs, and as Bluestar watched, as what she thought was going to be her death bed, she decided to give her her warrior name- a name that she would be stuck with in StarClan. She chose "Lostface." Brightpaw would eventually recover, loosing one of her eyes in the attack, and would live with being called Lostface until Firestar was able to rename her (to Brightheart). The whole renaming thing feels gross enough, but Brightheart is probably the best case scenario of ableism in Warriors, as she was allowed to function as a regular Warrior in the clan. Cinderpelt wasn't so lucky. She was a Warrior apprentice who got hit by a car, mangling her leg. She was then forced to become a Medicine Cat because she "couldn't hunt or fight" (despite the fact that real world cats are able to function completely normally while missing a limb). Longtail lost his vision in a fight with rabbits and he was retired early to the elder's den, despite wanting to be a Warrior. Jayfeather was blind, so he was made a Medicine Cat despite wanting to be a Warrior. Briarlight was paralyzed, so she was put in the Medicine Cat den most of the time despite wanting to be a Warrior. This is a very common theme in the series. Any cat who isn't fully able-bodied is often made to be a Medicine Cat or an Elder, even if that's not what they want. Literally every single Medicine Cat in ThunderClan since Spottedleaf through to Alderheart never wanted to be a Medicine Cat.

Being a Medicine Cat isn't supposed to be a bad role, but the way Warriors uses it as a cop-out to make disabled cats have a more "plot interesting" role without allowing them to be a Warrior is really weird.

ANTI-INDIGENOUS WRITING

I'm not the most knowledgeable person on this topic, however, many Indigenous readers have brought up a lot of issues the series has in terms of being culturally insensitive to native tribes. There's a well-written document that explains this in full detail.

IT'S KIND OF JUST BAD?

The writing isn't good. This goes back to the multi-writer issue. These people can't keep track of their characters or plot, so a lot of things just sort of fall flat. The best plotlines can be found in some of the novellas and graphic novels, and then I think it's because they're mostly written by one person.

How come StarClan can be so vague to living cats, but when we get POV in StarClan, they just act like normal cats? How come Ashfur randomly was super powerful in the Dark Forest/StarClan, while every other cat wasn't? There's just a lot of unexplained stuff, it's very weird.

Warriors is a very interesting series because it's pretty bad yet the fandom is huge. I definitely recommend watching Warriors Multi-Animator-Projects, reading fancomics, and fix-it fanfics instead of actually reading the books. The fans are so, so talented, it's crazy how a never-ending series of children's cat books has created such an insane fanbase.

[ladysarai]

@inception30daychallenge day 1: my favorite thing about the movie

I think my FAVORITE thing about Inception is how MUCH there is to it, as a movie. You can watch it a zillion times and get something new from it every time, and you can read one person's take and be impressed and amazed because you didn't even think of that take!

But what REALLY makes me sit up and pay attention to a piece of media is Characters, and Relationships. I love how MUCH the cast did with so very little... I want to know EVERYTHING about Arthur's relationships with Mal and Dom, (okay, ESPECIALLY Mal) just because of the way he calls Mal "lovely" and because of the way he PUTS UP with Dom and follows him around and has obviously been loyal through So Much Shit and then the way he SMILES in the end. Cobb himself is a hot mess, and given only the context of the movie, you have to wonder why anyone would put up with the things he puts Arthur through, so there has to be a history there, right?? And OF COURSE I'm here for Arthur and Eames and their shared history, whatever that may be (they're married okay). The fact that in the paper script, Arthur and Eames could have been played so differently by two other actors is... It's a little awe inspiring, and just makes you really appreciate what actors can bring to their roles.

I love that every single time I watch it, there is something new to notice, some new nuance to pick up on, a new piece of canon that can be used to spin out headcanon or fic from. And I absolutely ADORE that so much is open-ended and there's no real WRONG interpretation; I think that's what's given the fandom such lasting power over the years. We're give so little actual canon that very little fanon is actually contradicted. It's kind of beautiful that way.

On a personal note... When I say that I'm new to the Inception fandom, I mean BRAND NEW... like as of April of this year new. Which is not to say I didn't see the movie when it came out in 2010, because I did! I watched it more than once! But here's the thing... You ever have those experiences where OTHER PEOPLE ruin a thing for you before you give it a chance yourself?

That's what happened with me and Inception. I thought "hey, fun movie" and left it at that. Largely because my younger brother was in this weird "I'm a Movie Connoisseur/Expert and My Opinion is the One That Counts" stage and as someone with self-proclaimed "man crush" on Leo, he was All About Cobb, who is easily my LEAST favorite character. He was also All About arguing for the "it's all a dream" theory over the ending, which I think beautifully demonstrates the main difference between us: I am an optimist and prefer happy endings. So he would Not Shut Up about this movie and how GROUNDBREAKING it was and how the pessimistic viewing of the ending was the Only True Way to watch the movie. (May I say how much I fucking love that this has generally been disproved in the last 14 years? Because I have serious Schadenfreude over that.)

(I was also RPing in a panfandom LJ game at the time with people who were obsessed with playing characters played by Certain Actors and our game wound up with an Arthur and an Ariadne and I think they shipped them but it was full of ~drama~ and I wanted nothing to do with it so I kept my Barbies on my corner of the game and avoided theirs.)

ANYWAY, this is a very convoluted and long-winded way to get to my point. Which is that I largely forgot about Inception for the last 13 years-ish. Then I was rereading some old fanfics in March and because I liked an author, I went to see what other fandoms they'd written for. And somehow I fell into Inception and discovered Arthur/Eames, and HOW THE FUCK DID I MISS THAT????? After a few weeks of reading fic, I decided to watch the movie again and, well. Then I was watching it every other day for several weeks.

Moderation? What's that?

So another favorite thing about this movie is that I got back into fandom for the first time in... god. Almost ten years???? Because of it. Which is a little miraculous by itself.

[ameliapples]

I see people on other platforms talking about cohost going down and I generally see the same few complaints being trotted out over and over as the reasons why it failed and was doomed to fail from the start. "It kept logging me out", "there was no app", "my timeline was always dead", "I got so little engagement", "I had to wait how long before I could post??". It's the stuff people have complained about with the platform forever, and while I think these complaints are generally a bit silly, they do arrive at what's probably the real reason we're all mourning the impending death of eggbug without realizing it.

A big part of what made cohost so different from other social media platforms is that it was the only platform where you had to actually want to be there. Every other platform is basically designed to hold you at gunpoint and force your attention and engagement 24/7. The gun in this situation being mostly fomo - everything is happening so rapidly, there's so much to keep track of, what if you miss something? what if it's something really big and you don't tweet about it within the first 5 minutes of it happening? what if you miss the next Main Character? there's a new one every day and they're forgotten as quickly as they arrive, but a month from now someone's gonna bring it up as a joke and you won't get it and you'll look lame and cringe! you don't want to look Lame and also Cringe, do you?

cohost never felt that way. If you were there, it was because you genuinely wanted to be. The site was designed to ensure that, even. You had to wait about a week after you made an account to ensure you weren't a spam bot before you could post at all. Once you could post, there was no algorithm. None. Nothing was fed into your feed that wasn't directly posted to a tag you follow or a person you follow. If you wanted to see something outside of that, you'd have to do the legwork browsing tags yourself. For budgetary reasons, there was never an app, so you had to either learn to set up a shortcut icon on your phone or else open it manually in a browser. It also logged you out every 30 days as a privacy and security measure. You had to want to jump through all these hoops to use cohost.

And what did you get for doing the effort? Peace. A social media environment that didn't feel like you were constantly stood in the center of Time Square with all the noise and marquees and heckling voices focused directly at you at all times. It didn't try to be a news site, or an advertising platform. No algorithm meant you only got what you actively chose to see, and nothing more. You could say in your head "lemme check cohost real quick", and you could be up-to-date on your timeline in under 5 minutes. It was a place you would willingly go to check in on friends or look at cool art or play around with html like it was 2004 again, not get sucked into for hours doom scrolling. Because there was no algorithm, no push for engagement, no numbers that publicly went up, no one was competing for attention or clout. No one I ever met on cohost was immediately antagonistic, or rude, or trying to dunk someone. People were chill, FRIENDLY even, in a way I have never seen on twitter or tumblr even back in "the good ol days". The adversarial, cliquey, petty nonsense we all expect from social media was almost entirely absent. It was peaceful, quiet. It was the only social media platform I've used to not give me anxiety, or a migraine.

So of course it fell apart. We live in a world where things require money to simply exist, and cohost was designed basically not to make any by virtue of having virtues. It refused to advertise, sell user data in any way, open a weird shop where you can put microscopic pngs next to your name, or force people's worst impulses in order to keep them on the site for as long as possible. It ran off merch purchases and cohost plus, which was meant to give you premium features but never got the chance to do much more than upping your file size limit on uploads. It was essentially a $5 a month donation. It wasn't enough, clearly.

So now it's going, but I don't really think saying it "failed" is right. If anything, it's made it clear what a failure the rest of the social media ecosystem is. Usually when a platform is dying, or looks to be dying (in the case of twitter, or tumblr post 2018), people immediately make plans to jump ship to a new one. But upon hearing that cohost was shutting down, my reaction, as well as that of a pretty large portion of the user base, was that we'd rather spend time on other things. Cohost was so different an atmosphere it seems to have had a healing property on people who used it. It wasn't perfect, moderation was spotty at times due to the limited staff, people had their blind spots and biases they sometimes struggled to work through. But it was better than what we've grown to expect. It made you realize how tiring the rest of the internet has become, and that you don't need to deal with it. You can better spend that time, doing things you enjoy with people you enjoy. Maybe even outside, if you can muster it. You might even meet some cool people out there, wearing cool patches, eulogizing a cool little website, with a funny lil bug shaped like an egg.

[suffersinfandom]

So. Magic.

[Text of an AO3 comment, cropped to leave out the writer: "I finally got a chance to finish S2 (unspoiled!) and came directly to this document after to devour its contents. But by the very first chapter I was taken aback by the concept that anyone in the world thinks Izzy's death is permanent. Did we even watch the same show? You can ignore literally every excellent piece of analysis here if you want - the fact remains that Buttons turned into a bird, through magic, in the third(?) episode, it never got mentioned again beyond maybe one throwaway line, and then that bird returns to Izzy's grave marker in the very last scene (other than the end stinger). There is zero reason for that to happen other than foreshadowing for Izzy/Buttons/magic/resurrection stuff to occur in S3 (if it hasn't already). What, do they think that Buttons was just super sad and paying his respects? I have like less than zero media analysis skills, I noticed basically nothing of what you pointed out in this entire document on my own, and yet I STILL picked up that there's more going on here."]

The thing is.

The thing is.

IS magic real in the world of OFMD?

I believe in my heart of hearts that Buttons is a seawitch who transmogrified himself into a seagull and I believe that cunty suit was cursed as heck, but I don't think that magic is strictly, technically, literally meant to be understood as real in OFMD.

(I know there are a few posts about the show's magic, so apologies if I rehash a half-remembered idea. Feel free to leave a link if you have any of those posts handy!)

OFMD's world is full of little magic. The Caribbean is easily traversed; people can find each other with no real issues (or avoid detection when that suits the story better); time and space are all hand-wavey. The world operates on vibes and convenience. If something needs to happen for the story's sake, it just does. Don't worry about it.

The show's big magic works the same way: we can analyze and try to parse out how stuff happens, but we're not asked to. Is the suit cursed or is Frenchie just allergic to peanuts? Did Stede bring Ed back to life or was Ed in a head injury-induced coma? Did Buttons turn into a bird or did an addled Ed lose track of Buttons in the woods? It doesn't matter, don't worry about it! What matters is that Stede (kind of) learned a lesson about listening to his crew and respecting their beliefs. What matters is that Stede's presence gave Ed the push he needed to save himself. What matters is the message behind Buttons' transformation: people can change.

The show's magic has some rules. When it comes to the big magic, there's always a logical out -- a way to explain it away and keep the story more-or-less grounded in reality. OFMD isn't going to give us some big, literal, onscreen magic act. It's not going to tell us that the Gravy Basket is an actual metaphysical location that souls swing by and anyone can be called back from. It's not going to show Izzy mystically resurrected after we saw him die a bloody death right in front of us.

Let's look at Buttons' transmogrification.

It's important that Ed is the only witness to his change because Ed is explicitly set up as an unreliable POV character in S2E4. We are told, in three different ways, that we can't trust what he sees (and what we see through him).

First: Roach, the closest thing we have to a medical professional, says that Ed is half-dead and brain-scrambled. His mind isn't right.

Second: Buttons says that Ed has one foot in the Gravy Basket and isn't entirely present. (Side note, but I don't think that Buttons using the term "gravy basket" is meant to establish it as an actual place. I believe this line is just meant to set up Ed as witness to the transformation; we don't need to read too much into Buttons, the character who Knows Things when convenient, saying it. Or, if you want to ground this in reality, you can assume that Buttons has talked about the Gravy Basket before and Ed subconsciously picked up on it.)

Third: Ed refers to a rabbit as a wolf, confirming that, yeah, he's having some issues with reality. Like, we don't really think that Ed can't identify a rabbit, right? I know the guy spends his time primarily on the ocean, but he's a genius who does, sometimes, set foot on land.

So Ed's out of it, and not even he has eyes on Buttons when the transformation is meant to occur. One minute we have a chanting Buttons, the next we have a seagull flapping around his transmogrification vessel. We all know that seagull is Buttons and he's off to make sweet love to the sea, but also... do we?

What matters is that Ed believes he saw a man turn into a bird so he could better love the sea. That's it! Ed, someone who desperately needed proof that people can change -- that he and Stede can change -- has that proof and can truly start healing. It's beautiful and I love it, ten out of ten, five stars, no notes.

If we're lucky enough to get a season three with Ewen Bremner in it, I fully expect a butt-naked Buttons to show up with absolutely no explanation. Maybe we get a few little wink-wink nudge-nudge moments hinting to his time as a seagull, but straight confirmation that magic is real would break the rules the show has established.

Anyway. All of this is really just my way of saying that Izzy's dead and it'd be extremely fucking weird and world-breaking if he crawled out of his grave thanks to bird magic.

[kutputli]

I really need to stop thinking about that gay vampire show. I've been reading around it the past few days. People's tumblr posts, media essays, interviews with actors and creators...

I stand by my conviction that this is a show that will break your heart if you are a person of colour, because it is a show fundamentally made by white people. My distrust of white people writing PoC comes from a very informed study of media made in the past three decades, and the mistakes that I have seen in the past are being repeated here. Not all the same ones, and not necessarily in the same magnitude as other shows, but beyond the gradation of mistakes, there is a fundamental quality to media made by people of colour, where race informs everything. When white people address race, it is only in certain specifics. Everything that is not specifically labelled as 'race-related' gets treated as neutral (which is to say, it gets treated with a white-default view.)

And that's what this show has been doing and is continuing to do. You can see the specific places where they concientously address race relations, and then you can see all the places where their eye slides off of what the characters are embodying.

And I've done this dance before of book vs movie, and treating the film as fanfic of the book. It's a valid way to approach an adaptation, and I can see a lot of people enjoying bringing the book knowledge to guesses about the show's interpretations and motivations of characters.

But when you change a character's race, you fundamentally change a character. And trying to impose a connection between a white book character and a Black or Brown TV character becomes an exercise in minimising identity. I am not interested in how to squish the impulses and emotions that a South Asian Armand is performing into the box defined by a white Armand.

And what white showmakers repeatedly do is pander to a white gaze--this colourblind casting idea where it doesn't matter what race the actor is because we're here for the character.

I don't watch shows like that. I am here BECAUSE Louis is Black. I am here BECAUSE Claudia is Black. I am here BECAUSE Armand is Brown. Yes, of course they are beloved to me because they are not white. Yes of course, I dislike Lestat more because he is white. This is obvious, this is what any person who has faced racism will bring to a racially diverse piece of media.

If they had genuinely wanted to make a show about problematic mutually abusive vampires where race was not a factor defining their relationships, then they should have made Lestat also not white. (And that would have been easily achievable - they could have taken inspiration from Joseph Bologne.)

I don't have time to write the essay pointing out all the small detailed ways that the show has failed on race, because I just want to express my frustration at the large one. The one where the people in charge are talking about a different version of the characters than the ones I saw on the screen, because of the fundamental incompatibility in how they view race as a factor in shaping a person, and how I do.

I'd like to be able to speculate on things with other fans, to get into Armand especially, to talk about Louis's future and past, but I can't. Because the truth of the characters as I see them isn't what the powers that be define as the truth, and so that makes me a liar.

And so once again whiteness defines those who are not white as the deviant gaze.

[archivalofsins]

So, let's talk. This is going to be a serious discussion about hyper-sexualization and hypo-sexualization.

TL;DR- Sexualizing characters is an issue but not simply because sexualization is occcuring. Everyone has different needs, interests, and ways they interact with the media they enjoy. All of which are worthy of respect. However, other's need their right to not be exposed to things that cause them discomfort respected to. So, it's always best to properly tag things with consideration towards those we share this space with. It's important that when doing what you want you spare consideration to those you can.

Now, Gunsli why would you be bringing up this? Well remember this post. In this post I said this,

While a factually sound statement it seems to have been misinterpreted. So, let us elaborate on it real quick.

It is important that everyone tag things properly with respect and consideration toward other fans.

People interact with sexuality and the concept of being sexualized in different ways. What may not seem like much to one person will more than likely be too much for another. This is where-

Hypo-sexualization and Hyper-sexualization come into play.

Source (CW: MENITIONS OF SECUAL ABUSE): X

Sexualization is a topic that is heavily rooted in individual perspective. Not only when it comes to real life people but fictional characters as well. What one person may find pleasing to read or see art of involving a certain character another person may dislike. However, the conversation I was personally having about Mikoto was never about whether or not he should be sexualized.

That's irrelevant. People should continue to do what they please in a way that is considerate of the other people in the community around them. Literally it is that easy.

But isn't sexualizing him when he has such a disorder bad?

Not sexualizing him solely based on the idea that he has a disorder is bad as well. People with dissociative disorders can and sometimes do want to be sexualized. If Mikoto was a real person then forcefully sexualizing him would be an issue. However, he is not.

Well, since we know the characters can hear what we're saying I'm uncomfortable with it.

I'm right there with anyone who is feeling that way. It's incredibly embarrassing to think that some of the views we've all seen now and again can or have been heard by Mikoto for the amount of time that it has been. For people who have experienced forced sexualization this can be a wildly upsetting thought and they have every right to be upset about it and display that upset.

However, no one has the right to tell others how they should enjoy things. Regardless of how much it causes them discomfort. In the same vein no one else has the right to continually expose people to something they have said they dislike. This is why personally I think tagging things appropriately is the best way to do things moving forward. We can't control how people talk about Mikoto on other platforms.

However, we can control if we respect and show consideration for the people within the fandom on the platform we are on. Regardless of how they enjoy a character or don't enjoy them. Regardless of if our opinions may vary. I don't think anyone here wants to have their actions cause anyone real life harm.

Yes, the sexualization of Mikoto's character can be upsetting considering one's lived experiences. However, derivative works are a way for many people to explore aspects of their own sexuality safetly and that aspect of fandom should be respected as well. Representation matters and as I stated in the previous post Dissociative Identiy Disorder is not a monoloith.

What one person finds unhealthy to be displayed in this instance may not be unhealthy to others. There are people that have Dissociative Identity Disorder that will, can, and should find the sexualization of Mikoto's character comforting. Simply because it displays that someone with the disorder can be desired in that way.

Then there will be others like me who dislike it. Because at times it can feel as though Mikoto canonically having Dissociative Identiy Disorder isn't being fully explored and it's just there to check off a switch kink.

“A switch is someone who demonstrates both characteristics and is comfortable with both submissive and dominant roles,” X

Which no one is really being slick about but like you don't need to do this with the one character that has Dissociative Identity Disorder literally anyone can be a switch.

Yet again I must stress him being sexualized was not my issue. The way he was being sexualized was. Something I failed to fully elaborate on in my previous point. So, I will now do so here.

My issue was the fact that the way Mikoto is sexualized veers into slut shaming. Something that many are very reluctant to say can happen to males, but it does.

The comments I've seen made about Mikoto are simply disgusting to me because they've literally mostly been,

"He knew what he was doing being shirtless in his video that many times"

Me: You mean changing his clothes in the comfort of his own home? You mean taking a shower and bath in the comfort of his own home?

Regardless of how someone presents themselves and where they are not responsible for someone else finding them attractive or interpreting them sexually. I wouldn't be okay with this being said about a male or female character. Simply because no one is responsible for what a person finds sexually attractive or not.

When I said what I said it wasn't meant to be from the lens of stop sexualizing this character you grossy gross's oh no my pure eyes have been sullied by your heathen ways.

No, it was literally making a very offhanded comment about something that had been bugging me since MeMe released actually since before Milgram was even a thing. The hyper-sexualization of men and the retraumatization of males who have experienced sexual violence through fetishization.

This was never about what people in the fandom should and shouldn't do. It was about interacting with the concept that males have sexual trauma too. That is ignored and heavily overlooked by society. Along with the fact that if Mikoto was Yuno most of this shit wouldn't be being said and provably so,

Yuno dressing like this was mostly described as empowering, liberating, her owning her sexuality.

I have to stress Mikoto was implied to be thrist trapping for taking a shower and bath in his own fucking home last trial. Yet Yuno is here in full lingerie, and I didn't even see one thing talking poorly about her to the extent THIS MAN HAS BEEN FOR WEARING WHAT HE IS IN THIS THUMBNAIL.

Naw, you got me fucked up.

It was never about the fact that sexualization exists. Because that's always going to exist. It was about how that is disproportionately displayed. Men are just as worthy to their own sexual autonomy and the respect of that as women are.

That will always be my line with this.

Forced sexualization is bad whether it's happening to a man or woman. The characters should not be being discussed as though they are real people but the behavior that the fandom demonstrates publicly should be regarded with the consideration of real people. Because how one conducts themselves in the real world can and will impact real people.

[cryscendo]

i was gonna reply to your comment on my post but i thought id bring the discourse straight to your inbox instead alskfjdslk its not like we're telling teenagers to go out and discover some weird kinks of their own right this second lmao but they absolutely have to learn to be comfortable with the fact that people are going to be into kinky shit they think is weird and thats its not in fact a moral issue and also none of their business lol

like when i was a kid everything was so fucking raunchy and im not saying it was better but everything has to be so fucking sanitized now and thats not good either. when i was a kid online in the 00s people would literally link you to shock porn videos as a joke and that was just an accepted norm. nowadays there are so many ways to tailor your online experience to you and people are just ignoring all these block and filter functions and look at shit they know they dont like and bitch about it when they had every opportunity not to see it

and it goes back to the fucking rocky horror discourse like god forbid youre trying to portray a queer character in a way thats anything other than the most palatable beige blank slate that ever was. god forbid a queer character acts or dresses or looks or behaves in a queer way aksfjsld they want everything to be so fucking boring and palatable to 1) encapsulate every single queer experience on earth in a single piece of media and 2) be tolerable to straight people because theyre under the illusion that there is any acceptable way for a queer person to be to a bigot other than dead. both are a useless endeavor and they need to quit wasting energy on caring about either

like god fandom just feels so bleak nowadays and i know part of it is bc of how fast things move and no one can hold longterm interest in stuff anymore but a huge part of it is how flat out prudish people are all of a sudden

let ships be problematic let queer characters be weird let sex be kinky lmao let fandom by fun again my godddd

sorry for the rant aklsfjkdshfdk i apparently had a lot to say but hey i love you thanks for complaining with me xxxxx

omg i’m so sorry i meant to respond to this earlier than now!!! i saw it originally when i was waking up for work and thought “ooooh she’s making some banger points i’ll respond to that on my break” and then i just… forgot. so here i am now better late than never 🥰

i’ve always had a bit of a problem with the incessant need to sanitize fandom. i’m not saying ppl can’t curate their fandom experience to appeal to their interests, because obviously, they absolutely can. HOWEVER i do think it has become much more policed than it once was.

i think kink, and understanding its place on a fundamental level (especially within queer spaces), is something that takes maturity to fully understand. like with the rocky horror thing, the use of sexuality and kink is inherently different than what a young person of today might perceive it as. it doesn’t particularly surprise me that people are so sensitive to it, because they simply don’t understand their roots — they’ve formed this concept of queerness that pleases them, and therefore find other demonstrations of queerness to be antiquated or “back-pedalling” (even though we both know it isn’t). i think it’s dumb and immature to try to dictate “right and wrong” ways to be queer, but i’m also not all that shocked that it’s happening.

all this to say, queer characters don’t have to fit into the boxes that we deem as “appropriate”. just like how real queer people don’t owe an explanation for who they are, these queer characters don’t HAVE to reflect every queer person that engages with their media.

personally for me, kink is a MASSIVE component of the queer experience. so because of that, i like my favourite bitches to be kinky but that’s just me 😌

absolutely feel free to rant anytime your opinions are literally always correct to me <3

[cookinguptales]

Excited to see that you watched vampterview! You always have such fun and interesting commentary on stuff. No pressure of course but I'd look forward to any Sarah takes you might have on it 👀

Who knows? Maybe! I'm about to go on a three-week road trip, but we'll see how much time I have!

I'm still digesting a bit, I'll admit, and I really don't know what's already been discussed to death in the fandom. Personally, my academic interests were always really focused on stories, how we tell them, how we internalize them, and how we can't help but put ourselves, our experiences, and our biases into our retellings of them. To be loved is to be changed when memories of us live in the hearts of others, y'know?

So... I'd say that I was really interested in the ways they played with unreliable narrators in the series. How the concept of the sanctity of primary sources was really dismantled. Because they were all primary sources and they were all telling completely different stories! Whether it was due to misremembering, bias, or literal mind control, even the written sources simply could not be trusted.

I remember there was this really formative experience for me was when I was 16 years old and taking summer classes at UChicago. I was studying Egyptology there, which meant I was spending a lot of time at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the OI) studying and translating the artifacts there.

I don't remember all the details (though I guess I could probably pin down the particulars if I combed through their collections) but I remember seeing two ancient accounts of the same war written by both sides -- and both accounts claimed victory. And, y'know, whether each side had a different definition of victory or whether someone was just straight-up lying... I mean. It brings up the idea of an unreliable narrator on a massive historical scale.

Sometimes, particularly with older historical events, we're only going to have scattered archaeological fragments that we can piece together. Sometimes we have to do a lot of guessing and detective work to come to any conclusion at all. And historically, we have prioritized written accounts over all other forms of evidence. But, y'know... people lie. Or they misremember. Or they misconstrue. Reconstructing history not just through first-person accounts but by looking at other evidence and questioning those accounts is crucial. And even then, we'll probably never find any objective "truth," if objective truth even exists in a situation like that.

So... like, an unreliable narrator is nothing new in media. But framing it through Daniel, who is a nonfiction writer trying to make sense of all of these different testimonies to construct an actual historical narrative... That made it really interesting to me. It wasn't just all of these different vampires stating their truths. It was Daniel trying to sort through all of the misdirection to find out what actually happened. And the show makes it clear that, while he gets close, he'll probably never know all the details for sure. It simply isn't possible.

So IWTV, to me, was a really interesting look at the impossibility of constructing an objective historical narrative, especially when speaking about very old events with few sources. You have mentally ill vampires who are several decades removed from the events in question, you have contemporaneous (but very biased) journal entries, you have newspaper clippings written by journalists who had very little information, you have artifacts that may (or may not!) confirm certain testimonies...

idk. I guess while I do have thoughts about the characters and their motivations, I was more interested in the way that things were framed and presented in the show. I thought that was really neat.

[lover-of-mine]

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/757480576623230976/pssst-pass-it-on-tim-scrappedcancelled-buddie-to

I always find this take so interesting because they love to say Tim canceled, Tim said no, Tim won’t do this

But they seem to forget it’s not up to Tim.

Does he get a say? Yes. And a pretty big one. But ultimately it’s up to the network. If they don’t want buddie it won’t happen. As we saw season in 4 and 5 with Fox when the network said no.

If the network wants buddie? Tim can try and say no if he wants, maybe try and change their minds but ultimately they can just as easily let him go and replace him with someone else who will be happy to give the network what they want.

And the big thing about networks? They are money hungry. Especially on the backend of strikes when they lost money and revenue from shows etc. Giving up on buddie and losing all the viewers and money and publicity they would rake in for years when buddie goes canon, because people didn’t like a plot device character and they want to be childish and petty would be insane.

Honestly, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Buddie is a gold mine because there isn't a relationship like them in media. I don't know why fox didn't realize that but abc clearly does because they are using Oliver and Ryan and they are aware of the numbers they bring. But I've been thinking about grey's anatomy comparisons to be specific. I keep going back to Jackson and April because japril was very well liked, but they didn't want to keep them together, so much so they got divorced and they wrote April off, and there was enough backslash that when the Jackson actor asked to leave and they brought April back so she would go with him and they eventually got confirmed as back together even tho the writers very much did not want that, just because the audience wanted them together. We're not dealing with a rarepair that only we see as possible. Buddie is part of the core of the show and we are not the only ones who want it to happen. They would be pissing off a lot more than just us. The show tried to separate them and it backfired. Buck being bi was huge. So they have ga approval, and that can make them SO MUCH MONEY. Giving up on that because a writer wants to be petty is crazy even when said writer hasn't stated in multiple occasions how important a pairing is for the show like Tim has. They know what they have. They can go down in television history. They're not gonna throw that away because people are being mean on the internet. The fandom fucking hated every single love interest for no reason with no consequences. Why would this be different? It's not their job to monitor fandom spaces. And it's not their job to punish viewership when that viewership is the clear majority of their audience. Like, PLEASE.

Also, not doing buddie after making Buck bi, continuously using Ryan in the promotion with Oliver, and having multiple people on record saying that they were studying ways to make Eddie queer too, along with the way the show established Buck as Eddie's partner in universe, would sink the show. Abc is not that stupid. They know how that looks. They just bought the show, they're not gonna shoot themselves in the foot like that.

[lucy-moderatz]

any thoughts on the recent influx of heavy criticism and hate carrie's received on social media from newer and younger viewers even since satc moved to netflix? like, how horrible she was for making her breakup with berger more important than charlotte's engagement? how a sex columnist was actually prudish and quite conservative about sex? her being 30-something and terrorizing a 20-something (natasha)?

I'm not particularly surprised, because for as long as I've been a fan of this show, there has always been heavy criticism of Carrie as a character. She has always been taken to task for being self-involved to the point of obsession and for the less than stellar choices she makes throughout the series.

Michael Patrick King once said in a DVD commentary of, I think, "Change of a Dress", that when shooting outside they specifically tried to avoid movie posters because they didn't want to tie the show down to a particular time. They wanted it to feel like it could be taking place at any time. I think that was a wasted effort. Society evolves pretty quickly and it didn't take long before the politics, sexual and otherwise, that the show exhibited became very dated (see the insulting depiction of bisexuality in "Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl" or the transphobic language in "Cock-A-Doodle-Do", for two huge examples).

As a Carrie Bradshaw stan (for better or worse), I will address these specifically, though:

how horrible she was for making her breakup with berger more important than charlotte's engagement?

I don't think she did that. She just found that post it note. It was a very raw, very insulting thing that had literally happened to her right before she put her clothes on to go to brunch with her friends. I think she was entitled to be angry about it. Also, she didn't even bring it up until Charlotte reminded her that she also came in with news. And later, when Charlotte was being hesitant about celebrating her engagement properly, Carrie was very supportive and most importantly, genuinely happy for her in spite of having been left by her boyfriend the previous day.

how a sex columnist was actually prudish and quite conservative about sex?

Well, she is. Samantha says as much in season two. She says, "For a sex columnist, you have a very limited view of sexuality." She is rigid in her definitions in part because she is so deeply insecure. If her boyfriend is bisexual, there are now twice as many people he can leave her for. This same plot creeps up in an episode of Ally McBeal. The late 90s and early 00s view of bisexuality was hugely biphobic. There's no way it can't be dated now.

I think it's a fair criticism of her, honestly, but I don't have a problem with it the way others might.

her being 30-something and terrorizing a 20-something (natasha)?

Natasha is 27 years old. Her brain is fully developed. She's an adult. Lets not infantilize her. When we talk about age difference between characters and the power dynamic that is involved, I don't think it's always relevant. In the case of a 40-something man like Big marrying a 20-something girl like Natasha? That's more relevant. Marriage is a different dynamic with different power imbalances that can occur. In the case of Carrie and Natasha, I don't think their ages are relevant. They're both adults and there isn't that much of an age gap between them (between seven and eight years).

Carrie did not terrorize Natasha. She talked shit about her behind her back and had an affair with her husband. These are cruel things to do to anyone, of course, but they do not rise to the level of terrorizing someone. Her attempt to apologize was idiotic and misguided and not really about Natasha at all, but that's the only time she went out of her way to seek her out, very much against her will. Did she treat Natasha like crap? Yes. Are we, the audience, supposed to think that's a good thing? Absolutely not.

Carrie is our protagonist, but we're not supposed to endorse everything she does. I get why people have problems with Carrie. And having problems with Carrie is, really, nothing new, so I'm never surprised, or offended, when it happens.

[skateboardtotheheart]

in every fandom, I see a lot of posts that are always like "if you don't like this character you're wrong" or "you just don't understand them" and seeing those kinds of posts just makes me so frustrated???

most recently I've seen a lot of those posts about the cat king from dead boy detectives (just because it's my latest hyperfixation), and frankly, yeah, I don't really understand. and I will read your entire long post explaining why he's got all these little nuances or subtle tones or genuineness that I missed and I can grow a little more understanding about him. but hey- when I'm done reading your post? unfortunately I still do not like him. I can appreciate him and what he brings to the show, but I just don't like him. it's not because I think he's creepy or gets in the way of a ship or anything most people automatically assume - he's just not my vibe. he simply doesn't fit in the scope of characters I enjoy.

and why is that wrong?? why do I need to be lectured at because of that?? when did fandoms get to a point that people aren't allowed to have differing opinions on a character or dislike a character just because? yes, a lot of the time it is, but it doesn't always need to be deeper than that.

YOU relate to that character on a deeper level, YOU understand their intrinsic motivations, or at least what you perceive them to be, and YOU love that character. fantastic!! I'm happy for you!! enjoying media in a way where you can do that is how it is meant to be!! but in absolutely no universe will everyone ever have the exact same interpretations of a character or piece of media. we all see different aspects of people and relate to things/characters differently. I've been on both sides of things! sometimes my favorite character in a show is someone that everyone else hates or doesn't care for, but I'm okay with that! if they disagree with me, then they disagree with me. I've done the deep dives into why I think the character acts the way they do and taken time to devote myself to better understanding them.

but some people just don't do that. you can be a fan of something without doing that with a character. hell, you can be a fan of something by only ever consuming the source material at its surface level and NEVER going deeper if you do not want to do so. it's allowed.

maybe while you're interpreting a character to have a deeper trauma that results in them acting the way they do, they're reminding someone else of trauma they went through and that character makes them feel bad. maybe you see someone trying to help, but someone else sees it as manipulation. maybe you see someone cold and bitter while someone else sees the kindest person with years of walls built up around them. maybe what someone else interprets as funny, you have never laughed at.

((if we're keeping with the dbd example, think about when the Night Nurse watched Charles' death. what she saw was the quick and utter devotion that Charles developed for Edwin and how deeply he cares for him; she's seeing that Charles will truly not give up in getting Edwin back from hell. what Charles saw was the pure kindness Edwin had done for him even after all those decades in the worst place imaginable; he's seeing who Edwin is on a deeper level. neither interpretations of the memory are incorrect. but after watching the exact same thing, they are thinking in two entirely different directions))

so why does everything seem to start off with "you're wrong" and "I'm sad for you because you just don't get it"? we should be HAPPY that there are people out there who take different approaches and have different interpretations. that is how media is meant to be consumed. and I'm not saying that you shouldn't make your long posts explaining why you love a character- by all means do that!! you understand something that others don't and that should be put out in the world!! but if you're going to do that you also need to understand that there are a lot of people who you WILL persuade, and there are a lot of people who you will NOT. don't be upset about that and certainly do not put down or lecture anyone who doesn't agree with you. it's OKAY. it is not the end of the world just because someone doesn't like a character you like.

everyone interprets media differently. and that's amazing.

[poisonousquinzel]

Listen, I'd have less of an issue with Elseworlds concepts for Harley in live action if we'd EVER gotten an accurate showing of her origin story, the manipulation that runs throughout every second of every session they had together and the sheer and graphic brutality of the abuse she's endured at his hands, but we haven't.

And I doubt we're going to.

Regardless if you want to face it or not, the live action films reach a much larger audience than the animated shows or movies or comics. They're popular, but these live action films have a chance to bring in a Huge outside audience and that's apparent with Harley's surge in popularity after Suicide Squad.

And right now, every version of her origin that's been shown in live action is either a watered down little montage with heavy censoring that can (and Did) leave audiences with a horrifically skewed perspective on the actuality of their relationship, or is reported to be a completely changed and altered dynamic where she's not even a fucking psychiatrist at Arkham, she's a fellow patient.

Like, an important aspect of Harley's origin and the entirely of her character as a domestic abuse survivor is that it's showing that no matter who you are, no matter how much you think "I wouldn't fall for that, I'm smarter than that", or believe that you'd easily pick up the red flags, or that you're trained to see these things so it couldn't happen to you-

That's just not always true. You can still fall victim to these types of people.

Anyone can fall victim to an abusive, manipulative mastermind.

"You little fool. The Joker doesn't love anything except himself.

Wake Up, Harleen.

He had you pegged for a hired help the second you walked into Arkham."

"That's not... No... No!

He told me things, secret things he never told anyone!"

"Was it his line about the abusive father? Or the one about the runaway mom? He's gained a lot of sympathy with that one."

"Stop It! You're making me confused!"

"What was it he told that one parole officer? Oh yes, "there was only one time I ever saw dad really happy, he took me to the ice show when I was 7."

"Circus... He said it was the circus."

"He's got a million of them, Harley."

/ also I think it's important to point out based on Batman's "You and the Joker?" reaction that, despite her relationship with Joker being near the 7 year mark in this episode, he did not Know this "thing" with them was anything more than the standard henchmen/henchwoman type relationship most rogues have with their goons.

And the minute he does, he tries to get through to her. He tries to get through to Harleen. And then in the end, when he's almost got it, she's almost convinced and seeing the truth, he calls her Harley. He calls her by the name she's going by now, not the woman he believes to be trapped inside, but the one in front of him who's crying while her world is crumbling before her eyes.

It does not matter how trained you are, or how prepared you believe yourself to be, it can happen to Anyone. And it's No One's fault except the abuser for the actions the abuser takes.

But you can be the smartest person in the room and still be abused.

However, now, instead, we've got yet another film that's going to completely miss the mark and make a mockery of her journey. And instead of it being a first Live Action appearance for her and many others and whatnot like Suicide Squad was, this film is different.

This is a sequel to a film that's already got a fan base full of apologists for him. A fan base full of incels who have taken him on as their icon, as their role model, and we all fucking know it.

However they portray her character in this is going to stick with people and a lot of those folks are going to happily believe and treat this as if it's the true reality for her origin. No matter what other medias say, this is the accurate one. This is the one that's finally just allowing them to be together and not toxic. This is the one that's "not butchering his character so she can be the victim", he just gets to be his goofy little self and isn't changed so her story can exist.

And the only other live action movie that these people will or have watched that's got her character is Suicide Squad, as it's apparent so many of them clearly do not care about the 3 decades worth of evidence showing their actual relationship.

Cause facing the fact that that crusty ass disgusting man Is, and Has Been, a domestic abuser would make their constant woobification of him all the more difficult.

And why would they do that when they could just keep pretending he's not the fucking problem.

[saltygilmores]

THOUGHTS WHILE WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS: SEASON 3, EPISODE 2: HAUNTED LEG (PART 2)

Both Emily and Lorelai are planning to attend Rory's "Swearing In" for her Vice Presidency at Chilton So, this is a very similar scenario to the one that happened 4 episodes back in "Lorelai's Graduation Day". Yes ma'am, it's another "Lorelai is unhappy about having to be at a place where her mother will also be but Rory wants them both there" situation. Yeehaw.

Shhh. Nobody tell her.

This is such a great line, and I don't fancy myself much of a Quote Lover, but I love this one so much I want to make it a magnet and stick it on my fridge next to my "Why did you drop out of Yale" magnet.

Nothing of great consequence or interest happens at the ceremony. Rory and Paris give mediocre speeches. Things between Lor and Emily are still chilly. Emily wants to meet Lorelai for lunch at Luke’s the next day. I see Francie up on stage and remember, tis the season for an incredibly boring storyline involving mean-girl nonsense and school politics 🥱 Francie is the Jason of S3.

I plan to forward past a lot of that sillyness and save myself some time.

Rory tells Paris after the first student body meeting that she wasted everyone’s time and nothing was accomplished and nobody ate the doughnuts that were provided. Paris is incredibly turned on and asks Rory if she wants to get married.

Just more Jess erasure... Alright, alright! This was Sookie's directive (supposedly) and it was said in jest. And here I was about to cancel Lorelai again for banning Jess from her stupid inn filled with mice. I've canceled her more times than an unwanted subscription to Dean Forrester Monthly magazine.

Not me going "what is this stupid obscure reference that nobody will understand", then googling it only to find out it's from The Godfather, the award winning book and movie series that half the population alive has seen but not me. I don't watch movies, okay?

Yes Ma'am!

I hate this stupid bullshit. Blew past the entire scene.

That's more like it.

Luke: Kirk came to me for advice about whether or not he had a shot with you. I told him you liked movies and junk food and talking incessantly but we both agreed that there's nothing like some good lovin to shut someone up." So then you agree, the only thing that would get Lorelai to shut up is to fuck her? Take your own advice already, Sir, and do it already. You're killing us here. Lorelai: Can you bring me a sharper fork? I'm not sure this one will go through your hand. Ah, I see that like me, Lorelai is also a connoisseur of making jokes about injuring people with forks. We're not that different, you and I.

What the hell else is there to do for fun in Stars Hollow?

More Crusty nonsense. Followed by student council nonsense.

Well if that isn't the Non Privacy And Feelings Respecter Pot calling the Non Privacy And Feelings Respecter Kettle black.

At least Santa Claus visits his Children once a year, which is more than Christopher does.

Not me and @frazzledsoul discussing just yesterday how often answering machines were used as a plot device on tv in the 90's and early 00's. AmyShermanPalladino in particular is obsessed with the humble answering machine. Because social media didn't exist yet and the male characters must have some way to harrass the women when they're apart. At least It's only Kirk this time so he probably meant well. Probably. He's kinda a perv. Lorelai: i hate my life. Maybe if we look into each other's eyes and say "I wish I were you" we could pull a Freaky Friday. (Imagining I'm me, Salty, and NOT Rory, Freaky Friday'ing with Lorelai): Let's see, let's see switching lives with Lorelai: The whole "fucking Luke" thing is good But then I'd also have to fuck Dean And I'd have to fuck Crusty.. Max? (eh?) Alex? (sure) Have Emily as my mother... Working at a dumb Inn... Idk if having sex with Luke is worth all that. Rory: "If we switched bodies, I'd have to date Kirk." If you switched bodies, Lorelai would have to date Dean. I don't hear her complaining about that.

The real star of Gilmore Girls.

Oh no. Not the LOR.

*smashes that bottle of wine over Crusty's head*

45? FORTY FIVE? He tripled the record held by the previous contender. Dean better step his harrasment game up if he wants to surpass that number. Crusty: "You don't get to dictate what to do! I called you (45 times) and you didn't respond so I did what I had to do. You can't shut me out, that's wrong! Your'e keeping Rory from me! Why hasn't she called me back?" EXCUSE ME? EXCUSE MEEEE??

Oh my, the whiplash of seeing Rory stand up for herself and get into Crusty's face, only to have her head to Doose's in a few moments where Jess will give her the peg-lowering of a lifetime and she'll limp away defeated with her tail between her legs. I'll put that in my next chapter. Things Googled While Watching Gilmore Girls: Clemenza, I Take A Nap Gif, Now Kiss Gif, Spelling Of Connoisseur Cutting Room Floor A joke about how Jess won't be invited to any more Bracebridge Dinners since he's vegetarian and he's banned from the inn.