#so they kept the characters who get depth like the protagonists and major antagonists white

[bmpmp3]

and by the way if i see one more story with themes of not fitting in with ten thousand white outcast main characters and then the only non white character in the entire plot is a black cop minor antagonist i am going. to intervene

[slimequeenofeverything]

#27: I am Lisa (2020)

There’s some appeal to this movie. It’s a pretty straightforward genre combo of werewolf + female revenge flick which makes for a solid concept but ultimately kinda disappoints. 

I find the femme-coded werewolf movies more interesting in general than the masc ones, and I like the movies with werewolf protagonists more than the ones with werewolf antagonists, but this is probably the worst werewolf lady protagonist of the bunch. She’s just so damn boring. Pre-werewolf, her only personality trait is “not like other girls”, and post-werewolf, her personality is “likes raw meat” and “revenge”. 

The coolest part of this movie is its unabashed ACAB message. Lisa’s quest for revenge begins when the corrupt and cartoonishly evil small-town sheriff assaults her and leaves her for dead in werewolf infested woods. From then on it’s a lot of fun watching her maul her way through the cops who wronged her. This was a nice breath of fresh air from the terrible politics of most werewolf movies, but like everything with this movie, it gets quite shallow on closer inspection. 

At great personal risk, I’m gonna get way too in depth about the politics of this movie, so sorry you’re coming with me on this one. Lisa is pretty heavily queer coded early on, which is awesome and got my hopes up for a lesbian werewolf protag. But then the evil sheriff’s evil daughter is revealed to be lesbain when she makes an aggressive pass at Lisa. Lisa turns her down in a “no homo” kinda way, and the evil lesbian flies off the handle and sics the cops on her. This probably isn’t that big a deal, but I’m just so tired of the evil repressed gay person trope at this point. 

Also this movie is aggressively white. There is one nonwhite person in this whole movie: one of the evil Lesbian’s followers who gets like 3 lines before Lisa murders her. When Lisa killed the black woman first before any of the people who actually assaulted her, my eyes rolled into the back of my skull. Watching Lisa chew through cops was fun, but watching her chew through the only black and queer characters was annoying. 

Now it’s probably unfair of me to be so harsh on the politics of this movie. After all, I like the message much more than the vast majority of the movies on this list, but that’s kinda the problem. This movie kept setting my expectations high, only to crush them moments later. Overall it left me pretty damn disappointed.

[ninasfireescape]

Jessica Jones season 3 review

Back when Jessica Jones started, more than three years ago, it was all I heard about on social media. It was up there in my top tv shows. There was something about it which set it far above other superhero content. We were not just presented with a big bad who was a crime lord but given what was a very real metaphor for the abuse faced by women. The show was an examination of rape culture and mental illness, all while keeping up the action typical of the genre, and kept me gripped from episode to episode. I watched at least one season of every other Marvel Netflix series and none of them quite compared. Though they could be enjoyable at times, their storylines were all over the place, they were too long so that you could easily zone out, and their villains felt laughable.

I really hated season 2 of Jessica Jones. I remember very little of it but the villain was introduced so late and the stakes did not feel high enough. So I had no idea what I should think of Jessica Jones season 3 and as a result, I kept my standards fairly low. Where did it lie in comparison to its predecessors? Somewhere between the two. On the level of most of the other series. Enjoyable enough but not something that you feel such a compulsion to continue watching. Something that you will have forgotten within a week of watching. However, I did have a lot of thoughts about it.

Firstly there is the feminist message of it. This came very naturally to the first season given the subject matter. The first season exposed something that was real for many women and that genuinely felt like a horror story. Trying to continue in the same vein was what really ruined the initial villain of this season for me. The bad guy, Sallinger, quickly became a straw misogynist, defending himself by ranting about how the only reason Jess was after him was because he was a white man and she’s must hate him. Sure, some men actually think like this but it took away much of his depth and felt like it was trying to bash in a feminist subtext that would have been there without him.

Now onto the conflict between Jess and Trish. I found Trish to actually be the most sympathetic character of the season which was ironic since I strongly disliked her last season. Meanwhile, I started to become irritated with Jess. She became patronizing and unnecessarily rude to everyone (her attitude towards her secretary was particularly mean) and it seemed like the writers were trying very hard to make her ‘’’edgy’’’. Jess clearly suffers from PTSD and is an alcoholic and I would have liked to see her receive help with this but it isn’t even suggested. This might have been a plotline in later seasons if it hadn’t been cancelled but I really wish it had been addressed more earlier on. Season 1 definitely focused on Jess’s mental health much more.

We saw the message that we have seen again and again in the superhero genre: if you kill bad people that makes you just as bad as them. At this point, we’re all tired of it. So when Trish killed some abusive men including the man who murdered her mother, I fully understood her actions. Yet she was treated as the real villain of the season. It felt hypocritical of marvel. Have we forgotten that Jess murdered Kilgrave in season 1? Have we forgotten the Punisher’s entire characterization involves him killing bad guys and he just gets called an antihero and gets his own tv show?

Jeri is a very difficult character to form an opinion on. I found her a very interesting character in season one. Though she was morally grey, for the most part, she was on the good side and we saw her with a woman she loved a lot. We have to remember she was the very first MCU LGBT character and is the most prominent out of those in their Netflix shows so it is rather suspicious that their she happens to be a very corrupt, self-serving figure. I became very angry with what they did with her in season 2 as she started to fall into the disgusting trope of the predatory lesbian. In season 1, she was very in love with her assistant who was likewise in love with her but in season 2, we hear she is being accused of sexual harassment by her, leading to Jeri saying something along the lines of “what did she expect, wearing a skirt that short, she was asking for it.” So we’re having the only major lesbian character use widely recognized rape culture phrases? Cool. And naturally, her storyline in season 2 became about her dying. Because what else can you do with a lesbian character? In season 3, I began to enjoy her storyline again but she still remained an incredibly horrible person. She manipulated her ex-girlfriend whom she hadn’t seen in 25 years and whom she had cheated on into breaking up with her husband and ultimately ruined her life. It was meant to be justified by the fact that Kith’s husband turned out to actually be bad but Jeri didn’t know that in the first place. Kith deserved far better than Jeri.

Jessica Jones has always had a problem in its treatment of characters of colour, particularly women of colour. I’ll admit I didn’t notice it so much during the first season because I was a lot younger and not as aware of the tropes as I am now. This season did not break that pattern. The women of colour are never major antagonists but they tend to be minor characters who cause inconveniences to our white protagonist and whom we are meant to disagree with. In season 2, we had the bossy Latina ex-wife of Jess’s love interest. In this season, we had the two policewomen trying to arrest Jess for a crime they believe she committed, a Latina woman who called the police on Jess, a black TV presenter who disagreed with Jess and Malcolm’s girlfriend, Zaya, who despite being listed as a series regular had a very minor role. Of course, there were also the characters of Kith and of Gillian whom I have just discovered is played by a transgender actress which is a very big deal for Marvel. However, they still lacked a voice in the narrative.

I was upset with how mistreated Zaya was by the narrative. She was working for Jeri and Malcolm was keeping secrets from her so of course she did not know for certain who was innocent and who was guilty and she was just doing her job, yet we were meant to see her as being in the wrong. Malcolm was the sweetest character in season 1 and possibly my favourite and he continued that way in season 2. My opinion of him during season 2 did start to go down when he went to a gay club for the purpose of blackmailing a closeted man and then got angry when said man hit on him. In season 3, he was lying to his girlfriend and cheating on her with a white woman which exemplifies the mistreatment of women of colour as love interests, especially love interests to men of the same race as them.

TLDR: Things I liked: Most of Trish’s storyline, Kith (although she should have had more of a role), cameo from Luke Cage!

Things I disliked: Dismissal of Jess’s mental illness, Jeri, Malcolm, Erik was a boring character

[sol1056]

the consequences of unexplored implications

One of the hardest things to do in writing (above and beyond all the regular hard things) is recognizing the unexplored implications. Some of these can be more obvious with some simple stats: how many characters are male vs female? how many white characters get speaking parts or are named, vs how many non-white? 

Others take a bit more thought, like realizing the only female characters are unnamed prostitutes, or the only Hispanic characters are janitors. Sometimes it means untangling a well-meaning attempt to subvert a racist trope (ie uncivilized/inferior primitives) that actually ended up unwittingly in a completely different but equally racist trope (ie the noble savage). 

And then there’s a really tricky one to realize, that at least in my experience needs a big-picture view of the entire story. Only then can you see how seemingly independent parts, when overlapped, result in unfortunate implications. 

It’s this last one that I’m starting to twig on, in VLD. And it comes from a combination of a particularly pernicious trope in American media, the canonical relationship between Keith and Shiro, and the purpose of repetition in stories.

the bury your gays trope

Basically, this trope shows up when a story establishes a happy queer relationship, and immediately decides one of the two must die. 

Often, especially in older works (to the extent that they are found in older works, of course), gay characters just aren't allowed happy endings. Even if they do end up having some kind of relationship, at least one half of the couple, often the one who was more aggressive in pursuing a relationship, thus "perverting" the other one, has to die at the end. ... Nowadays, when opinions on sexuality have shifted somewhat, this justification will often be attempted via Too Good for This Sinful Earth. Sometimes it's because the Magical Queer has died in a Heroic Sacrifice so that the straights may live. 

(Also, for some reason, it’s a particular favorite to have one-half of a lesbian couple killed by a stray bullet. Google it.)

Honestly, this trope is so pervasive, it’s damn hard watching popular media. You end up constantly braced for the inevitable death (sometimes followed by the surviving partner going totally evil, a la Willow in BtVS). Well, unless the relationship is toxic or controlling, and then the implication is that het relationships are the only healthy ones, but that’s a slightly different trope. 

In short: if you’re queer, happy endings are not for you. And if you do manage to get a happy ending (ie Bill in Dr Who), you had to suffer ten times as much as anyone else to get there. Compared to het relationships in the same story, it’s always the queer couples that suffer the most. One way or another.

canonical and word-of-god Shiro/Keith

Assumption: Keith and Shiro have an emotional bond much deeper than any couple we’ve seen on-screen. The very least one could say is that they have a deep relationship, albeit presumably platonic. (I should also note that I do consider ‘platonic’ love to be an equal to ‘romantic’ love; it’s just a different type of consummation.) 

Apart from that, there’s word-of-god: the EPs’ comments (ie “beloved mentor”), VA interviews, and various directors/artists posting sheith images with romantic vibes. Yes, that’s all non-canonical, but the message is: if you read this platonic as simply pre-romantic, well, the series’ creators are there with you. 

I will note, I don’t consider this as representation. In canon or it doesn’t count! (Looking at you, Rowling.) Still, word-of-god is clearly impacting the fandom’s interpretations of the relationship.  

using repetition in stories

The try/fail cycle and repetition have a core element in common: an event repeats until the character learns what they need to achieve victory/resolution. The difference is that in try/fail, the character should move up each time. In repetition, the character must re-experience a lesson they failed the first time.

To compare: 

try/fail: the antagonist has a black belt! get white belt, challenge antagonist, fail. okay, green belt! challenge antagonist, fail. next belt!

repetition: the antagonist has a black belt! test for white belt, fail. test for white belt again, fail. test for white belt again... 

When the overall plot’s try/fail is too similar, readers will see the protagonist as too stupid to quit (or change tactics). Repetition works best as a recurring motif: event A, parallel event B, character learns and changes, we have development, and this happens in support of, or alongside, the plot’s try/fail cycle.

Example: if Lance were to flirt with ten different girls and they all shot him down, that’s try/fail. His development is via repetition: it’s a repeating pattern with Allura, until he learns to take a different approach.

Here’s the important thing: like try/fail, repetition is a lesson to be learned. Most readers assume repetition means the previous instances were failures. If the character does the exact same thing and this time it goes beautifully, expect some side-eying from your more astute readers. 

But at the same time, if the character had no control over the outcome in previous instances, expect frustration instead. Readers will intuit the story is indulging in a kind of victim-blaming: the character had no power to ‘do it right’ before, yet the repetition implies that failure was their fault.

And that brings us to how these three parts, combined, make me see some seriously unfortunate implications in VLD.

all three together

So we have sort of this gray-area kinetic-platonic, potential-romantic, relationship. And twice now, one-half of that relationship has been, well, not killed, but sort of killed. Gone, vanished. The other half is left behind, grieving. It’s implied Keith fell apart the first time, and then we got to see it on-screen, the second time. 

It doesn’t actually matter whether S3/S4 Shiro is the ‘real’ one. If he’s not, then we have a third loss. If he is -- but compromised as a tool of the empire -- then it’s still a loss, if a psychological one. He’s there, it’s just not... him, anymore.

In other words, three times that a potential-queer relationship has been put through a Kill Your Gays maneuver that ended up being just a ploy. 

Done once, it could’ve been a subversion of the trope. Aha, the writers could say, we didn’t kill anyone, instead, we brought him back! Yes, one-half of the couple (and later, we find out, both halves) suffered during the separation, but since that’s mostly backstory, it’s all good, they’re happy now. Carry on, Jeeves.

Done twice, the writers not only re-triggered a possible KYG interpretation, they also tripped over the issue of repetition. Remember, the repetition is a lesson -- something must be learned, to prevent its recurrence. 

The problem is removing Shiro leaves Keith to experience the aftermath. By default, he takes the protagonist’s role, and according to the literary convention, he has to learn something to prevent a repeat. But in neither instance -- the Kerberos mission, or Shiro’s disappearance from Black -- does the story give any indication that Keith had a direct impact on the outcome. He did nothing to cause either, therefore there’s nothing he could feasibly do to fix either. 

That makes it especially infuriating that the third time around, one could conceivably say: gee, Keith kept looking, until he found this not-Shiro. If not-Shiro does any damage, that can be traced back to Keith. 

On its own, that could be an interesting dilemma. Taken in light of repetition, not so good. The unfortunate implication is he should’ve learned from the previous two times, and his failure to do so is the reason he ended up here.   

what’s the lesson, then?

Is it: stop caring for this person? Is it: loving someone that much means you have to suffer? Is it: you can’t just be happy? Is it: if you want to try for happiness, you have to earn the right to it? 

How is it that Lance can just flirt, make peace, and develop a deep friendship with Allura -- and neither are forced to undergo repeated trauma in the process? Or that Pidge has just one scene of implied loss, and it’s over and resolved in the same episode? Yet meanwhile Keith -- the only one with a same-sex relationship of significant depth -- has to lose, and lose, and lose? 

Maybe the writers figured: well, it’s not really death, it doesn’t count, let’s go ahead and yank that chain a second and third time. The story is blind to how their plot-twists aren’t all that better. It's still the same old bullshit: if you’re queer, you don’t get the happy ending. And if you do, it can’t be the simple meet-like-love of a het relationship. You’ve got to suffer for it.  

But the story they’ve written, and the choices they’ve made, tell me: these implications are not on their radar. Worse, I end up feeling like they don’t care enough to even put it on their radar.

That’s why it really bothers me when the EPs say they’re pushing for queer representation. Because if the writers can’t even see the implications of doing this to a deeply caring platonic relationship between two people of the same gender, like hell if I want to see what they’d do to an actual, onscreen, queer relationship. 

If you are rising up right now to insist ‘this is what the story demanded!’, I strongly recommend you go read this post: this is a jar full of major characters. Yes, that post is talking about black characters vs white, but it goes for any marginalized group, including lgbtqia.

Bottom line: no story demands anything. You’re the goddamn writer; you control the story. If you write shit, you’re a shitty writer. 

Think harder. Dig deeper. Do better.