#so to my good Star Trek people - please excuse this rant

[givemaycoffee]

So BTS got nominated for a Grammy. Guess it’s time to do my fan duties and actually listen to the new album 😅

Although I’m definitely in the camp of people who are disappointed that it was for Dynamite... 😑 The only song they’ve done fully in English and that they neither wrote nor produced (which - they do write and produce a lot of their own music). And when they had a platinum certified, record breaking album also come out this year.... but whatever.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

IOTA Reviews: Sole Crusher

Well... It's finally here... the episode introducing the new bee hero. And what do you know? It looks like I was right about how the new character would be portrayed.

It's kind of funny how I made predictions exaggerating what could happen, and they were surprisingly accurate. Isn't that funny?

Let's just get into the seventh (chronologically the seventh and the seventh episode in the season to air after “Mr. Pigeon 72”) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season: Sole Crusher. Damn, I hate that a pun this clever was used for the title.

We get to the point pretty quickly with the first scene being Zoe arriving in Paris and getting a tour of the city. She asks to stop at the Dupain-Cheng bakery, where she meets Marinette through some brief Unfunny Marinette Slapstick. The two quickly strike up a conversation.

I mean, it's not like Zoe is the sister of the absolute worst human being in existence, right?

Marinette compliments Zoe's shoes, and she points out that she designed them herself, and wrote every good thing anyone has ever said to her on them. But because she only has one friend, there's only a standard “I <3 U” on the left shoe.

So Zoe leaves the bakery and heads to Le Grand Paris where she meets her mother, Audrey. Unlike how she talked with Marinette, Zoe pretends to be just as snobby as Audrey in order to fit in. She then meets up with Chloe, who criticizes her for having poor person things like a phone without any diamonds embedded in it. And then she sees Zoe's shoes.

Look, that meme was already dated when it was referenced in Black Panther three years ago. Please don't try to reference memes in 2021, Miraculous Ladybug.

Chloe offers some golden heels while saying that those kind of shoes are for winners to wear and crush the losers underneath. This is the only episode to mention this kind of ideology, and believe me, it gets worse when Chloe decides to teach Zoe how to be like her.

Get used to this. This episode is all about demolishing any semblance of likability in Chloe's character. Now that Astruc doesn't have to bother with writing Chloe with decency since she's not Queen Bee, watch as he turns her into an absolute caricature of her former self.

Yes, Chloe has ordered her father to give her a lot of frivolous things in the past, but she has been shown to care about him, like immediately rushing to hug him after she was safe in “Origins” and showing concern for when he was akumatized into Malediktator while apologizing for causing it. For the love of God, one of the first things she did when she allied with Hawkmoth at the end of Season 3 was to have him unto her parents' akumatization. I guess she only cared about her rich parents for their status and not because she actually loved them right?

Next up on the list of Chloe's positive qualities to ruin is her friendship with Sabrina.

🎶It's seven o'clock in the morning🎶 🎶I can't believe they made this scene🎶 🎶With the writing Astruc's enforcing🎶 🎶It's like he's trying to piss off me🎶

Yep, Chloe doesn't view Sabrina in a twisted view of friendship anymore. Now she's a slave. I'm not exaggerating by the way, he actually said that in a tweet.

THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES

Okay, so I guess all those times we saw Chloe playing superheroes with Sabrina in “Antibug” and “Miraculer” were just a slave driver playing with their property. Actually apologizing to Sabrina for getting her akumatized in those episodes? Protecting her from the Scarlet Akumas in “Ladybug”? She was just interested in keeping her slave around. I think Astruc may have slept through the slavery unit in his history class. Yes, Sabrina was mostly used as a joke to show how controlling Chloe could be, but there were still semblances of an actual friendship between the two.

Chloe arrives at school and introduces Zoe as her half-sister, despite being the same age and having the same mother. Because I guess we can add basic biology to the list of things the writers don't understand. Now that we're at school, Chloe's friendship with Adrien is next up on the chopping block.

Yep, despite being Adrien's only friend and making a big deal about valuing his friendship to the point where she threw a big party just to make sure he wouldn't leave her and risked cooperating with an Akuma to save him, now Chloe just sees Adrien as a rich meal ticket. Two of the earliest episodes to show Chloe had a more compassionate side to her, and they just undid them. Even as much as I hated the episode, “Felix” showed Chloe was willing to cooperate with Marinette and her friends just to find a way to cheer Adrien up on the anniversary of his mother's not-death.

For the love of God, Astruc, 1984 was supposed to warn people about what could happen if they rewrote the past, not encourage people to rewrite the past. He probably finished Animal Farm thinking Snowball really did work alongside the humans, didn't he?

Marinette comes up and Zoe pretends to hate her, leading Marinette to wonder why she did that. She texts Zoe (she gave her number to her earlier) and invites her to a concert on the Liberty, but Chloe finds out. Zoe thinks fast and pretends it's just so she can torment her more. Chloe then takes out a book listing all the ways she can torture Marinette. I wonder if this is a metaphor for the writing process behind most of the episodes last season.

Zoe decides to go outside for some fresh air, and Andre comforts her. Funny how Andre bends over backwards to give Chloe whatever she wants, yet he's willing to actually talk to Zoe like an actual parent. Andre tries to cheer Zoe up, but she talks about her past where she had to put on an act so she would be liked, but (bet you've never heard this before) she just wants to be accepted for who she truly is. The surge of emotions is enough for Shadowmoth to akumatize her into Sole Crusher.

In addition to having one of the most clever puns for an Akuma name, I actually like Sole Crusher's design. Not only is it a good excuse to reuse Chloe's character design, it makes sense thematically, as Chloe was trying to mold Zoe into a copy of herself. The gold and diamonds also make sense given Chloe's love for shiny things. Her powers tie into the bizarre belief Chloe has about stepping on the winners. Whenever Sole Crusher kicks or steps on someone, she absorbs them and gets progressively bigger, making it easier to do so. While it's not cracking my top ten anytime soon, it's still an interesting character design.

Sole Crusher heads to the hotel to get Chloe, and she manages to get away pretty quickly. Maybe in an alternate universe, she's a track star? For some reason, she runs to the Dupain-Cheng bakery and then... Oh my God... pushes Marinette's parents so they get absorbed by Sole Crusher, before trying to do the same with Marinette.

When has Chloe ever done something like that? Whenever she endangered someone during an Akuma attack, it was unintentional or a result of her naivety. She was only trapped in Pixelator's dimension because Adrien tried diving to save her, she only alerted Rogercop to Ladybug's presence because she eagerly called out for her, and during “Zombizou” she only tried to throw Sabrina towards the horde of kissing zombies once, and that was meant to highlight her growth. The only person to actually do stuff like this consistently is Lila, but I guess she got vaporized by Big Brother offscreen.

This episode is determined to make the audience hate Chloe by retconning everything about her character while portraying her as a complete monster. As bad as Chloe could get, she was never selfish enough to use anyone as a human shield. This kind of behavior honestly could be explained by saying Chloe was lashing out as a result of losing the Bee Miraculous permanently, but the events of the Season 3 finale aren't mentioned ONCE, not even in the next episode that introduces Queen Bee's replacement! How the hell can you set up the next Bee hero without explaining why the original needs to be replaced in the first place?! And trust me, I'm going to talk about Zoe replacing Chloe later.

Sole Crusher grabs Marinette in her hand, so the Horse Kwami, Kaalki, uses her power to teleport over to Adrien's house and inform him Ladybug needs help, meaning once again Adrien did nothing in this episode before becoming Cat Noir.

At the Liberty, Chloe offers more victims to Sole Crusher in the form of the band Kitty Section (consisting of Luka, Juleka, Rose, Ivan, and Mylene) and theatens the giant golden supervillain she can send her back to Paris, even though she's really not in a position to bargain right now. And she STILL continues to insult her. Do you hate Chloe yet? Come on, do you? The writers won't stop until you do.

After we see Sole Crusher's conflicted emotions, Marinette is set free by Cat Noir and transforms into Ladybug, immediately summoning her Lucky Charm, a shoehorn. They only learn Zoe's sneakers were where she were akumatized thanks to Chloe's ranting, so the episode unintentionally made Chloe save the day. Ladybug breaks into Le Grand Paris and breaks the sneakers where Zoe hid them, using the shoehorn to open a door. So Sole Crusher is de-evilized, Ladybug fixes the damage, and gives yet another charm to Zoe.

Afterwards, Zoe goes to the Liberty, apologizes for the act she put on, all while divulging to the audience her “tragic backstory”.

Of course, everyone welcomes her with open arms.

And right here is where the biggest problem I have with Zoe as a character. I normally hesitate to use this term given how often it gets thrown around when criticizing characters these days, but I really can't say anything else.

Zoe... is a Mary Sue.

For those who don't know, the term Mary Sue originated in a Star Trek fanfiction from 1973 satirizing several self-insert stories at the time. Most of these stories showed a beautiful young woman joining the crew of the Enterprise and immediately gaining the attention of the crew. Mary Sue parodied this character archetype by showing how much she was appreciated by Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, the latter being driven to tears at her funeral despite his species being emotionless normally.

What does this have to do with Zoe? She has the exact same storyline as Mary Sue in the parody fanfiction. Her mere presence is enough to make Chloe act extremely out of character in an attempt to make her look better, and as soon as she apologizes while giving a frankly vague backstory, everyone just accepts her as their friend, and I mean everyone in the entire class. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't feel earned. Why was she bullied at her old school? What did her bullies have against her? What caused her to stop going along with her peers, and why did everyone turn against her? How the hell did the bullies who put cockroaches in another student's locker get no punishment while the victim was forced to transfer schools? It's an intentionally unclear backstory designed to make the audience feel sympathetic towards Zoe without actually doing anything else.

I want to ask anyone reading this who watched the episode a question: Outside of her backstory, what do we actually know about Zoe?

What is her personality like? She's nice? Socially awkward? We've never had a character like that in Miraculous Ladybug before! Sorry Marinette, Adrien, Juleka, Nathaniel, Mylene, and Marc, there's a new character with more personality than all of you combined!

What are her goals? She wants to be an actress? Great, but why? Even though there's no clear answer for why Marinette loves fashion, or why Alya loves journalism, or why Nino loves DJing, you can still see the passion in their lives when they do something related to their goals. Zoe only says she wants to be an actress, connecting it to her people pleaser backstory (and given how it ended, she must be a terrible actress), and in the next episode, she immediately gets the lead role in a student film.

When Mylene got the starring role in the movie in “Horrificator”, we at least got snippets of her acting skills in the same episode that established her desire to be an actress, which is also implied to be because she was inspired by her father in “The Mime”. She didn't just say she wanted to be an actress and got the leading role. She still had problems to overcome like her cowardice, which threw her own self-confidence into doubt. Here, Zoe just says she wants to be an actress, and is rewarded for no reason the very next episode.

Zoe basically exists only to be a foil to Chloe, and the writers had no idea what to do in terms of a personality, so they just dumped a bunch of extremely likable character traits onto her without thinking of how her character could come off. And like I said, she's a Mary Sue.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. I've seen a handful of posts on this very site calling Zoe a Mary Sue. In fact, I even asked another Tumblr user @anxresi​ to quote their take on Zoe being a Mary Sue, which I couldn't even top in terms of accuracy. They basically listed off five things that made Zoe a Mary Sue.

She has to have a ‘tragic backstory’ so all the other characters will fall in love with her. Usually within minutes, in the very first episode they’re introduced.

She has to have a supercute design so that the audience at home will fall in love with her. And if they don’t, they’re automatically dismissed as ‘haterz’ even if their objections are purely from a writing POV.

Her only flaw will be thinking too little of herself. “What, lil ol’ me as the Bee Miraculous holder? With my shyness, colorful shoes, chic beret and personalized pink strip in my hair? Gosh, who’d have thought it?”

The contrast to her half-sister will be a constant plot point, with Chloe always getting dumped on. “You see, kids? Bad things happen to bad people. But you see this super-sweet girl over here? She gets a free DAD. Instant FRIENDS. To star in her own MOVIE. The chance to be a SUPERHERO, even though she only arrived last week. Who cares if she has no depth, no personality and barely any reason for being in the show, apart from being a massive ‘Up Yours’ to all the Chloe fans out there?”

What about character development, Mr Generic Zag Guy? “Development? What’s that?! Zoe is already perfect as she is. The only ‘development’ she’ll receive is having her hair done in the first episode she’s introduced. Besides, That‘d’ word is banned here at Zag studios. Why do you think we abandoned Chloe’s stillborn arc so quickly? This is a KIDS show, why bother trying to create a complex character with more than one dimension?”

This is essentially who Zoe is. She's perfect, has no character flaws, has a cute design so the audience will love her already, and was designed only to replace Chloe as Queen Bee. That's all she is.

So the episode ends with Zoe feeling happy at all the new friends she made while we get one of the most blatant attempts of symbolism in the ending card I've ever seen.

See, look. While Marinette is happily talking with Zoe with the image of Ladybug next to them, Chloe is to the far left with an EVIL purple aura, showing how bad she is compared to how great Zoe is. Only a braindead moron would actually like Chloe over the super awesome and pretty Zoe!

I'll give my final thoughts on the episode in the next part where I analyze this plotline as a whole.

LINK TO “QUEEN BANANA” REVIEW

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 13: Star Trek Beyond

Some attempted thoughts on Star Trek Beyond.

So first it was bad lol. It is the worst. I thought maybe it would be less the worst than I had previously thought but it really, really is just irredeemably bad.

Trying to keep up with what was actually happening and talk in the group chat was too difficult and I now feel very exhausted lol. And I’m not even sure what I watched.

I liked Jaylah a lot, including her back story, characterization, “house,” traps, and cool mirror tricks.

I also like Kirk in that emergency uniform with the jacket unzipped.

That’s it! That’s all I liked.

In the past I’ve also said I liked the Spock and Bones parts but I honestly wasn’t a fan of them either this time around!

None of the characters felt IC and none of the relationships felt true or were compelling. Which is particularly egregious given that the alleged theme was strength in unity.

The movie was especially lacking in K/S content or even K & S interaction, which obviously didn’t please me. And it’s definitely the worst Kirk characterization I’ve ever seen. There’s no excuse for that either because it’s halfway through the 5YM, which means he should be pretty close to TOS Kirk--yes, he has a different set of experiences, so there’s going to be some variation, but there’s comparatively less excuse for a radically different characterization than in STXI and STID. They should have had Shatner read the script and make notes lol because whatever else you might say about him he KNOWS Captain Kirk.

Like, he (Kirk) lacked humor and charm and, often, confidence. He had moments when he was very smart and moments when he had a commanding presence. But he had just as many moments when he was whiny or bored and his Captain’s log??? I deserve financial compensation for every time I’ve listened to that. Bored of space?? No, this man is bored when he’s stuck on Earth. He stagnates in desk jobs. He is an adventurer and explorer before he’s ANYTHING else; if you don’t get that, you don’t need to be writing Star Trek.

Also, as I have frequently complained, I’m tired of him having no internal conflict or emotional complexity past his father issues. First reboot movie: dealing with his dead father’s memory and his step-father’s abuse. Fine, that makes sense for how they set up the AU. Second reboot movie: entirely motivated by the need for Manly Vengeance upon the person who killed his father figure. And for this redundant story line (in many sense) we had to lose Pike? Third reboot movie: you’d think he’d finally be ready to move on to other conflicts but actually no this time he’s sad about his birthday and having a longer life span than his...you guessed it!! father!! Yet again.

What else has ever motivated him? Legitimate question.

The destruction of the Enterprise was truly horrific. Long, boring, unwarranted, and without any emotional punch. As if it were just any ship! No, she’s a character in her own right and she’s not to be sacrificed like that but please tell me again how Simon Pegg is a true fan who brought the franchise back to its roots?

B said he did like that they split up the crew into unusual units but I have mixed feelings about it. I don’t entirely disagree, but I don’t think they did a lot that was interesting with any of those separated units. Uhura and Sulu are a cool pair (but this would have been a good opportunity to include Sulu’s semi-canonical crush on Uhura but whatever... a different rant) and they almost did some interesting stuff with them. There were glimmers of a caper in that story line and times when I could tell they were straining especially hard to make Uhura, their Sole Female Main--now that they cut out Rand, Chapel, and even Carol Marcus--into something Feminist and Interesting. But it didn’t quite gel for me. Like, Uhura would be having almost interesting dialogue with the villain and holding her own...and then she loses track of her colleague and has to watch that person die, thus undercutting everything she just said about unity and seeming to prove the villain’s point. Is she competent or not?

Bones and Spock are a pair I care about and like but again I think their canonical relationship in TOS is more interesting than STB showed. I personally read them as like...reluctant best friends who originally just had one person in common, and then realized they also like each other too, but they’ll never really say it. They understand each other but pretend not to. They have fun with the barbs they throw at each other. They both deeply love Jim but in different ways. They enjoy their intellectual debates. (That’s one thing that was definitely missing from them here! The intellectual debates!) So again, there was something there but not enough.

And Kirk and Chekov just happened to land near each other; nothing was done with that relationship per se. They really aren’t people who have much of a relationship in TOS so there’s not a lot to work off of but then on the other hand there IS an opportunity to create something new. Maybe I’m being too harsh and too vague but it just didn’t gel for me. The only specific K and C moment I remember was that supremely un-funny joke about Kirk’s aim as he sets off the “wery large bomb.”

But like there are possibilities.. they’re both pretty horny and Chekov is a whiz kid and Kirk is also very smart and has always been smart... Like in other words people Chekov’s age don’t end up on the bridge crew, in either ‘verse, without the Captain’s say, so even though he’s TOS!Spock’s and AOS!Scotty’s protege, Kirk is important to his life. Something with that maybe??

I’m upset that Spock’s individual story line was about whether or not he should go off and make baby Vulcans because, again as I have complained many times before, that was a conflict he faced and resolved in ten minutes two movies ago, and it doesn’t make sense to me for him to bring it up again now just because the Ambassador is dead. Like... the Ambassador told him to stay in Starfleet!! “Ah, yes, I will honor him by doing precisely the opposite of what he wanted me to do.”

Also--if they had made his motivation different or gone into it more, I would have been more into it. Make it about New Vulcan! Say there’s news from New Vulcan that it’s not doing well. Or what if T’Pring got in contact with him? Or what if we used this as an excuse to bring in Sarek?

This is part of a larger point for me which is that STXI set up a really cool AU and STID tried to do something with it--a little hit or miss, but it tried--and instead of pushing even more at the AU and developing it more and doing more with it... STB just ignored it! Was that part of what Paramount was warning about with making it “not too Star Trek-y?” Was it SUPPOSED to be a movie you could watch without having seen the last two? If so they did succeed but like.. .why? They made the supremely ballsy move of blowing up a founding Federation planet two movies ago and now they’ve just forgotten about that and all the reverberations that would necessarily have?

But of course we got a call back to Kirk being a Beastie Boys fan so.... Guess it was Deep all along.

We all three agreed that the core story of this film was potentially interesting but could have been done as a 50-some minute episode of a TV series rather than a whole-ass 2 hour movie. First off, cutting or cutting down the action sequences would have shaved off half an hour easily.

I’m frustrated in large part because there are certain things that are interesting here. I do like the concept of the crew being pulled on to an alien planet by a ship of former Federation crew, from the early days of the Federation/deep space flight, who were presumed missing but are somehow still alive because they have turned into aliens/used alien tech to prolong life, and who have also captured other aliens, like Jaylah, for the main crew to interact with. All of that was cool.

I would even be okay with these old Federation crew being villains but I don’t think that’s necessary or even the most interesting take.

But...first of all, as my mom pointed out, Krall was basically Nero in his illogical motivations: feeling aggrieved because someone who couldn’t help him didn’t help him and then just maniacally wanting revenge. It made more sense to me with Nero in a way. Maybe that was because he was better characterized, maybe it was because his anger was more personal (the loss of his wife), maybe--probably--it was because he was angry at Spock and Spock had actually promised to help, so there was some kernel of logic in his sense of betrayal, even if it was out of proportion etc. Also, Nero’s mania was portrayed as mania--we were all supposed to recognize that the strength of his emotion was warranted but his logic was deeply flawed. I think we were supposed to think Krall had some kinda... real criticism of the Federation, but in fact he doesn’t! He’s wrong! So like if he’d been angry with the Federation for abandoning him but the narrative and the other characters explicitly recognize that he’s wrong--the Federation tried but he was just doing something very dangerous and he recognized that danger on signing on--that might have been more palatable to me.

I’m not sure I’m making sense here entirely or explaining myself as well as I could.

I just don’t entirely get Krall’s beef with the Federation. I don’t get that whole “being a soldier and having conflict makes you strong and having people you can rely on and connections and community makes you weak.” That seems pretty obviously false. It also doesn’t really seem, not that I’m an expert, but particularly in line with military ethos either.

BUT the idea that he had a life that was comfortable to him as a soldier and then the Federation comes in and forms Starfleet and says, actually, we’re going to pull back on the soldiering and up the diplomacy and the exploration and the science--yeah, I could see that. I DO think Starfleet is military but even if you must insist it’s not, it’s clearly based on and formed from the military, and it has certain military functions. So obviously the first people to join or be folded into Starfleet probably were more explicitly military.

So he’s one of those people. Now he’s supposed to be a scientist and a diplomat and an explorer and he doesn’t like that. He’s given this very prestigious and interesting mission and jumps at it. Starfleet warns him, you might go beyond where we can reach, we might not be able to help you. That’s fine. But then when his ship is stranded and he is lost, he gets angry--maybe somewhat irrationally, but understandably--why?? Why did the Federation do this to him? What was even the point? When he put himself in danger before, at least he knew why. But just flying around space for the hell of it, and this is the cost? So that’s what creates his anger.

I thin this could be tied into Kirk’s diplomacy at the beginning--if the scene were written to not be a comedy bit where Kirk looks like an incompetent buffoon and is completely disrespectful the whole time. He’s good at this job and we should say it. But we could emphasize that this IS a diplomatic mission often, just as often as it’s a military or scientific mission. Maybe we could include other bits of their missions, too, to play up the variety of things they do and roles they play.

Another thing I think could be interesting, going back to my point about Spock, Vulcan, and using the first two movies and expanding on the world building... what if Spock wanted to leave Starfleet for better, more well-defined reasons, and we used that? Paralleled the two? Connected the two?

Because I think Vulcan in the AOS verse is very interesting and the movies didn’t do nearly enough with it. First, we have the Romulans showing up way earlier, at least visibly: in TOS, no one knew what they looked like or their connection to Vulcans until Spock is in his late 30s. In AOS, it happens not long after he’s born. So he’s growing up probably with more anti-Vulcan racism floating around the Federation. THEN Vulcan is destroyed. Now it has nothing and it needs to rely on the rest of the Federation, which must be both humbling and frustrating to many Vulcans, on top of the extreme tragedy of losing everything. Most of their population, a lot of their history, their manufacturing, their scientific facilities, their resources, their animals, literally whatever else you can think of that a planet has--all gone. Now all of the survivors have lived some period on an alien planet, by definition, and they’re probably very dependent on the Federation not just to set up the new colony, but to replace all of the resources--natural and Vulcan-made--that they lost. And they’re a founding Federation member, Earth’s first contact. They’re especially important. And now they’re weak, and reliant on others.

So maybe Spock, early on, hears from New Vulcan and they’re not doing well. Maybe we hear from Sarek or T’Pring (...I’d just like to see reboot T’Pring). Maybe it’s not about, or just about, having children, but about being from an important and ancient family, and being seen as a hero for his part in the Narada mission, that makes him want to go and help rebuild their government (taking his mother’s place perhaps? she was on the High Council) or their scientific facilities, or the VSA, or their space travel capabilities--you know Vulcan had space ships of their own, outside of Federation ships. This would be the perfect place to showcase that tension between wanting to be independent--out of pride, out of fear, even--and needing help, because Vulcan could not survive without the Federation, probably less than 10 years out from the original planet’s destruction.

And then you feed it back into Krall.

So I could see like... well the tension, and then Krall comes in, and he's angry that the Federation "abandoned" him, but we actually explicitly address this. Maybe Spock gets to interact with him and say "I get it. You had a life and a mission and a purpose that was comfortable for you. Then the Federation came in and changed everything. A lot of my people are also feeling upset for similar reasons. But here's why actually you're wrong."

So anyway as you can see I’m smarter and more interesting than Simon Pegg.

I also hated, speaking of writers of this movie, the gay Sulu thing and HEAR ME OUT on this. It’s homophobic. His husband doesn’t have a name? Might not be his husband at all? Looks like he could be his nanny or his brother? As B said “at least grab his butt or something.” That was the most sanitized, no-homo depiction of a gay person I’ve ever seen. He’s gay (see, progressives and queers! gay! you like that right!) but DON’T WORRY STRAIGHTS--he’s in a monogamous relationship and has a child, he’ll show nothing but the most platonic physical affection with his male significant other, and the plot point will be so minuscule you’ll need a microscope to detect it. Also, we’ll throw in a no homo joke about two male characters not wanting to hug and we’ll make sure Kirk and Spock interact as little as possible, because we know they give off Big Queer Vibes every time they’re together.

Yes the last point is a little unfair but can you blame me for being angry about all the “look how hip to the times we are” back-patting that went on in 2016 when canonical bisexual Kirk is RIGHT THERE and we could have had ex-boyfriend Gary Mitchell instead of Unnamed Nanny??

Also Sulu is a hella random choice because again, like... he may not have had an s.o. in TOS but nor was there any indication he was gay. So it seems a LITTLE like they picked him because (1) his original actor is gay and gay people can’t play straight people duh so probably Sulu was Gay All Along I mean did you not get vibes???; and/or (2) asexual Asian stereotypes preclude giving Sulu any kind of love interest, male or female, that is actually... sexual, outright romantic, anything.

Anyway I can’t remember if I had any other thoughts, but I’ve said quite enough I think.

I miss Kirk so much... real Kirk... even my version of AOS Kirk who is probably not even characterized that well but at least I worked with love!!!

[sierraraeck]

Why Dads Suck

Spencer x OC Aundreya

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

(This is my gif so please give credit if used)

Summary: Partially inspired by 4x7 Memoriam. When Aundreya goes with Spencer to talk to his father, she snaps. Story six.

Category: Some angst, some fluff.

Warnings: Cussing. Talk of past abuse.

Word Count: 6.2k

“Listen to me, you worthless piece of shit.”

That was a sentence that I weighted very seriously. I cussed casually in conversation and way too much in my internal dialogue, sometimes I said it just to get people’s attention or stress the situation, but I rarely said it in a meaningful, hurtful, way. But in that situation, I was aiming to be way more than just hurtful.

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Over the past 14 months, I allowed myself to care. I don’t know what got into me, but it happened. I actually started to care for the people that I worked with. I always faked that to their faces because I wasn’t a complete cold-hearted bitch, and I’m not saying that I never cared about them, I’m just saying that now I care-cared about them. Like, it was no longer ‘hey I’m glad you’re not dead’, but instead was like ‘hey I’m genuinely concerned for your mental and emotional well-being’.

And it terrified me.

When I first hit the streets, I was determined to keep a hold on my humanity. Soon that proved too difficult and my new mission was to look at everyone like a chess piece; some more useful than others but all disposable in the end if they could benefit the long-term survival of the king. That mission continued in prison and became my new everyday mindset, one that followed me into the FBI. So when I realized that that mindset, the entire foundation of my existence and survival for the past 11 years, was dissolving, and there was nothing I could do about it (I’d tried but it was a futile effort and I knew it), I was terrified. And I felt like I was falling apart.

In BAU profiler terms, that would be considered my stressor. What followed would be considered my trigger.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

Spencer was going to visit his dad.

He and I had grown very close over the course of those 14 months, and I would’ve considered him the closest person to me (with the exception of my mom and sister) ever. He even overpowered Deen and Sydney in my mind. But I guess those two were more of a ‘loyalty-to-the-end-as-a-means-of-survival’ type thing, instead of just simply ‘friends’.

I told him the most out of anyone on the team, and overall just felt like he wouldn’t judge me, which was a complete 180 considering how we started. I just felt like he understood me in a way that I hadn’t experienced, like he understood the roots of who I was, not just who I was in relation to what I’d done.

We even had a couple agreements.

The first was that I was going to make him more ‘culturally-adequate’ while he was going to make me more ‘educationally-adequate’. That took form in a book swap. I would provide him with all of my favorite and popular books (seriously, who doesn’t know the Cullens), and he would provide me with all of the profiling, math, history, engineering, psychology, sociology, chemistry, and philosophy books he’d read, along with any other fascinating topics he’d found in paperback form. We would either swap on the jet, or he’d come over to my apartment to read. We’d tried doing it at his apartment once, but I didn’t bring enough books, so it was just easier for him to be near my library. It also occasionally took form in a tv/movie swap. I would force him to watch some of my favorite shows or movies from my childhood like ‘Supernatural’ and ‘The Hunger Games’ among others, and he forced me to watch ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Star Trek’. This we always did at his place, as to not get bored of my place. It also worked out well because I wasn’t really allowed to go out much, and he just didn’t want to go out much.

The second was ‘jet talk’. Whenever Reid got going on one of his rants, and the information wasn’t dire to the situation or necessary for understanding, I would just interrupt him and say ‘jet talk’. It was my way of letting him know that he was rambling and needed to get to the point, but that he could tell me all of that extra information on the jet. I’d become his new info outlet that he got to share all of those mind-boggling stats with, without being judged or feeling like he was on a time crunch. I had to smile the other day when he started going down that path and he stopped himself saying, “... it was an ancient ritual started by the Mayans in 500 AD, I’ll skip over all the jet talk, but the main purpose was …” It left me feeling gooey for the rest of the day.

So yeah, we’d grown pretty close, and I would say that I was becoming very protective of him, especially when it came to personal threats he’d already overcome and shouldn’t have to deal with again.

Like his father.

Which was why I was completely against the idea when Spencer suggested it.

“I have to talk to him, I have to know what happened,” he pleaded.

“I understand that, but why does it have to be like this? Why does it have to be you?” I countered. I’d suggested that he stay with either myself, Rossi, or Morgan, while the other two went to talk to that asshat for him.

“I know this case better than any of you. I have to be there.” I looked over to Morgan and Rossi for help, but they were staying completely indifferent, not willing to challenge or support either side. Spencer’s eyes were begging me to agree with him.

I sighed. I hadn’t realized our volume had risen until I brought my voice back down, trying to return to a calming tone. “I know. I just really don’t like the idea of you having to be around him. That’s all.”

He nodded. “I know. I don’t like it either, but it’s the best shot we have.”

I looked back over at Morgan and Rossi, and they both gave me a knowing look. I nodded.

“Okay. Let’s go,” I said.

“Wait, all of us?” Derek paused, his attention on Reid. He hesitated.

“If you don’t want all of us there, we understand that,” Rossi offered.

“No, I want you there,” Spencer said, still a bit hesitant.

“Are you sure? Because if you don’t want any of us there,” he looked over at me, “or you don’t think it’d be a good idea to have one or more of us there, that’s fine.”

What the hell was he looking at me for? I was offended, “Rossi, is there something you’re not telling me that I should know about?”

“It’s just that you being there could be …” he trailed off. I wasn’t sure how to fill in that blank, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. What was I doing wrong this time?

“No,” Reid said more confidently. “I want you all there.”

“Okay, kid. Lead the way,” Derek said. My mouth was still open, reeling from the shock followed by the suspense.

Rossi and I shared the back seat of the car on our way over to William Reid’s office, leaving an awkward silence looming over the vehicle.

“Look, I’m sorry. I only meant that-”

“It’s okay, Rossi, seriously. I don’t think I want to know anyway,” I said, which was a lie. I did want to know, I just didn’t want to have that conversation in the back of a car on our way to meet Spencer’s dad, stressing him, and selfishly myself, out even more.

Reid had been confident about his decision to talk to his father all the way up until we entered the building. His whole demeanor changed and he seemed frozen in time.

“Can I help you?” the lady sitting behind the front desk offered.

“Yeah …” Reid said. We all looked at him expectantly, but it was like the words were caught in his throat, like he couldn’t get enough oxygen to continue.

“We’d like to speak with William Reid,” Rossi helped.

“Is he expecting you?”

“I don’t think so.” Rossi held out his badge.

“He’s in a meeting right now, why don’t you have a seat and I’ll tell him you’re here,” she said, turning back to her desk.

“You okay?” Morgan asked.

“Yeah,” Reid answered, his breathing labored. “No, um, yeah. I’m, I’m gonna go to the bathroom.” He took off, speed walking away from us.

“I’ve never seen him like this before,” Derek commented. Neither had I. He’d told me bits and pieces about his family life, but that was a topic we both decided to veer away from. In all other stressful or emotionally taxing situations, he was able to keep his composure. Do the job, be objective. He even kept it together when his mom had to get involved with a case of ours. The only time I’d seen him get even a little rattled was when a case had quite a bit in common with his childhood surrounding schizophrenia right after he got some troubling news about his mother’s health, but all the other ones having to do with absent fathers creating killers didn’t get to him. Granted, those were a dime a dozen.

This, however, was a whole new beast.

“... more of a personal matter,” Rossi was saying to a man near the front desk. I must have zoned out.

“It concerns your son,” Morgan said.

“M-my son? Did something happen,” the man said. So that ugly bastard is his father?

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Reid said, entering the lobby again. His stood more straight, trying to make himself look as tall as possible, and I could tell it was taking all of his effort to appear professional. I saw his back muscles start twitching.

They stared at each other for a few moments, sizing each other up, before Spencer said, “Hello, dad.”

William cleared his throat, “Follow me.” He led us back to his office, Rossi and Morgan sandwiching Reid between them, while I straggled behind, shutting his office door.

“You don’t look like me anymore. You used to, everybody said so,” William started. It was a lame excuse for a connecting point.

“They say some people look like their dogs, too,” Spencer quipped with an eyebrow raise. “It’s attributed to prolonged mutual exposure. Elderly couples also, they unconsciously mimic the expressions of people they’ve been around their whole life, so it kinda … kinda makes sense that I wouldn’t really look like you, I haven’t seen you in 20 years.” Whenever he got anxious, all of his sentences ran together in one long stream of consciousness.

“Are you here on business?” William changed the subject.

“Just wrapping up a case,” Rossi dryly answered.

“A five year old boy was abducted and murdered,” Morgan chimed in.

“Oh, yeah I read about that, Ethan Hayes, right? That’s terrible,” William responded.

“That case got me thinking about Riley Jenkins,” Reid said, and William turned away. “You remember Riley Jenkins?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve been having dreams about him for a really long time, but when we came back here for this case it jogged something and the dream changed. I saw his killer. It was you.”

“Interesting dream.”

“You don’t seem all that surprised,” Morgan questioned.

“I stopped being surprised by Spencer’s mind a long time ago,” William responded.

“There are certain criteria we consider when looking at this type of suspect. You fit parts of that profile,” Rossi said. He was looking at William like he wanted to choke him out right there. I could empathize.

“Me?”

“We just want your cooperation,” Rossi continued.

“My coop-” William started. He looked around at our faces and realized that we were all dead serious. “You’re not actually saying you think I killed Riley Jenkins.”

Reid gave a slight shake of his head. “We didn’t say that.”

“Good, ‘cause that’s absurd,” William stated. That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t just stand there, staring at his face knowing what he did to Spencer and not say anything.

“Is it?” I asked. William looked over at me like he was acknowledging my presence for the first time. “You were able to do something as absurd as abandon your own son, who knows what else you’re capable of.”

Rossi gave me a warning look, but Spencer didn’t even falter, his burning gaze set on William.

“Excuse me?” William asked.

“You heard me,” I simply stated.

“You know, I don’t think I caught your name when I first let you all into my office,” he said, a slight threat resting on his undertone.

“Chambers.”

“And how do you know my son, Chambers,” William asked.

“Your son? You’re getting quite possessive considering you’ve only just now met him for the first time as an adult,” I said. I kept my voice a low growl, trying to keep my head on my shoulders.

“What can I say? I’m concerned about his selection of company.” I scoffed. I was starting to realize why Rossi didn’t think it was a good idea having me around. I quickly scanned myself and remembered that I wasn’t exactly dressed like ‘FBI’ today. I’d already worn all of my official-looking outfits and was left with a more casual one, which I figured was fine because we weren’t ‘officially’ on the job. I was wearing a simple, low cut, white t-shirt under a leather jacket, with black pants and combat boots. My hair was in a ponytail, so from where he was sitting, he could probably spot my four visible tattoos.

“You don’t have a say in my selection of company. You gave that up a long time ago,” Spencer jumped in.

“Well, whatever your friend Chambers is implying-”

“Agent. She’s Agent Chambers,” Reid said. I refrained from smirking.

“Regardless of what Agent Chambers is implying I did, I did not kill Riley Jenkins.”

“We’d just like permission to look through your computer, access your records,” Morgan said, trying to regain control and focus over the situation.

“Yeah and, what would you be looking for exactly?” William challenged. He turned and looked pointedly at Spencer. “You want access to my files? Get a warrant.”

Spencer stared him down, but turned to leave. We headed toward his office door when he decided to add one last thing. “I’m proud of you, you know that? You’ve done a lot of good, choosing to help people. I mean, other people with your talents might have sought out different opportunities, a private sector. My god, you could have made a fortune.” He sighed and the message seemed forced. He sounded condescending, disappointed even, that his son wasn’t making millions.

That’s when I snapped.

“No. You know what, actually, no,” I mumbled to myself, shaking my head and turning around to walk back towards William. I couldn’t even stop myself before I punched him square in the jaw. It caught him so much by surprise that he toppled out of his chair and onto the ground. I placed a foot on his throat, careful not to put too much pressure on it, and squatted down so that I could see the fear in his eyes. “You listen to me, you worthless piece of shit.” I knew that one of the three behind me was calling my name, probably to stop, but I was too hyped up on adrenaline to pay attention. I was committed now. I removed my foot and grabbed a wad of cloth at the base of his neck and yanked him up to standing.

“You’re proud of him? You don’t get to be proud of him. You did nothing to help him get to where he is now. The only thing you did was provide him with the feeling of abandonment and anger, which luckily he was strong enough to use as fuel to become the amazing man standing in front of you, instead of letting it rip him apart. He’s way more than your small mind could ever comprehend, and he is worth way more than the bullshit fortune you wish he was making.”

“He’s also worth more than spending time with a slut like you,” he spat at me. I switched my grip to wrap around his throat, and swiftly shoved him up against the wall.

“You’re right. I have been a shitty person for pretty much my entire life. The only redeeming quality I have, is that I know Doctor Spencer Reid, and for whatever reason, he has allowed me to continually be a part of his life. To be there for him. Which is more than I can say for you. A child, especially a son, needs a good male role model, otherwise they grow up with the feeling that they can’t trust anyone, especially men. They have problems keeping healthy relationships because they can’t trust their partner, or worse, they can’t trust themselves not to end up just like their mom or dad. You were mentally healthy enough to raise him, a luxury that some people don’t have, but instead you were too weak. You left him with a mentally handicapped parent that couldn’t take care of herself, let alone a child. You didn’t even bother checking in on them. What if she’d died? What if their house burnt down? What if something happened and he was left all alone? He would have ended up in foster care or on the streets, and could have easily turned out like one of the monster’s he now hunts.” My face was hot, and I quickly swiped at the dampness on my cheeks. Get it together. My voice lowered to a murmur as the next words rolled off my tongue. It felt like it was the first time I had fully comprehended them myself, “He could have easily turned out like me.”

I swallowed, coming up for air, but I wasn’t done yet. “Is that what you would have wanted? Would you have wanted him coming in here, not to respectfully ask you for your side of the story, not even to just arrest you like he definitely could have, but to come in here looking to kill you? Is that what you wanted! Did you even think about that?”

“No,” was all he could manage to get out. He was choking on his words, so I loosened my grip. But only a little.

“No to what? No you didn’t want that or no you didn’t think about that?”

“Both! I wouldn’t have wanted that for him. And I didn’t think about it that way,” he struggled.

“Exactly. But that’s what you should have been thinking about. You should have been thinking about your child, not yourself.” I released his neck with force, shoving him away from me and further into the wall. I stepped back, giving him room to slouch in on himself. “The least you could do is answer a few simple questions for him. You owe him at least that much.”

With that, I turned around, my brain not even fully capable of processing my co-worker’s reactions, and walked out the door. I kept walking at a feverish pace until I reached the bathroom. The moment I closed the door behind me, I broke down into a sobbing mess.

What is wrong with you? You need to get your shit together! This isn’t even about you, but as always, you had to go and make it about yourself. You are supposed to be there for Spencer, not the other way around. He’s the one having to face his absent father and relive his traumatic childhood, not you. Pull yourself together!

I forced myself to deep breathe.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. In, out. In, out.

I walked over to the sink, careful to avoid the mirror, and splashed my face with water. Once I felt I was sufficiently washed clean of my meltdown, I looked up into my own eyes.

What is happening to you?

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts and refocus on the situation at hand. I grabbed a paper towel and blotted at my face. I took one more quick glance at the mirror, making sure I didn’t look like a complete wreck, and exited the bathroom.

This is about Spencer. Get over yourself. Be there for Spencer.

I walked back out into the main lobby to see that Derek and Rossi were waiting for me.

“Where’s Spencer?” I asked, trying to ignore their worried faces and the urge to just curl up and evaporate into thin air.

“He’s still in there talking to William. They asked us to wait out here,” Morgan answered.

I nodded. “Talking about Riley Jenkins?”

“I’d assume so. You were pretty … convincing,” Rossi commented. I nodded again, not knowing what to say. I stood there with my arms crossed in a self hug, digging into my sides harder than usual trying to control myself and my breathing. I looked down at my feet.

Please don’t ask, please don’t ask, please don’t … wait no. It doesn't matter if they ask because this isn’t about you. This is about Spencer and you all need to be clear headed and focused on him and what he needs.

About 20 minutes later, Spencer emerged looking as pissed as he was before, but now he also looked confused.

“What did he say?” I was quick to ask before the focus could be shifted. Not like I was expecting it to be.

“Not much, just that the three of us should talk about it together,” he answered, voice strained.

“The three of you? Who’s number three?” Morgan asked.

“My mother.”

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

So I was in an awkward spot. I just blew up the meeting between Spencer and his dad, but I also kind of helped get him talking? I couldn’t tell what he was thinking about it. He seemed irritated and up-tight but those were also feelings he had because of his father and the whole situation, so I didn’t know what to do regarding him going to talk to his mother.

Do I come with, to continue to support him? Do I hang back because I don’t want to cause any more problems? If I hang back and he actually does want me there, then I’m being unsupportive. If I go and he doesn’t want me there, then I’m being pushy.

I tried so hard to look for a hint as to what I should do and it never came. I was forced to breach the topic and ask, “Spencer, what would you like me to do?”

He stopped next to the car and faced me. “What do you mean?”

“I just don’t know … I don’t know if you want me to come with or ..?” I trailed off.

“Oh. Um,” he seemed caught off guard by my question. “My mother is a very difficult person to talk to, and this is a sensitive subject so …”

“You’d rather have me stay here?” I completed. There was no malice in my voice, just concern for him. He wasn’t responding, so I assured him, “Don’t worry if that’s the case. I understand.”

He nodded.

“Why don’t I stay here with Aundreya, which will help lessen the stress on your mother, and you can take Morgan with you to go talk to her?” Rossi offered. Oh no. I knew what that meant. Derek and Spencer nodded at his words, and got into the car together. Rossi gestured for me to join him as he started walking back toward the hotel that was only a few blocks from the office.

I quickly caught up to him and he put his arm out, side-eyeing me and giving me that signature Rossi smirk. For real? I sarcastically let out a sigh and rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help returning the small, closed-lip smile. I looped my arm in his, and we continued to walk. In an alternate universe, he was walking me down the aisle.

We walked in silence for a block before he finally came out with it. “So, would you care to inform me what that little episode was about?”

“I don’t like disrespectful people.”

“Neither do I. That doesn’t mean I’m going to hit every one of them in the face.”

“Well, you tend to have more manners then I do.”

“True. But I also didn’t feel personally connected to that situation.”

“What are you talking about, we are both protective of Reid.”

“We are, but we both know that’s not what I’m referencing,” he said. He stopped walking and turned to face me, taking my hands in his. “Talk to me, Aundreya.”

His eyes were soft but piercing, and his wise-guy aura was getting to my head.

I nodded, squeezed his hands, then dropped them so I could loop my arm back in his. We continued walking as I spoke. “Do you remember what I told you about my family situation about a year ago?”

“You mean when we went to dinner? Yes. You told me that your parents got divorced when you were six, you started living with your mother full time when you were nine, and haven’t had contact with your father since you were ten.” I was surprised that he cared enough to remember all of that.

“Yeah. During those three years that I was splitting time between my parents, my sister and I had to deal with my abusive father. It was mostly verbal abuse and mental and emotional manipulation. Honestly, I’ve dumped most of the memories from that time period,” I said. He glanced over at me, silently inviting me to continue, so I did. “Just the feeling I got every time he showed up to a game of mine when I didn’t want him there, or I ran into him for any other purpose, was the worst mix of feelings I’ve ever experienced. It was terror and discomfort and panic and hatred. I felt physically sick every time and it was like my brain stopped working. Even though I don’t really remember everything that happened to me, that he did to me, I just have this overwhelming feeling of disgust. I guess that Spencer’s dad demeaning him like that, and his situation being kind of similar to mine, just set me off.”

Rossi nodded and his features told me he was deep in thought. He was probably still trying to process everything I’d told him. “You felt the need to fight back.”

“Yes.”

“Can I make an assumption here?” He looked concerned. I just shrugged and nodded. “I think that while you were going through that, your big sister protected you, and you were her support system to fall back on, to keep her grounded. You’ve since become quite the fighter, and somewhere in there,” he gestured to my head, “you regret not fighting back harder when you had the chance. You regret not helping your sister out, and you now feel the need to help Spencer out and fight back like you think you should have with your own father.”

It was stunning to me that he could dissect my thoughts better than I could. Everything he said struck a nerve and made complete sense. I’d been trying to figure myself out for over ten years, and he’d figured me out in under ten seconds. It’s astonishing how that works.

“Damn Rossi. You’re so good at this stuff,” I said, and he offered a gentle laugh. “Seriously. You just described a thought process that I’ve had for ages that I didn’t even know I’ve had for ages until you just now told me about it.”

“Hey, it’s much much easier examining what’s going on with someone else than it is to have to self diagnose. There’s a reason they say that doctors are the worst patients,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“Am I your patient now?” I asked, returning the eyebrow raise.

“Would you like to be?”

“If you’re going to enlighten me like that all the time, hell yeah.”

He smiled. “Alright then. That’ll cost you $17.99 up front and an additional $5.99 each month after.”

“Oh, well in that case, just kidding. It isn’t that important to me,” I laughed.

“Well, if you can convince Reid to drink half as much coffee, it’ll be included in the budget.” I laughed again. It felt good after a weird and taxing day.

“Well then I’m definitely screwed!” Oh right. Speaking of, “How do you think it’s going?”

“I’m not sure. I hope for the kid’s sake that it’s going well.”

“Me too.” We entered the hotel, and decided we’d wait in the lobby playing cards until they came back.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

They didn’t get back until 11 that night, during which time they’d talked to Diana, arrested William, released him, found out that Gary Michaels was dead but was the killer, arrested Lou Jenkins for the murder of Gary Michaels, and finally got the whole story out of Diana and William.

“And you didn’t call us?” I accused, grogginess in my voice. Rossi and I had since fallen asleep in the lobby chairs, but only for less than an hour. That was a lot to go through for just the two of them in the back half of the day.

“We had it covered,” Derek answered. I couldn’t help feeling guilty, like it was my fault they didn’t call because they thought I was too unstable.

“So what now?” I asked, trying to brush the feeling off.

“Nothing. We let the local police handle it and we head back tomorrow,” Derek replied. Rossi and I nodded.

“We should all get some sleep,” Rossi commented, surveying our faces.

He had a point, so we headed up to our respective rooms and I just about crashed the moment I entered mine. My stomach growled and I remembered that I’d skipped lunch and Rossi and I forgot to get dinner. Our nerves must have been too amplified to be overpowered by hunger. It didn’t matter now because Reid got his answers, triggering relief to course through my veins and I was much too tired to care about food. I was on the brink of sleep when I heard a gentle knock on the door.

I grudgingly got up and looked out the peep-hole. It was Spencer.

“Hey,” I said with a bit more energy, opening the door.

“Hey,” he said. He stood there in silence giving me an expectant look.

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Come in.” The lack of sleep and sustenance was starting to show. I moved to the side so that he could slip by me. He sauntered toward the bed in the middle of the room and sat down. I followed suit. I waited patiently for him to speak, because I knew whatever caused him to come to my room at 11:30 after a stressful day was important, and he had to say it in his own time.

“Thank you.” His voice was a small whisper and I felt like I hadn’t heard him right. What does he possibly have to thank me for?

“For what?” I murmured.

“For staying with me through this. For trying to protect me and standing up for me. For respecting my space. And for letting me come into your room late at night to tell you this.”

“Of course. I’d do anything for you,” I said. It had come out so casually that I almost missed it. Spencer looked up at me with utter shock, which zapped me right back into reality. Oh shit. Had that really just tumbled out of my mouth?

I panicked and tried to quickly cover it up. “Like I’m happy to be here for you and you are welcome to come bug me at any time, day or night. I’m probably not doing anything interesting and I’m probably not getting much sleep either.” Although I could really use some right now if it would help me shut the hell up and stop spouting stupid shit.

Spencer’s mouth was still hanging slightly ajar from the shock of my initial comment. When he realized that I was just going to sit there staring at him until he did something, he shut his mouth and looked away from me again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

“You weren’t just talking to my dad in that office, were you?”

I sighed and met his warm brown eyes. I swear those things change color on the daily. Sometimes they’re a perfect hazel, sometimes they’re a light caramel brown, sometimes they’re a dark chocolatey brown, and sometimes, when the light hits right, they look as gold as the soul behind them.

“No,” I admitted, “I was talking to both of them.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Do you wanna hear about it?” I countered. He nodded shyly. “You know how I told you that my parents got divorced and I lived with both of my parents equally for three years and then my mom got full custody?”

“Yes.”

“Well, those three year were hell. I can’t remember everything that happened to me because I must’ve dumped most of it. I told Rossi that I didn’t remember anything at all, but that was a lie. The really big incidents, I remember. Like I remember him shoving me up against a brick wall giving me whiplash for the next two weeks. I remember him cussing out my mother in the rec center, him screaming at us in the car, especially after going to see the therapist, and leaving my sister on the side of the road because she pushed too many of his buttons. I remember him pushing me down on the bed and forcing my legs open so he could look at the rash between them, even though I begged him to just let my sister help me with it,” I choked. I hadn’t told anyone this. I hadn’t really talked about it with my mom and sister much when they were alive. “I remember having panic attacks and being constantly terrified that he was going to kill my mom or sister. And I just remember this intense feeling of complete hopelessness and dread whenever I was around him or his family. They were suffocating.”

He looked at me, eyes glistening, and he let a heavy teardrop fall. I slowly brought my hand to his face, asking silent permission, and when I got no resistance, placed it softly on his cheek. My fingers barely brushed his jaw as my thumb lightly wiped away the tear. I breathed, “Don’t cry. Don’t cry for me. It was a long time ago, and I am who I am today because of it.”

He put his own hand atop mine, engulfing it, subconsciously applying a bit more pressure which I was happy to comply with.

“It’s just … It’s just that no one should have to go through that. Even if it was a long time ago.” He closed his eyes, leaning into my hand.

“I know. Neither one of us deserved what we got, but we survived and came out the other side. That’s what matters now.” I placed my other hand on his cheek, and tilted his head slightly up towards mine. “How are you doing?”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head. “No. I just want you to know that without you, I couldn’t have solved this or gotten the answers I needed. I appreciate your strength to face my father like that.”

“And I admire yours to do the same.” He leaned out of my touch, leaving me feeling cold and got up to leave. I didn’t even know what I was saying before I blurted, “Wait.”

He turned.

“Do you want to stay?” I was too tired to fight the words, too tired to even be surprised by them.

“I’d like that,” he responded. I smiled and he returned it. I didn’t want him to be alone with his thoughts and nightmares, and I selfishly didn’t want to be alone with mine either. He slipped off his shoes and I kicked off mine and he came to lay down next to me. Neither of us cared about the clothes we were still wearing and definitely wrinkling from the long day. I took big spoon, knowing he needed me more than I needed him at the moment, even if he wasn't ready to talk about what he’d just experienced over the last 24 hours yet.

I was just about to pass out, arms hooked on my own elbows around him when he whispered, “I never explained this to you, but I think deep down the reason I was so resistant to you at the beginning was because I knew you and I were only a choice or two away from living the other person’s life.”

“Spencer,” I murmured, “you don’t owe me an explanation.”

“I want you to have one, though.”

“Thanks. I’m just glad that the one or two choices after that led to our paths crossing.”

“Yeah. Me too.” That was all he could get out before both of us slipped under, able to finally relax in each other’s arms, finding reprieve from the relentless struggles of the waking world.

[dgcatanisiri]

So while I was looking over some of the fallout from that thread with Patrick Weekes on said message board, something occurred to me.

One of the things I tend to be critical of is the way that the BioWare writers seemed so... pleased with Dorian’s story, when it basically comes across as an after school special from the 90s about how homophobia is bad, reducing the gay person and their feelings on the situation to a prop in order to develop the straight person(s) in the room.

And I stopped to think... Gaider and Weekes, the writers I’ve seen most outspoken about the importance of that story... They are at least a decade older than I am, just entering my thirties. Their experiences as queer men, when they came of age, when they were growing up... were actually very different from mine.

My first genuine exposure to same-sex relationships is hard to pin down. There were some things that completely flew past me as a small child. I can look at things that I saw or read as a child and say ‘wow, that’s actually legitimately gay.’ Not even something as iconic like the kiss between Jadzia and Lenara in Star Trek Deep Space Nine but things like references to gay people in Animorphs, or some characters in the Trek novels who were novel exclusive and able to be said to be in same-sex relationships, all of this prior to my discovery of actual fanfic and the slash communities by around... oh, I think freshman year of high school or so, so 14/15. I just had these things kinda wash over me because it wasn’t until then that I really GOT the concept of homosexuality. 

That puts us in the early 2000s. That’s when I call the start of my “coming of age” period. And for someone older than that, older than I was, old enough to be writing for games produced in that time frame (which, as Gaider was a writer for KOTOR, yeah, that’s a thing)... That coming of age period was coming into an entirely different atmosphere.

Because the AIDS epidemic would have still been fresh for that generation. Like, I was... “lucky’s” an awkward word for the situation, but, for my introduction to AIDS, at least beyond the goofy portrayals from the “so you’re going through puberty, don’t have sex” videos from like fifth/sixth grade, was in my junior high Health teacher, taught by a very down to earth and (particularly for Kansas) open-minded woman (and, side note, she was SO MUCH BETTER at this than the course I had in high school that was a unit as part of PE class... Just needed to stop and have a teacher appreciation moment here). Additionally, I have a memory dislodging of hearing that one of the teachers at my school had specifically contributed to the AIDS Quilt. So the lessons we learned about AIDS were genuine, were inclusive, were kind. 

And, looking back on it now, I can see how easily it would be for a teacher without that determination to NOT vilify people as victims of “god’s wrath” could have changed that. And that was the perspective that would have been imprinted on anyone who grew up in the days of the worst of the AIDS epidemic.

When I write stories that deal with coming of age narratives, I write to the version of me in high school, just out of high school, who needed to hear that he was okay, that he wasn’t broken for feeling how he did. For me, that story involves “being gay” as a part of who he is, but not EVERYTHING that he is. His existence as a queer person isn’t revolutionary, it’s him being more than that while still being queer.

But if you grew up in a time and environment that told you that you couldn’t be queer AT ALL, that you had to hide this fact away in the tightest closet in the deepest darkest parts of yourself... It is revolutionary to just exist. To openly, bluntly, proudly affirm your queerness. In the fact that Patrick Weekes has just recently stated openly an identification as non-binary, it’s a process that people from that time are STILL working through.

For me, it’s a facet. For that older group, it’s a revolutionary statement. To that older group, who are speaking to THEIR younger selves, they’re giving that message that they needed. And to those of us who don’t need it, who need a new and different one, we’re the ones who are privileged to be able to stand in the light and declare ourselves to the world and not have those wasted years, living lies.

And I say that not as a value statement but as a simple statement of fact. It’s a generation gap issue, and the queer community, as a whole, doesn’t have the tools to try and bridge it, since we LOST that generation, so we’re experiencing it now for what is, in effect, the first time. 

Now. This isn’t me EXCUSING things. Like I’ve said, repeatedly, at length, I still genuinely need different stories, and I am not alone in that. That’s why there’s this group of us who do complain about Dorian, how he failed us. That yeah, they may be speaking to their younger selves in the name of trying to offer that life preserver to those who need it... But they’re telling those like me, those who need something different that, because we’re treading water, we don’t need the preserver like others do.

This is a generational issue. Yeah, there’s the kid who needs that story. But, speaking as the person who that story serves more as an anchor than a life preserver (can I beat this metaphor into the ground any more?), what I get out of stories like Dorian’s isn’t “you deserve to live openly.” It’s “you’re not free of homophobia, even in your fantasy.”

Like, here’s bits of a rant for another day, this was, in retrospect, a great deal of my problem with a character like Kurt Hummel from Glee - that character, yes, was unapologetically gay, but also presented in this fashion that framed him as “properly gay.” That if you weren’t like this, you weren’t REALLY gay. To me now, to me during the height of Glee mania, that message just infuriates me. But had I gotten that message from my media back in high school, when I was trying to come to terms with this part of myself that I had no idea how to handle, not having role models, that would have pushed me FURTHER INTO the closet.

And I mean it when I say that I don’t want to give the impression that this was the intended message with characters like Kurt, like Dorian. But where for this older generation of queer people, the message they want to send is “you deserve to live proudly and openly as who you are,” the message I get instead is “this is what being gay is all about.” In Kurt’s case, it was “fashion, glamour, being one of the girls!” In Dorian’s case, it’s “your family hates you, and dropping your lover for the country that hates you as well.” (Because I have ISSUES with Dorian’s unilateral decision to turn the relationship into a long distance one with no discussion). 

And, you know, hey, from a certain point of view (...okay, yeah, still hate that phrase), it is a good thing, speaks to an advancement in society. But... Writer intent is the smallest part of the messages received by the audience. These writers intend for their messages to be empowering to the audience. But I don’t hear their intended message, just the one that I end up getting. The one that DISempowers me. 

[hornyliverpudlianputz]

What are some TV shows that you highly recommend? (I love The Monkees, but they don't have to be similar to it) Thanks!

Hhhoooo boyyyyyy. Ok I’m going in completely blind here so I will take the shotgun approach. (Bless you anon, I love recommending things.) 

Classic comedies -

The Dick Van Dyke Show: an absolute comedy classic, and Rose Marie and Mary Tyler Moore are main characters! Is great! Can get a little sexist at times but honestly not as bad as it could have been. It’s in black and white and, as a product of the time, Van Dyke will frequently kiss his young son on the mouth in greeting. It is NOT sexual AT ALL but if that makes you uncomfortable, be warned.

I Love Lucy: duh. I mean do I even have to describe this one? Watch it, it’s great!

The Carol Burnett Show: another very funny lady. Their sketch parody of “Gone With The Wind” had me laughing so hard I was not physically producing sound any more.

Get Smart: a spy comedy from the 60s, The Monkees reference it a few times. Has some ridiculously funny catchphrases.

Hogan’s Heroes: set in a WWII POW camp in Germany, is basically a funny version of the howling commandos from Captain America. Again, sexist as a product of their time, but funny none the less. One of the first major sitcoms to have a main black character, and has a lot of behind-the-scenes epicness. Obviously, because of the setting, the main antagonists are Nazis, but I feel it’s important to point out that they are made to look incompetent at ever turn. (A lot of the main/reoccurring cast are either Jewish or come from Jewish families, and the actor who plays LeBeau is actually a Holocaust survivor. Trust me when I say the Nazis never win.)

MASH: you probably see me post about this a lot here besides The Monkees, I love this show. It’s very long, 11 seasons, and transforms over the course of it’s run from a slapstick comedy to a short drama with witty jokes. It’s set in a mobile medical unit during the Korean War so it can get pretty bloody and does not shy away from gallows humor. Is sexist at the beginning but it gets better, same with period typical racism towards Asians. (The guy who plays BJ, a main character, was a guest on The Monkees and I LOST MY SHIT.)

Monty Python’s Flying Circus: a British sketch comedy show from the 70s. These are the same people who do “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Life of Brian” so they are very funny. Unfortunately a lot of it was political satire at the time so it has the tendency to go completely over our heads now, but still great. Other British sketch comedies I love include A Bit of Fry and Laurie with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie and Not The Nine O’Clock News that has Rowen Atkinson.

Classic dramas - 

Dragnet: I haven’t had a huge opportunity to watch a lot of this, but it’s an old police procedural that actually started as a radio drama. It’s a bit stiff, but it’s NOT as bad as Ben Casey so I’d give it a try.

Star Trek: classic 60s, you had to have seen this coming. Horrifically cheesy special effects, costumes, acting, and music, but man has it got heart. Please do also check out all of the other Star Treks.

Columbo: this is an epic police procedural that turns the typical formula on it’s head; the audience follows the murderer rather than the detective. Basically we watch the lead-up to the crime, usually the crime itself, and then we watch Detective Columbo come in and destroy the criminal piece by piece. It’s great and Peter Falk is a national treasure. Suffers from “black people don’t exists” 70s syndrome, but is basically about rich white people killing each other because they have too much time on their hands so like. Yeah.

More recent shows that are no longer running -

The West Wing: listen. This show is one of the only dramas to effectively work really good comedy writing into itself. It will also teach you about American politics and you won’t mind. I sat down to start this show thinking I would watch one episode to give it a try and then go to bed. I watched 3 in a row. Also Martin Sheen I mean come on.

Psych: very funny crime show about an adult child with daddy issues and his fiscally responsible best friend solving crimes by pretending to be psychic because the police wouldn’t believe he has hyperobservational skills. Has great character development and does not take itself seriously at all. Great show.

Leverage: do you like heists? Well this show does a heist an episode. Basically it’s a team of specialized criminals that work together to Robin Hood it up as they learn to love each other as family. What’s not to love.

Due South: again, I have had little opportunity to actually watch this, but it’s about a Canadian Mountie working with the Chicago PD. Hijinks ensue. Also apparently ghosts get involved later? Can’t wait.

Teen Wolf: ok so like. This is closer to brain candy than Really Great Writing but. The main cast is solid and it’s a fun supernatural drama. I did a rant post at one point about the super good background queer rep so you know. Also Dylan O’Brien.

Black Sails: a show combining fictional pirate characters from “Treasure Island” with real historical pirates while events that set up “Treasure Island” occur. It is extremely full on, expect nudity, violence, rape, flashbacks, and swearing. However it handles these issues well, and gets aggressively more queer as the show goes on. Also the ladies kick ass.

Scrubs: it didn’t age super well, and we don’t talk about the last season, but this is a very funny medical comedy that is sort of the inverse of The West Wing in terms of writing; this is a comedy that does dramatic writing really well. It’s in a hospital though so like, gross and sad things happen sometimes.

Shows that are currently airing -

Letterkenny: I post about this occasionally here, it’s a very funny Canadian comedy about a small rural town. The dialogue can be difficult to follow because it uses a lot of Canadian slang and is very quick fire, but it’s hilarious. Has the benefit of not only including Native characters, but actually casting Native actors in those roles. Has the most creative swearing I have ever witnessed and it is glorious to behold. Is getting progressively more queer. Also, while sexy fun times are talked about, thus far there is absolutely no PDA, not even kissing, on screen which, as an aroace, is nice.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine: a cop comedy. Racially and sexually diverse, is still holding up after 5 seasons. Has the distinction of not going down hill after acting on romantic tension between main characters. Brilliantly satirical writing and will call absolutely anyone out.

BoJack Horseman: extremely dark Netflix animated comedy. It covers a lot of intense subjects like depression, substance abuse, emotional abuse, and self-loathing, but it explores them in a really well-written way. Has the distinction of making one of the main characters (Todd) realize he is ace over the course of the series, and it is the best damn ace rep I have ever seen. Suffers from a fanbase of dudebros who try to use the main character to excuse their actions, but literally called itself out for this in the latest season. Epic.

Archer: an animated comedy about a spy organization that is made up of people who cannot work together because they are awful and selfish. Is hysterically funny but quite raunchy and hints at larger issues, like alcoholism and emotional abuse. But again, dark comedy.

That’s all I’ve got anon, and if anyone has recommendations for me hmu!

[tremolux]

Darkness Rising

Over the past two years, many of you have asked if I would ever write a followup to my original Lucas theory, Uber A: What’s in a Name?

Well my friends, the wait is over.

The end is near.

The darkness is upon us.

Darkside/Lightside

Grunwald: I've never considered the content of dreams to be important; it's the impressions they leave that affect me... In this case, the dream left me quite unsettled. The sense was strong enough that I felt compelled to come here.

Hanna: The sense of what?

Grunwald: A darkness, around you and Caleb.

Those of you who have already ventured down the rabbit hole of my original Lucas theory will remember a very literal interpretation of one of Mrs. Grunwald’s impressions that singled out Lucas as “the one Alison fears the most.”

My interpretation of that scene has not changed since it was written. Not only was Grunwald speaking in reference to Lucas back then, but she still is now.

In 7x08, Mrs. Grunwald returns to Rosewood with an ominous message about "a darkness" around Hanna and Caleb. Several factors make that statement particularly interesting. Not only are they standing in Lucas’ apartment when she says it, but the idea that “the darkness” lingers specifically around Hanna and Caleb as opposed to the others seems to point towards Lucas. After all, Hanna and Caleb seem to be Lucas' only friends in Rosewood, as far as we can tell. 

Aria: It’s no coincidence that he turned dark after the masquerade ball.

Spencer: Well, Jenna has that effect on people.

Aria: Yeah, but she’s been gone all summer, and he’s still ‘Boo Radley.’

Have a look at 3x01, the episode that Marlene King called "the return of Uber A" when it initially aired, and watch for when the liars observe Lucas in the cafeteria. Aria calls Lucas "dark," point blank, and then says that he's been that way since the masquerade ball, which is when he started hanging around with Jenna. The Boo Radley reference is also a play on words, foreshadowing Lucas’ suspiciously skulking about at Radley later in the third season. 

Lucas is "dark" + Hanna & Caleb his only friends = "darkness" around Hanna & Caleb 

Hanna lives in Lucas’ loft. Caleb is there all the time. Caleb is an investor in Lucas’ business. Hanna is doing business with Lucas.

Lucas is the "darkness," just as much as he is "the one Alison fears the most!"

The Grunwald strikes again! Just like in the previous theory, the profile fits Lucas like a custom tailored suit. 

Having studied Latin, I'm well aware that the name Lucas is rooted on the Latin word lux (lucis), meaning light. "Bringer of light" is the meaning typically attached to the name Lucas. What a perfect synchronicity for a character described as one who “turned dark!”

Interestingly enough, the "bringer of light” meaning is equally applicable to Lucifer, a fallen angel commonly associated with Satan. 

Stunningly, this recent message seems to allude to a fallen condition: 

Embrace your darkness, Em. I’ve had to. That’s how you win the game. A.D.

What’s fascinating is how A.D. seems to offer a glimpse of something personal here, as if speaking from experience as someone who “had to” embrace their own darkness. 

Why did they have to, I wonder? 

Perhaps in order to win a game in which A.D. was an actual participant. A player, as opposed to the conductor. 

Or maybe the oppressed, rather than the oppressor. Sound familiar? 

Lucas is someone who took a dark turn, just like Aria pointed out. Maybe he felt that going dark was the only way to win the game he had been dragged into, as in Mona’s original A-game. 

It’d be kind of a Batman move to do so, wouldn’t it? Kind of a Dark Knight feel to it? 

For Love of the Game

When Lucas returns to Rosewood (post time jump), he’s shady from the get go. He’s barely been in town five minutes before he bumps into Hanna, which comes across as planned. Heavy stalker vibes. He immediately makes it known that he’s extremely rich, as if he’s been patiently waiting for the moment to impress Hanna with the fact that he drives a Jaguar and owns houses all around the world.

Later on, Hanna asks him to be her alibi for the night that Charlotte was murdered, and Lucas has no qualms about lying to the police, even though he’s terrible at it (or purposely flubbing the story.) That’s shady enough as it is, but it’s not long after that when the first message arrives, stating “you know who did it and I’m going to make you talk.” 

Of course Lucas should have suspected their involvement from the moment Hanna approached him for a fake alibi. But he questioned nothing and carried on with a foolish looking white knight act. Of course, you have to consider that he’d really have no need to press Hanna for answers if he could do it more effectively (and anonymously) as Uber ‘A’. 

But by far the most important thing to take away from Lucas’ arrival is that he mentions he’s a highly successful game app developer. Not just software, but specifically games; which is exactly the skill set one would require to create such a monstrosity that combines aspects of a traditional board game with modern technology and real life consequences. The centerpiece is of course an iPhone running a custom designed app. 

It simply can’t get any more on target for clues that Lucas is Uber A. Considering this game has to be his greatest creation to date, his masterpiece, then the very execution of the game becomes a motive in itself. 

There was a brief time (before the messages were signed as ‘A.D.’) when they referred to the sender as “the techie.” Uber A’s work space has been shown full of stray PC boards, disk drives, wire, soldering gear, and electronic test equipment. Definitely “techie” stuff, but the only legit “techies” we know are Lucas and Caleb.  

There’s literally no wiggle room here, folks: it’s either Lucas behind this game, or some new techno-wiz character we haven’t been introduced to yet. It’s getting to the point where it’s impossible to deny that Lucas is involved. Caleb might have the technical skills, but he certainly lacks the specialized game design experience that Lucas has. 

Furthermore, the level of personal detail involved in this game means that the creator has to know everything about the players, the rules, how it’s all supposed to work together, and the game’s ultimate purpose. So there's no chance of pleading ignorance or passing the buck when the nerd finally gets caught. 

Revenge of the Nerd

Please excuse the brief rant, but this needs to be said:

Good luck to Marlene King if she thinks she can pass off this dude as Alison’s twin, or Spencer’s twin, or some other physically impossible, equally nonsensical garbage. It just doesn’t work in any way, shape, or form. And the devil’s advocate argument that “A has all kinds of helpers” gets tiresome and annoying, because it’s pointless and anticlimactic to have an uber villain who never actually gets their hands dirty. 

On the other hand, Lucas has about the right height and build, and the capacity for explosive anger. The sadism and latent misogyny inherent in the cattle prodding of Hanna comes across when this guy beats the pulp out of Ali. I would wager that once Lucas found out Alison covered up the death of her own husband, it enraged him. He saw the perfect opportunity to terrorize her, and he seized it. 

Lucas was low-key happy when he heard Alison was in the hospital after her fall, and I’m sure he’d be thrilled to send her back to the emergency room for a second visit. 

From the very beginning, A’s style and attitude has been an intentional mimicry and mockery of Alison DiLaurentis. Now we have ‘A.D.’ as a new incarnation of the same old patterns. Could it be that Uber A’s endgame strategy is the ultimate set up: to pit Alison’s friends completely against one another, turn them to the “dark side,” and then pin the blame for everything on Alison “A.D.” DiLaurentis? Is that not a brilliant method of destroying Alison once and for all?

“It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.” -Oscar Wilde

Back in high school, Lucas swore that one day Alison would one day “get what’s coming to her.” An old saying goes that living well is the best revenge, and Lucas certainly lives well, but there’s always the chance that maybe that’s not enough for him. As another saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. And seven years after high school is certainly a cold dish.

Never underestimate a patient nerd who harbors a long term grudge.

Uber ‘A’, Ubergeek

Since the time jump, the Lucas clues have been dropping so frequently that it's hard to even keep track of them all. Lots of people have noted how comic references like The Wrath of Kahn (Star Trek) and The DArkest Knight (DC Comics, Batman) could be a nod towards Lucas and Uber A’s ubergeek status. His bedroom during high school contained several Batman figurines on display. 

Most recently, Emily mentioned the exam that A.D. passed for her; a situation that serves as a reminder how Lucas was known for selling test answers in high school.

And then there are more subtle hints, like Jenna saying "we have an Uber waiting for us," which seems a cheeky double meaning of an Uber driver and Uber 'A', and recalls the season six prom when the Liars saw Lucas and Jenna together, and Spencer remarked that "she probably thinks he Uber'd her there."

That’s all cute, but the important point is: 

Nobody doubts that Jenna and Uber ‘A’ are connected. 

Everyone associated with Jenna turns out to be bad news. 

Lucas has been connected to Jenna since the masquerade ball, yet he's managed to dodge suspicion thus far. How? Why? Just because he seems nice and friendly? Because he let them use his apartment? It doesn’t matter how secure their phones are if they’re always hanging out in an apartment that’s wired with secret microphones and cameras. 

The fact that Lucas has consistently been involved in sketchy situations since the very first season, but somehow stayed off the radar, makes me confident that he’s not simply a red herring. 

Noel Kahn was the latest of Jenna’s long time co-conspirators to be exposed and brought down. And although the narrative hinted towards him being the one who tortured Hanna in the barn, he died before we could get proper resolution on that.

However, this leaves the door open for a hideous and shocking betrayal when the curtain is finally pulled back on Lucas, and reveals that he was the one who stripped Hanna down to her underwear, hosed her down with cold water, and sadistically tortured her with a cattle prod. 

Now that’s what I call dark.

The very idea that this superficially nice and friendly guy would do this to his friend, business partner, and long time crush will send shock waves throughout the fandom, and blow the minds of those who never saw it coming.

Lucas will be exposed as the one behind the masks, and the one behind the game. And then like a broken dam, the truth will come rushing forth, concerning everything he’s done since day one of playing the game with Mona. 

Lucas is the darkness.

Lucas is “the one Alison fears the most.”

Lucas is the genius behind the game.

Lucas is Uber ‘A’.

[ecotone99]

[HM, SP] No-Star Reviews

Joel struggled to find the right words.

He’d written so much so often lately that it had become difficult not to describe his thoughts but to piece together sentences that differentiated them from one another.

“Incompetent,” he typed, then paused.

No, scratch that, he thought. Delete, delete, delete.

“Negligent,” came out through the flurry of clicks.

Too easy to rebut, he thought.

“Malignant and diseased,” he typed as a sneer crossed his face and tears spilled over his lip and into his mouth.

He’d found the perfect words with the perfect weight.

He hit the enter key and felt a wave of exhilaration that made his face flush.

Just two months and more than a hundred thousand words ago, Joel decided he’d had enough of his mother, his boss and what felt like a million others walking across his back each day. Any man with an ounce of pride would never have taken the abuse so long, which meant there was no reason to take it a day longer, Joel thought as he stared at his paunchy reflection in a mirror spotted with flecks of toothpaste.

“I will build my own empire. Today,” he whispered through gritted teeth then wiped away the evidence of his sobbing and put in eye drops hoping to avoid tipping off his mother that he’d been crying again.

But the groundbreaking had to wait. Eight or nine hours, at least. Mr. Figginbottom promised Joel he’d be fired if he called out again and Joel was sure the octogenarian wasn’t lying this time. His boss’s 50-something nephew had recently moved back to town, surely after being kicked out of his own mother’s house after yet another failed stint at a rehab, and Mr. Figginbottom was looking for any excuse to give away Joel’s gig. And while no man ever became rich selling pool supplies for a man who couldn’t even become rich owning a small chain of pool supply stores, Joel needed at least one more paycheck to cover his own startup expenses.

The windfall came sooner than expected, though. Joel had barely clocked in when the phone at the front desk rang. INTERNAL, it said.

“Checkout, this is Joel,” he answered.

“Joel, this is Figs. Can you come back and see Linda in my office?”

“It’s a little busy up here, actually. There’s a woman who was asking Roger for help with chlorine tablets and as soon as she asked, two more people walked in …”

“Joel, I want to make clear that I wasn’t asking a question, I was giving an order,” the man on the line said.

A long silence took hold before Mr. Figginbottom tired of waiting.

“Joel, I said …”

“Yessir, be right back,” Joel said and slammed down the receiver.

Joel was surprised to see Mr. Figginbottom in the office.

“I thought Linda was supposed to be here,” Joel said from the doorway, still holding the knob.

“She’s right there,” Mr. Figginbottom said, pointing to a blonde woman holding a clipboard sitting on the small sofa hidden behind the door.

“Hi, Joel,” she said warmly as she leaned into view.

“Son, sit down,” Mr. Figginbottom said.

Joel had no idea what this could be about but he wondered if it wasn’t his opportunity to preemptively quit. To tell Mr. Figginbottom this was the worst job he had ever had working for the biggest idiot he had ever met who owned the worst company in the world.

“Joel, we saw the tape,” Mr. Figginbottom said. “I’ll be honest, I’m half tempted to beat you myself first but Linda here says that’s not going to look good for my insurance rates, so I’m just going to tell you to get out of here right now.”

Joel was stuck on the part about the tape when he realized there was more to process.

“Joel, actually, there are some papers we have to go over,” Linda said as she began pulling some documents from beneath the clipboard’s hinge. Mr. Figginbottom cocked his head, a little perturbed the office manager’s politeness had sucked the vinegar out of the rant he was building up to.

“Wait, what tape?” Joel asked.

Mr. Figginbottom looked at Linda, who turned back to Joel and opened her mouth to speak before being cut off.

“Joel, there’s a security camera in the back of the building,” Mr. Figginbottom said as he leaned across the desk, face reddening as the position pulled his shirt taught and made the rolls of fat hang out over his collar more than usual. “We started getting complaints from the closer that someone was blowing mud behind the dumpster. We looked at the camera, and by God, if that wasn’t you, Joel.”

That much was true. Joel had always hated going to the bathroom at work. Or rather, he hated going to the bathroom in the bathroom at work. It was a single-stall, unisex bathroom the employees shared with customers. It was usually clean enough — Joel often had to take care of that himself — but it was a cacophonous tile room that sent reverberations of even the gentlest tinkle throughout the store. There was a smaller but better-insulated facility in the back room but that was reserved solely for Mr. Figginbottom, who had “the I.B. syndrome,” as he’d often say unburdened with the shame Joel carried for such talk. The way Joel saw it, he had no other choice but to go behind the dumpster.

“Son, are you even listening?” Mr. Figginbottom asked as he pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his plaid western shirt and wiped the beading sweat off his bald head.

Mr. Figginbottom leaned back in the chair again and swallowed hard, covering his mouth.

“I’m nauseous right now thinking about that video, you …”

“Fig,” Linda interrupted, “we talked about the paperwork for Joel? Remember the paperwork?”

The rest was a bit of a blur. Crying now for the second time in an hour, Joel nodded along as Linda told him about how he could sign up for COBRA Health Insurance and how he’d have 10 days to return all three of his work shirts, properly washed and pressed, please.

“And you’ve accrued 32 vacation hours that we’ll be paying you out for today along with the rest of your scheduled hours for this week,” Linda said as she handed him a check in exchange for the clipboard full of documents he’d been signing.

It was 9:25 a.m. Monday and Joel held $388 in his hands. The tears started to dry as he realized this was his seed money. Mr. Figginbottom had inadvertently become an angel investor.

Thirty minutes later, Joel was a new man. He paid his mother $300 for two months’ rent in advance and he was a free man for the next 60 days. Nothing could get in the way of his empire now.

First, though, Joel needed to get something off his chest. He pulled out his laptop and signed in to a Facebook account under the name Colby Stimpson, a chiseled man with perfect hair whose stock photos Joel stole for an account he used to stalk all the girls he knew a decade ago high school who wouldn’t accept a friend request from his real account.

“If I could give Fig’s Pools no stars, I would,” Joel typed into the review field as Colby Stimpson. “It is run by a fat and old man who loves having power over everyone for no reason other than he has the IB syndrome … aka DIHARREA! He also loves his employee Linda so much he has sex with her at work without his wife. I suggest you try a different pool company that cares for its customers because this is a no star place with an owner who could drop dead and anyone could care less!”

Joel slept as well as he had in months that night and awoke at 2 p.m. thanks to the blackout curtains he bought the afternoon before. It was an investment in himself, he thought as he watched his newfound nest egg dip to about $50.

He rolled over and picked up his phone to open /r/hentai but saw a stack of text message alerts on his lock screen, all from Roger at the pool store.

“Can’t believe it. So crazy!” the latest message read. “I guess it happened last night when he got home,” another read as the story unraveled in reverse as Joel scrolled to the top of the text chain.

“Figs is DEAD!” the first message said.

“LOL,” Joel replied, following up with a laughing emoji.

The next few days were a mix of emotions for Joel. He had intended to spend them building an empire of some kind — maybe an app company or a place that sold graphic novels and adult novelties, he thought — but instead found himself watching anime and wondering whether it was right to feel so vindicated by Mr. Figginbottom’s death. Confused by his own emotions, he left the house for the first time since being fired and walked the two blocks to the Stop-N-Shop.

He filled up the handbasket with a dozen Little Debbie snack cakes and as many Rockstar energy drinks before throwing a one-pound back of pretzels on top of it all.

“Forty-six eighty-eight,” the man at the counter said after scanning it all.

It seemed like a lot of money for groceries but it was enough to let Joel avoid leaving the house again for a least three or four days.

The card reader let out a flat honk. “Declined,” the man behind the counter said.

“Let me try it again,” Joel said.

HONK.

“Do you have another way to pay?” the man asked Joel.

“No, but there’s at least $50 in the account,” he said.

“It’s declined. Do you have cash?”

“No, but there’s money in there.”

“Then you’ll have to go to the bank to get your cash out,” the man said, pulling the handbasket across the counter to his side.

“If there was negative stars this place would get them all,” Colby Stimpson’s review read. “They won’t do business with their best shoppers and it means they will LOOSE THEM ALL! Bad customer service = never shopping there again because of the experience. Totally negligent and discrimination from the clarks with no respect. I wouldn’t give a rip if this place burned down tomorrow. Shop at a better place who cares about customers such as Murphy’s.”

Joel’s hunger strike didn’t last long. He woke up the next morning with an empty stomach and a headache so bad he winced. He needed sugar and caffeine. He put on his Crocs, pulled $5 in quarters from the old coffee tin his mother used to collect coins and started his trek to the Stop-N-Shop. He had barely turned the first corner when he saw the black smoke rising from the other side of the strip mall. He picked up his pace excited at the prospect of seeing something burning down and turned the last corner wheezing from the brisk walk to find a few beams and a row of gas pumps covered in ash where the Stop-N-Shop was a day earlier.

The fire must have started hours ago because only one fire truck remained and its sirens weren’t even on. How the sound didn’t wake him up just two blocks away was a mystery but the store caught fire sometime during the night and there was nothing but rubble left.

Joel was dismayed by his first thought. “I’ll have to walk another six blocks to the next store.”

His second thought put him in a better mood: “I did this.”

Joel spent the rest of the afternoon pacing his room taking mental note of everyone and every company that had ever wronged him, no matter how minor a slight.

“I wish there were zero stars instead of one star but it’s thanks to everyone gets a trophy in this society,” read Colby Stimpson’s screed on the Old Navy Facebook page. “The employees at this particular location are very judgemental and have no interest in finding what is the truth from lying customers. They have a changing room that is just a curtain and if you are man and are shopping there and have to try on clothes you can’t knock on a curtain. And when you open it and there’s a girl in there the employees at this location will say the cops are coming even though you followed all their own rules. I hope they all get laid off for being INCOMPETENT!”

Joel stayed up for hours on end posting in an almost fugue state. Long-forgotten memories came flooding back.

A Hormel Chili can that had some kind of root vegetable in it. “Can you say health codes? What is going on in that factory?”

A grocery store that was always out of his favorite pasta sauce. “Disappointing to say the least. This store needs to be shut down ASTAT!”

A Target whose manager once refused to let him return a package of briefs that were too small. “This store is a scam! How would you even know if they fit if you can’t try them on but then you can’t return them once you put them on? The BBB needs to investigate this illegitimate business.”

In the weeks that followed came a reign of terror. Inspectors shut down canneries for unsanitary conditions. Shopping malls closed, taking out all of their tenants at once. Stock prices dropped and stores were closed after bad earnings calls.

From his fingertips to God’s ears.

As time went on, Joel realized it was easier than he first realized. He hardly had to mention a slight or even why he was offering a one-star rating. Just posting an inane comment in the reviews was enough to cause some damage.

“This hammer looks weak and dumb. One star crap,” Colby Stimpson’s review read. A week later, a pallet of ball-peen hammers crushed a warehouse worker at an Amazon fulfillment center 1,200 miles away.

The allure of this new power kept Joel so occupied that he rarely left his room. He barely had time to eat between screeds and he had lost almost 20 pounds in a month. He had only seen his mother twice in that time, so he hadn’t noticed she, too, was quickly losing weight until she collapsed in the shower.

Joel’s fingers tapped on his knees, as much a nervous tick as a habit now as he sat next to his mother’s hospital bed. There were machines and tubes keeping her stable but the doctor warned him they were a temporary fix at best. Days, maybe hours, were all she had left.

Joel awoke the next morning to a nurse sitting next to him in the waiting room her a hand on his arm.

“Are you Mr. J. Porter? Annie’s son?” she asked as Joel sat up and nodded. “I’m sorry, sir, but your mother has passed.”

Joel spent the next two hours walking home to clear his mind and subconsciously avoiding his destination by taking the long way through a park. He sat at a picnic table for a moment and felt the tears cut chilly trails down his face in the crisp fall air. Phone in hand, he opened Facebook and searched for the hospital’s page.

“I wish I could surgically remove stars from the ratings because the doctors and employees here are MALIGNANT AND DISEASED and all their tools look more like they are from 1819 not 2019,” read Colby Stimpson’s review. “This place is so filthy I would not be surprised if they cause a new plague.”

submitted by /u/TheEggplantEconomist [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/3hDWt6n

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Great Social And Political Import

by Viorica

Wednesday, 02 December 2009

Viorica does the time warp~

There's a very insightful Supernatural fanvideo called Women's Work, about the way the show handles female characters, set to Courtney Love's song "Violet" I mention this not because this article has anything to do with Supernatural or female characters, but because the vid very accurately sums up my current state of mind: I watched this, and now that I've seen it, I don't want it anymore.

For some background on what it is I'm about to rant about, I should probably explain Phase II Created in 2003 by a group of self-avowed Trekkies, the series is based on Star Trek: The Original Series, and picks up where TOS left off. The series is notable for the high production value, and the fact that they have several ST alum helping them out, including Eugene Roddenberry, Denise Crosby, and David Gerrold. The latter contributed an episode that he'd originally written for TNG, but was rejected due to the fact that it contained an openly gay couple and an allegory for the AIDS epidemic. Gerrold retooled his script to fit the TOS characters, and "Blood and Fire" was finally released to the public. So far, so good. I mean, I have to wonder how well-characterized the original script was if he could just adjust things to have it fit TOS, but the dialogue is well-written, and the characters well-realized. The gay couple in question (Kirk's nephew Peter and his boyfriend Alex) are genuinely sweet together, and their relationship doesn't feel forced or cliched. There aren't any stereotypes present- neither of them are especially effeminate or hysterical (well, in the first half anyway) and the other characters never lift an eyebrow at the idea of a gay couple. But then in the second part of the episode, it all comes crashing down.

The episode's main plot circles around the discovery of an abandoned ship, and the horrifying realization that it's infested with "bloodworms-" parasites that feed on human flesh, and are capable of destroying entire civilizations. Peter and Alex are on the away team sent to find out what happened to the ship's crew, and after the discovery that the ship is infested, Starfleet orders that it be blown up, along with everyone who's potentially been exposed. "Okay," I think, "this could be interesting. Kirk wrestles with obeying orders versus his concern for his nephew (and Spock, who's also on the away team) and has to decide whether the potential risk posed by saving the away team outweights the slaughter of anyone unfortunate enough to be on the ship . . ."

. . . or they could just blow over that, and save everyone, except for Alex, who is forced to committ suicide rather than be munched on by bloodworms. Three guesses as to which option the writer took, and the first two don't count.

So after Alex dies, Peter volunteers to go and blow the ship up himself, because he wants to die (because you know how HYSTERICAL them gays are!) only then they find out that the infested ship's original crew was carrying bloodworms because they wanted to committ genocide against the Klingons. Captain Kirk lectures everyone on the dangers of hatred, and they steer the ship into a solar flare, roasting the bloodworms. Oh, and a bunch of sparkly space butterflies symbolize Alex passing into the afterlife or some shit like that. The end!

There is so much wrong with this, I don't even know where to start.

The Times, They Are A-Changing

Back when this script was originally written, the socio-political climate was light years away from what it is now. For one thing, there were virtually no gay characters on television, let alone ones in committed relationships. To show such a couple tragically ripped apart by AIDS- excuse me, bloodworms- would have made a huge difference in the way TNG's viewers would have looked at the AIDS epedemic. Instead of filthy perverts who brought their deaths on themsevles by being mindlessly promiscuous, they'd see two young men (who are so sweet and wholesome, it

hurts

- they bonded over being study partners, for Christ's sake) being ripped apart by something that neither of them could control. Sure it's a flawed allegory, but it was a message that needed to be sent. And even if they did kill one of the gay characters, there was still one left to remind the audience that gays were, in fact, people.

But that was then, and this is 2009. The climate is vastly different then it was in 1989, with different issues that need to be addressed. While AIDS still exists, it doesn't loom as large as it did in the eighties, and most people don't need to be told how awful it is. The problem now isn't a dearth of gay characters, it's the fact that they're rarely allowed to have successful happy relationships. We all know it's hard to be gay, but could someone

please

give us at least one happy couple? Please? I'm running out of hope here.

And although I'm sure the writers/producers would be shocked! shocked, I tell you! at my casting aspersions on their motives for getting rid of Alex, I'm going to do it anyway. With him gone, they never ever have to address Peter's sexuality again. Think about it: giving him another love interest would look callous right after his fiancee died, and if they aren't going to give him another love interest, they never have to mention his gayness again! He'll become functionally asexual, just like

Dumbledore

. [

Edit:

As a reader pointed out, "invisible" would be a better term.] They get all the kudos for having a gay character, but they'll never have to address his affection for men. Or they could retcon it entirely by having him fall for a woman and say "Oh, he was bi! Didn't we mention that?" which would just make me want to break things. I'm just as desperate for bi characters as I am for gay characters, but for fuck's sake, stop using my orientation as an excuse to erase queer characters. We deserve better than that.

But that's just the worst-case scenario. The best is Peter having other relationships with men (which I just don't see being possible/plausible in the near future) or just not having any relationships at all. The latter option would certainly please the fanboys who howled in protest about the icky gay kissing in their bastion of heterosexuality and testosterone, but it wouldn't especially please me.

The Dead Gay Problem

Back when gay characters were first starting to emerge in the media, they could rarely expect a happy ending.

The Well of Loneliness

ends with Stephen begging God for the mere right to exist, while

Maurice

's main character and his lover are forced to shun society and live in the woods. This is presumably due to the fact that the books were written at a time when being publically gay was social (if not literal) suicide. The problem is, it hasn't gone away as things have progressed. At the end of

Lost and Delerious

, Paulie jumps off a roof;

RENT

has Angel dying of AIDS. Even when the writers can't tie the characters' deaths to their sexuality, they still manage to get rid of them.

Buffy

had Tara get shot;

Torchwood

booted Ianto in the third season by having him drop dead of an alien virus. It's like there's some sort of mass delusion that being gay/bi will immediately result in violent, unpleasant death. Is Jan Moir secretly running a media empire or something?

So with the Dead Gay Epidemic going on on network television, it's disappointing to see web-based media falling to the trend as well- especially when there's no reason for it. Alex's death does absolutely nothing to serve the plot. You could remove it, and the episode would make just as much sense,

and

be rid of a bunch of extraneous angst. Now it's entirely possible, even probable that Alex's death was in the original script, but massive edits have been done since. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility for someone to say "Hey, this is great, but killing Alex doesn't really carry the same meaning as it would have back in '89- how about letting him live?" Moreover, I have a hard time buying that no one realized that it was outright offensive. Unless of course, they were deliberately making sure that they wouldn't have a gay couple on the series by killing half of it off. Not only did they avoid having a recurring gay couple, but they dodged having to show them getting married (the horror, the horror.) See, Peter and Alex spend the first half of the episode planning to get married, and Peter asks his uncle to marry them right before they leave on the away mission. Now this feels a bit like pointing out the obvious, but if you want to stay politically relevant, wouldn's showing a gay couple get married accomplish that goal? I mean, it's not like people

all over America

are fighting for the right to have their union legally recognized. Nothing of the sort. Prop what?

Good fuckity god.

In conclusion, the people running

Phase II

fucked up. Badly. They had the opportunity to remain politically relevant and adhere to Gene Roddenberry's vision of a more equal future. Instead, they sent their show hurtling back to the eighties, when I wasn't even born. Which I suppose is a good thing, because I am never watching this show again.Themes:

TV & Movies

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Minority Warrior

~

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

Wardog

at 10:07 on 2009-12-02I am so intensely clueless about fandom. As we know, I'm a big Trek nerd, but I hadn't even heard of Phase II - heh, not that I'll be watching it now! Also thanks for the link to the *AMAZING* Women's Work. I've heard people talk about how political, illuminating and fascinating fanvids can be but I've always kind of just gone "whatever." This is officially my conversion. My tiny mind is blown!

The few times homosexuality has come up in Star Trek that I can recall, except for the fact the show itself doesn't *really* want to deal with it, it's been semi-well handled. I seem to remember there's a nice episode of DS9 when Jadzia meets and old Trill lover who is currently in the body of a female. They grapple with their love for most of the episode, but the main issue is always very much the fact that Trill aren't allow to resurrect relationships rather than the fact that they're both girlz now. Which I liked :)

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http://bitterlittleman.livejournal.com/

at 11:22 on 2009-12-02In regards to Women's Work - I get the point it's making, and I see the problem, and recognise the video isn't just talking about supernatural etc etc.

But.

Ugh. I don't even know how to put this. One link summarises it as demonstrating the portrayal of women as "Evil, slutty or helpless" but this is true of almost every bit part character that the main characters meet. Why? Either they are the big bad - ie evil, or they are the victims - ie helpless. Slutty is a different problem (to do with target audiences etc), but temptation is part of the whole demon thing, right?

Plus, to make it's point, it ignores a lot of actual characters. (

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Supernatural)

There are women who are not evil, slutty, or helpless. There are guys who are...

Here I stop before I dig too deep a hole.

Basically, I think the video is extremely well put together, hits all the right buttons to get you worked up about certain issues. But in doing so it leaves out all evidence that doesn't agree, and that bugs the hell out of me.

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Dan H

at 11:31 on 2009-12-02It's genuinely fascinating, I think, how something can go from "awesome message of tolerance" to "actually kinda skeevy" purely by putting it in a different cultural context.

Back when Star Trek TNG was big, just having openly gay characters on television was a Big Deal, which means the episode described would actually have been remarkably progressive for its time. Put it ten years later and suddenly it's yet another episode in which the token gay character gets killed off early.

On a side note, bisexuality on TV is always really tricky. There's this horrible trap that both writers and audiences seem to fall into off assuming that bisexuals "don't count". It always used to mildly annoy me that Buffy made such a big thing about Willow being Definitely Gay and Not Bisexual At All. There's this nasty perception out there that being bisexual is somehow cheating - which I rather expect is exascerbated by the fact that, as you observe, it very often *is* used as a way to retcon out previously gay characters.

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Arthur B

at 13:30 on 2009-12-02It's insanely depressing how many people just

don't get

bisexuality. I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a character on TV identified as bisexual who wasn't either a) genuinely confused, and settled on a "permanent" orientation once they met their Twue Wuv, or b) slutty slut slut sluts. Usually they are both.

I can't believe people are

still

buying into the idea that "monogamous bisexual" is a contradiction in terms.

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Wardog

at 13:38 on 2009-12-02

Basically, I think the video is extremely well put together, hits all the right buttons to get you worked up about certain issues. But in doing so it leaves out all evidence that doesn't agree, and that bugs the hell out of me.

Well, it's very self-consciously a piece rhetoric - that is rather the nature of rhetoric, isn't it? To concentrate on the evidence that supports your central point.

Also I don't want to derail Viorica's very excellent article into a discussion of the portrayal of women in Supernatural BUT I think the issue is one of generalities not specifics in that the two central characters of Supernatural are men, so you're *always* going to have a very strong portrayal in the foregound to counter-balance all the slutty, helpess, evil men who show up as secondary characters. Equally you always have a very positive depiction of male-male bonding, again, to act as a counterweight to any unfortunate or destructive male relationships, like Dean's short-term friendship with the crazy rogue demon hunter guy.

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Jamie Johnston

at 15:51 on 2009-12-02'Jamie speculates wildly about reasons why things might be the case', part one:

It's like there's some sort of mass delusion that being gay/bi will immediately result in violent, unpleasant death. Is Jan Moir secretly running a media empire or something?

One can think of no end of possible reasons for this: conscious or unconscious desire to feature gay characters but not for so long that they have to be treated like, you know, real characters; the fact that a lot of media people are probably of such an age that the first time male homosexuality really obtruded on their picture of the world was when it was very strongly associated with AIDS; the conscious or unconscious belief that gay people are normally or necessarily deeply troubled (a belief no doubt

reinforced by the fact that a few of them are

- thanks to Sonia for reminding me of that comic). But it occurs to me that another contributing factor to the high death-rate among gay characters may be the persistently low visibility of middle-aged and older gay people in society. In other words, not only do writers have in their minds an association between homosexuality and early death (partly based on out-dated reality - AIDS in the '80s - and partly based on distortion by the news media - Jan Moir and such), but they also lack a counter-balancing store of real-life examples associating homosexuality with long life.

Of course it's all a bit of a vicious, er, whatever geometric form is more complicated and less symmetrical than a circle, because the low visibility of older gay people is largely caused by media distortion and by the habits they themselves have picked up from growing up and growing old in times (even) less tolerant than today. But it does underline why Ian McKellen is right to nag his contemporaries and fellow public figures to come out.

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Jamie Johnston

at 15:54 on 2009-12-02'Jamie speculates wildly about reasons why things might be the case', part two:

I can't believe people are still buying into the idea that "monogamous bisexual" is a contradiction in terms.

Now this one I think may be partly structural. The only ways for a work of fiction to dramatize the bisexuality of a character are (1) to put him or her through a series of monogamous relationships with people of both sexes; (2) to put him or her through a number of simultaneous or overlapping relationships with people of both sexes; (3) to have him or her demonstrate the desire or temptation to have sex with other specific people of both sexes; (4) to have him or her express attraction to other specific people of both sexes; (5) to have him or her (or another character or omniscient narrator) state his or her attraction to both sexes in general.

Perhaps you already see where I'm going with this. Options 5 and 4 are weak and smell of tokenism (it used to be, for example, one of my major difficulties with the generally charming

Questionable content

that although there was a respectable number of bisexual and gay characters they never actually did anything beyond mentioning their off-stage partners and hook-ups and occasionally claiming in a rather hypothetical way to be attracted to other characters of the same sex; I'm glad to say the last few months have remedied this to a great extent). Also option 4, if the character is already in a monogamous relationship, risks making him or her look like he or she has a roving eye and is therefore within sight, if not within spitting distance, of 'slutty slut slut' territory. Option 3, if the character is already in a monogamous relationship, can, unless handled very well, end up with the character looking confused about his or her sexuality and / or fickle and tending toward the slutty. Option 2 has to be handled very very very well to avoid landing in confused / slutty territory. And the trouble with option 1 is that, to make it clear that we aren't dealing with a case of confusion or conversion, you really need to give the character a series of at least three monogamous relationships with partners of alternating sex, and that means either making the relationships very short (which again risks ambling down the road to slutty) or dealing with an unusually long time-span for the average work of fiction (excluding soap operas that run forever).

None of which is to say that it can't be done or that it shouldn't be tried or that writers couldn't be doing a lot more than they are. But it's worth noting the pitfalls.

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Melissa G.

at 16:23 on 2009-12-02

It always used to mildly annoy me that Buffy made such a big thing about Willow being Definitely Gay and Not Bisexual At All.

Again, not to shift off the topic, but yes! Fifty times yes. This annoyed me so much. Here was an opportunity for a truly bisexual character (rather than retconning a previously gay/straight character), and they totally ignored it. I felt like poor Oz got so gyped. It was obvious that Willow was in love with and (key word) sexually attracted to Oz. She was the aggressor for the most part in their sexual relationship. Every time Willow had a line equivalent to "Eww, I don't like penises, remember?!" I always got majorly pissed off.

/rant

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Arthur B

at 16:30 on 2009-12-02

Also option 4, if the character is already in a monogamous relationship, risks making him or her look like he or she has a roving eye and is therefore within sight, if not within spitting distance, of 'slutty slut slut' territory.

This surely depends whether you're defining "expressing attraction" as the person in question saying to themselves "hey, this person of a gender not of my partner's is making me doubt my commitment to my current relationship", or whether it's just them casually saying something along the lines of "I'd hit that" without any serious intent behind it to go out and, you know, hit that. There are plenty of relationships in which both partners are just fine with their other halves idly expressing attraction to others in a purely hypothetical way.

And what about option 6, depict them in a committed relationship during the course of the story but make references to a previous romantic history which, while in the past, is not denounced or regarded by the character as an aberration?

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Viorica

at 16:50 on 2009-12-02

It always used to mildly annoy me that Buffy made such a big thing about Willow being Definitely Gay and Not Bisexual At All.

At one point, Amber Benson commented that she was glad that Willow didn't "flip-flop" about her attraction to men versus women. I don't even know what to say to that.

Most shows featuring bisexual characters seem to take either option two or three, if they don't just retconn the character's sexuality altogether (Buffy, The L Word) The problem is, the audience will automatically assume that when a character is dating someone of one sex, they are only attracted to that sex- i.e. they've "settled down-" when when that's never stated in the show itself.

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Arthur B

at 17:02 on 2009-12-02

The problem is, the audience will automatically assume that when a character is dating someone of one sex, they are only attracted to that sex- i.e. they've "settled down-" when when that's never stated in the show itself.

Yes, but there's only a certain extent to which you can blame the audience for the depictions an author chooses to put forward. Surely, in fact, in this case there's a certain responsibility for writers to challenge the audience's assumptions?

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Viorica

at 17:04 on 2009-12-02

but I hadn't even heard of Phase II - heh, not that I'll be watching it now!

In fairness, I should say that the first part of the episode is really well done- part of my irritation stems from thinking "Yay, a well-done gay couple! I'm so happy!" and then getting smacked in the face with SURPRISE DEAD GAY! But I'd say that Part 1 is worth a look, if you ignore part two. (Both parts are on YouTube

here

and

here

if anyone wants to take a look.)

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Sister Magpie

at 17:35 on 2009-12-02This conversation is making me think about bisexual characters on TV...and wonder you think of Angela on Bones? She's been shown in relationships with men, but also had a past significant girlfriend with whom she almost got together with again. She seems to me like an actual bisexual.

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Arthur B

at 18:20 on 2009-12-02A point that seems to have gone amiss:

I mean, I have to wonder how well-characterized the original script was if he could just adjust things to have it fit TOS, but the dialogue is well-written, and the characters well-realized.

I'm sure the original version was much different - Picard would have tried to negotiate with the bloodworms rather than shoving them into the Sun...

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Melissa G.

at 18:44 on 2009-12-02

This conversation is making me think about bisexual characters on TV...and wonder you think of Angela on Bones?

For me personally (though this may be just because I was not hugely into Bones), Angela kind of read like a straight women who had a sexy, wild side that included sometimes making out with girls. Granted, I never saw her when she was with this woman (maybe I missed that ep), but from what I remember, she primarily dates men. Having one girlfriend does not really say much for her being bisexual (to me, anyway). Others may disagree.

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Viorica

at 18:49 on 2009-12-02Part of the problem with bisexuals on TV is that it's hard to explain the Kinsey scale to audiences. Some bisexual people tilt more to one gender than the other, but not many people realize that. It sounds (though I haven't watched Bones) that Angela would fall about a two on the scale- romantically inclined more towards men, but still attracted to women. Of course, I could be missing in-show context.

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Melissa G.

at 19:05 on 2009-12-02I agree. I just feel with such a stigma attached to bisexuality, a show has to work harder to make it come off as actual bisexuality.

I guess as far as Angela goes, I just never really saw her be interested in women as fully as she was in men. Which, yeah, bisexuals can lean to one side or the other. But it didn't come off that way to me when I watched it. Even my mom thought it was reconning when she got engaged to (blanking on his name) Dirt Guy. For example, when the two guys were fighting over the delivery girl, and it turned out that she was actually into Angela, she didn't actually ask her out or anything as far as I remember. It was like, "oh, haha, she likes me not you". Angela seemed more surprised and flattered than actively interested.

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Viorica

at 19:22 on 2009-12-02But why

would

she be interested? Are straight/gay people interested in everyone who hits on them?

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Arthur B

at 19:54 on 2009-12-02

Part of the problem with bisexuals on TV is that it's hard to explain the Kinsey scale to audiences.

Especially when the labels we use tend to make people think of discrete little boxes, like sexuality works along the same lines as D&D alignment.

Although now I think of that, I do get a sort of juvenile amusement from the idea of Paladins being obliged to be Lawful Gay.

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Wardog

at 20:43 on 2009-12-02

Part of the problem with bisexuals on TV is that it's hard to explain the Kinsey scale to audiences.

To say nothing of the fact that this it's an incredibly reductionist and unhelpful way of looking at bisexuality. Obviously I can't speak for every other bisexual in the world but I think most of us experience regular fluctations in our attraction to members of either sex, dependent on who knows what. How on earth do you put that on TV? I can barely explain it anybody who isn't an actual bisexual. Main character is feeling moderately more straight today than she was yesterday!

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Sister Magpie

at 20:55 on 2009-12-02Yes, that's the way it seems to be with Angela. 13 on House seemed to be shown having lots of anonymous sex with women, but then wound up in a relationship with a man.

Angela is basically a wild child who was mostly shown dating men--though I don't think she dated so many men, exactly. I thought of her because it seemed like when her ex-girlfriend was introduced she was introduced as an ex-girlfriend, meaning a serious relationship, rather than an experiment, for instance. She does seem to mostly be into guys, but I got the impression that this character was introduced as an important past relationship not particularly different because it was with a woman. She was more important than her first husband, for instance.

I still consider her as mostly leaning towards the het side, but it didn't really feel like a retcon when we were told she'd had a girlfriend.

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Viorica

at 21:00 on 2009-12-02

How on earth do you put that on TV?

Not easily, which is a shame, because it would probably be a great help to teenagers who are freaking out over "what the hell is going on with me?" without any real examples that say "yes, this is normal." I know it would have been a huge help when I was fifteen.

. . . what was the original article about, again?

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Melissa G.

at 22:17 on 2009-12-02

But why would she be interested? Are straight/gay people interested in everyone who hits on them?

Fair point. And it's annoying when shows/media act like anyone who is gay is attracted to anyone else who is gay because, yeah, they're not. So I understand that Angela might not be attracted to every girl she sees.

But I was just trying to pull an example out of the many examples. From the beginning, they indicated that she was interested in woman, but I don't remember her EVER really hitting on a woman in the seasons I watched. She commented that a girl was hot or cute or something once, but more as a recollection of what this woman looked like.

I didn't see her with her ex-gf - I couldn't put up with the show enough to watch that far. But when I think about her relationships, I remember Hodgens, her first husband/fling thing, and the guy she was involved with in New Mexico who died.

I guess it just felt to me like a bit of cop-out. It seemed like they wanted to have a hot, artsy bisexual woman without having to actually deal with it past her talking about having a past relationship with a woman or saying a woman is hot/pretty/sexy. This ex-girlfriend (I’ve just looked up) doesn’t show up until season 4 though she was referenced in season 3. It just seems like the writers were more inclined to write her in relationships with men despite having made it clear that she was bi. Why did they wait so long to actively show this part of her sexuality? Maybe other people read her character differently, but that's how I saw her.

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 04:10 on 2009-12-03Having personal interest in the portrayal of the LGBT community, there are a couple points I would like to add.

I think bisexuality is, in some ways, more frightening than homosexuality to straight culture. An informed understanding of bisexuality denies the black-and-white, gay-and-straight mentality that can be easy for straight people to fall into. Being attracted to both sexes opens up the myriad possibilities of human sexuality in a way that neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality do. Because of that, it can be more threatening than homosexuality to the traditional straight mindset.

Because of this cultural context, like it or not, people need to be very careful portraying bisexuals in the media. I'm even going to make the claim that bisexuals in media should not be considered the same way as bisexuals in real life. In real life, bisexuals can be anywhere on the Kinsey scale. For example, I have a female friend who has never had a girlfriend and recently married a man, but considers herself bisexual because she is attracted to women as well as men. In real life, this is fine.

In media portrayals of bisexuals, however, this is not acceptable. In the media, a bisexual who only has experiences with the opposite sex might as well be straight. Similarly, a bisexual who only has experiences with the same sex might as well be gay.

The thing to remember is that media characters are not real people. Real people need no justification for their identities; characters do. If a character does not behave in accordance with their supposed identity, either the character's behavior or identity should change. Bisexual characters, therefore, should be portrayed as being attracted to both men and women, preferably in roughly equal proportions. That is not to say that bisexual characters need to be attracted to every person they encounter, or that they can't have long-term relationships. But bisexual characters should be just about as likely to have relationships with women as with men, and when they are flirting or looking for dates, they should look to both sexes.

Media people (directors, producers, authors, etc.) need to stop presenting characters that have mostly/entirely heterosexual experiences as bisexual. Bisexuality means being attracted to both sexes, and that needs to be better portrayed in the media.

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Wardog

at 11:41 on 2009-12-03I think, as Baihehua says, we have to recognitise a distinction between real people and fictional people. I mean, in 'real life' we can self-define as anything we can damn please, and it underscores no issues of representation or portrayal.

Ultimately, it's all very well to stand here going "the media doesn't portray bisexuality" very well, which is self-evidently true and nets you immediate Minority Warrior points ... it doesn't actually *mean* anything. I mean, I think most people find the sexuality of other people somewhat alien, regardless of the genders involved.

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Arthur B

at 14:30 on 2009-12-03I think at the end of the day you have to make a distinction between fictional tropes which are simplifications of something broadly but not universally true, and tropes which perpetuate ideas which are actually harmful to people, and accept that you're going to get a lot of the former because writers

have

to simplify; you can't expect authors or scriptwriters to concoct perfect simulacra of real life - and also, human beings appear to

need

to come up with this sort of simplification in their heads to actually process real life in the first place, let alone fiction.

Which is probably why it probably isn't helpful to bring up the Kinsey scale in this context. Putting aside the fact that is itself an oversimplification based on dubious 1950s logic, the fact is that you just don't get people marching for Equal Rights For Four Point Twos.

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Viorica

at 03:02 on 2009-12-04

most people find the sexuality of other people somewhat alien

I don't really care about what other people think. I want to be represented because I'm sick of not having any characters to relate to. Which is why statements like this-

If a character does not behave in accordance with their supposed identity, either the character's behavior or identity should change. Bisexual characters, therefore, should be portrayed as being attracted to both men and women, preferably in roughly equal proportions.

Are

really fucking offensive

. If I read your statement right, you're implying that a bisexual character is not behaving like a bisexual unless they date both genders in equal measures, which as I've already mentioned is fallacious. Either that, or you're saying that bisexual characters should act in a way that doesn't challenge the paradigms of monosexual audiences. Either way, what the hell?

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Wardog

at 10:01 on 2009-12-04

I don't really care about what other people think. I want to be represented because I'm sick of not having any characters to relate to.

I agree with you that bisexuals are under-represented, I just merely meant to point out that it's very easy to lock yourself in "woe is me, I am so misunderstood and special" thinking, when sexuality, in itself, is a hellishly complex business. Quite frankly there's a part of me that cannot compute when someone is attracted to someone I am not, regardless of gender, and as far people who are only attracted to one sex ... yikes, how do they function within such limitations? =P

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Dan H

at 10:47 on 2009-12-04

If I read your statement right, you're implying that a bisexual character is not behaving like a bisexual unless they date both genders in equal measures, which as I've already mentioned is fallacious.

Not to put words into anybody's mouth, but I think what Baihehua was saying was that while in real life it's perfectly possible for somebody to be bisexual but still wind up having exclusively heterosexual (or homosexual) relationships, in fiction such a character would wind up looking extremely tokenistic.

To pick an example I think we're all comfortable with, in real life it's entirely possible to have an elderly gay man who had one tragic affair in his youth and hasn't been in a relationship since. It's entirely possible that you could spend seven years at school and never realise that your beloved headmaster was actually a homosexual. In a work of fiction, however, a "gay" character who never has a homosexual relationship is a major problem because it contributes to the idea that gay people are okay, so long as they don't actually act on their sexuality.

With bisexuality it gets a whole lot more complicated, because you've got a veritable minefield of stereotypes to dance around. It's particularly a problem with bisexual women, because it's extremely easy for their bisexuality to come across as something they put on for the benefit of men (a misconception not helped by the huge number of media outlets in which women are encouraged to do exactly that - Katy Perry has never kissed a girl in her life and probably wouldn't like it if she did).

I don't think numbers games are what matters here, so much as attraction to men and women being shown as equally *valid*. This ties back to Mellissa's comments about Angela in the first couple of series of Bones. The problem isn't that she doesn't routinely chase girls, the problem is that when she's attracted to men it's presented as something natural, sensible and meaningful, while when she's attracted to girls it's presented as something delightfully naughty and risque. Of course the fact that I didn't like Bones might be prejudicing me here.

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Melissa G.

at 13:41 on 2009-12-04

in real life it's entirely possible to have an elderly gay man who had one tragic affair in his youth and hasn't been in a relationship since.

You mean

Tim Gunn?

:-) Sorry, couldn't resist.

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Sister Magpie

at 15:54 on 2009-12-04

I don't think numbers games are what matters here, so much as attraction to men and women being shown as equally *valid*. This ties back to Mellissa's comments about Angela in the first couple of series of Bones. The problem isn't that she doesn't routinely chase girls, the problem is that when she's attracted to men it's presented as something natural, sensible and meaningful, while when she's attracted to girls it's presented as something delightfully naughty and risque. Of course the fact that I didn't like Bones might be prejudicing me here.

Since I brought up Angela, I just wanted to say I agree with this--particular since she seems to be a character who has a lot of sex and they also continue to bring in male character with whom she has a relationship or an attraction but not characters who are women.

It was just that this one relationship that they introduced for her as something from her past that was briefly revived, it seemed like it actually was addressing the idea that it wasn't naughty or risque, but was an actual long-term relationship. I don't remember it well enough to defend how well it was done or not, but it did seem like it was introduced as an important relationship, someone she'd lived with iirc, that was presented as less naughty and more thoughtful than some of her male relationships for instance.

Another problem I'd say is that there tend to just be more male characters, period, and of the female ones the writers probably want to put them with male characters. For instance, I haven't watched House in a while, but I remember being told 13 was bisexual, and seeing her have a lot of anonymous sex with women when she was self-destructively dealing with being diagnosed with Huntington's. But then she got into a relationship with a male character on the show. So it's probably all too easy to read her relationships with women as having different value.

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Viorica

at 20:23 on 2009-12-04

Not to put words into anybody's mouth, but I think what Baihehua was saying was that while in real life it's perfectly possible for somebody to be bisexual but still wind up having exclusively heterosexual (or homosexual) relationships, in fiction such a character would wind up looking extremely tokenistic.

Not denying that there's a minefield of potential stereotypes that well-meaning writers can fall into (especially since that's part of why "Blood and Fire" fails) but as long as it's well-established, it dosn't have to be tokenistic. Alice on "The L Word" establishes very specfically that she's more romantically inclined towards women, but enjoys sex with both genders. It only took two lines to explain that. Now, The L Word gets a bit more leeway because it's populated entirely with lesbians, so Alice doesn't look as tokenistic as she would on a show populated largely with straight characters. But still she was a well-written bi character for a few seasons.

And (to get somewhat back on-topic) I don't have any problems with the idea of Peter or Alex being bi, since it's mentioned that they only ever dated each other ("There's never been anyone else for either of us") so it's entirely plausible. Or- considering that the show takes place hundreds on years into the future- it could be that people no longer label sexuality, so dating both genders requires no explanation. What worries me is the very real possibility that "bi, lol" will be used as an excuse to duck out of ever showing a gay relationship with an HEA.

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 22:50 on 2009-12-04Sorry it's taken me so long to get back here. And thank you, Dan; that is basically what I was saying.

My point is that, no matter how much we may like and identify with fictional characters, they are not real people. Real people can identify and behave however they want and there's no problem. Fictional characters' identities, however, need to be justified. I think this is true for a lot of things, not just sexuality. For example, a character in the US who claims to be Democrat, yet always votes for Republican presidents and congressmen, exclusively watches Fox News, and who adores Newt Gingrich-- that's a problem. In real life, I don't think anyone can tell this person that he or she can't be Democrat (weird as that might seem). As a character's identity, however, there is no reason for this person to be Democrat. As evidenced by behavior, being Democrat is obviously not very important to the character. Therefore, there is no reason not to have this character be Republican (or at least moderate). Or, if the director or author wants to insist that the character is a Democrat, either revise the character's behavior or at least point out how incredibly hypocritical it is. The same goes for sexual orientation and a whole lot of other identity issues. If there is no basis from the character's behavior to make a claim about that character's identity, then the claim should not be made.

Now, I do grant that things are even more confusing with bisexuality because it is considered to be between hetero- and homosexuality. And I don't really care about exact numbers. Also, I grant that there is less of a problem if a bi character is generally more attracted to the same sex than if he/she is generally more attracted to the opposite sex. But if a bi character only exhibits attraction to one sex (note: that's "exhibits", not "claims"), I think the director or author should rethink his/her decision to make this character bi. Or revise the character's behavior.

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Viorica

at 00:13 on 2009-12-05. . . you lost me. A character's sexuality = their political affiliation? What?

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 00:35 on 2009-12-05No, a character's political affiliation does not equal his/her sexual orientation. Not at all.

But they are both elements of a character's (or a real-life person's) identity. Identity is made up of many facets, including race, sex, nationality, sexual orientation, political affiliation, religion, etc. I was simply using an analogous example to (hopefully) make my point more clearly.

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Sister Magpie

at 00:37 on 2009-12-05I think she was more making the point that a fictional character identified as something is slightly different than a real world person who is that something.

So for instance, in real life bisexuals can be any number of different ways, but when a character is identified as bisexual on TV we're going to judge how well s/he lives up to that idea, or what the fiction seems to be saying about bisexuals through how they show this character.

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Jamie Johnston

at 00:54 on 2009-12-05Crikey, this thread's a fair bit longer than when I last saw it! Jolly interesting, too, but I'm only going to reply to Arthur's comments on what I said:

This surely depends whether you're defining "expressing attraction" as the person in question saying to themselves "hey, this person of a gender not of my partner's is making me doubt my commitment to my current relationship", or whether it's just them casually saying something along the lines of "I'd hit that" without any serious intent behind it to go out and, you know, hit that. There are plenty of relationships in which both partners are just fine with their other halves idly expressing attraction to others in a purely hypothetical way.

I was hoping someone would pick me up on that because it's something I sort of wanted to cover in the original comment but left out to avoid wandering too far from the point. You're of course absolutely right, and I think the trouble here comes from a separate bias that's prevalent in fiction but isn't specifically to do with sexual orientation, though it has this disproportionate effect we've encountered here: it's very rare in fiction to get (and I quote because I can't say it better myself) 'relationships in which both partners are just fine with their other halves idly expressing attraction to others in a purely hypothetical way'. I suppose in origin this has something to do with the general assumption that every fairly unimportant that happens in a work of fiction should point towards something more important going on beneath or likely to go on in the future or possibly having gone on in the past: thus writers perhaps fear that

an idle expression of attraction in act one necessitates some sort of infidelity in act two

. Which is wrong because it assumes a far too straightforward connexion between finding someone attractive and actually having sex with that person, but one can sort of see why the idea might arise. So that's another thing for writers to work on, separately from (but related to) writing convincing bisexual characters.

And what about option 6, depict them in a committed relationship during the course of the story but make references to a previous romantic history which, while in the past, is not denounced or regarded by the character as an aberration?

That's a very good option that I hadn't thought of at all, which is probably why I shouldn't write stuff. :) Of course it's still a little bit at the less powerful end of the show / tell spectrum, but still it would be a dashed good start.

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Viorica

at 02:15 on 2009-12-05

but when a character is identified as bisexual on TV we're going to judge how well s/he lives up to that idea

And unless we adjust portrayals of bisexuality to reflect the real-life variations, that idea is going to remain flawed. Which is why saying "bisexuals characters must date both genders in equal measures" is only allowing the misconceptions to be reinforced.

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Melissa G.

at 03:11 on 2009-12-05I think the issue boils down more to validity than numbers, as Dan mentioned.

I don't think numbers games are what matters here, so much as attraction to men and women being shown as equally *valid*.

It's not that the bisexual characters can't slide to one side or the other of the Kinsey scale (to use a phrase we're all familiar with), but when bisexual characters are shown on televisions, there's a tendency to portray how they interact sexually with each gender in a different way. And this also leads in to the issue of how we interpret the behavior of characters on TV differently than we would in real life.

Just to give an example, in real life, it would be perfectly fine for a bisexual woman to follow a trend of having flings with women and serious relationships with men. But if this was a character on a TV show, people would infer from this behavior that the writers feel that relationships between men and women are more valid than relationships between two women. I think this is where it gets tricky.

And (please correct me if I'm wrong) I think that's why Baihehua suggested they show them being attracted to both sexes in equal proportions. Not because she feels that we need to cater to the mainstream monosexual audience, but because if there is a somewhat 50/50 ratio, we have more relationships with each sex to judge and would be better able to see how this character treats her relationships with both men and women entirely in the same light. It would be more obvious that this person falls for/is attracted to people regardless of gender (in the sense of not being limited to attraction by gender). Which I think would really help to battle certain stereotypes surrounding the bisexual community.

If I'm completely misunderstanding something, please let me know.

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at 04:41 on 2009-12-05Viorica,

I'm not trying to discredit what you're saying, and I think that adjusting portrayals of bisexuality to reflect real-life variations is a wonderful ideal.

However, I don't think it's manageable in a media setting. The media relies on simplifications all the time. If the media is not able to say "bisexual", "Jewish", "Democrat", etc. and have its audience understand what it means by these labels, then the media will never have the time to tell its stories--it will be too busy defining what these terms mean for each individual character. So, while these simplifications can be harmful in real life, they are often helpful in the media, if simply so the media can perform its function (to tell stories/to entertain).

From what I know of bisexuality, the basic concept is being sexually attracted to members of both sexes. Since the media is unable to present the entire spectrum of human sexuality (because it varies with every single person), it is this basic concept that should be consistently portrayed.

I understand it can be frustrating how the media interprets or presents your identity, but I don't think we can expect it to fully encompass all variations of humanity.

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at 05:05 on 2009-12-05Oh, and Melissa, you're not wrong. That is essentially why I was advocating for equal representation of relationships with men and with women (though you did extrapolate my original statements slightly). Thanks for the comment!

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Andrew Currall

at 16:21 on 2009-12-06I don't think I agree at all that it is unreasonable for a work of fiction to establish that a character is bisexual and never actually "confirm" that (i.e. by showing the character in a relationship with, or at least attracted to, individuals of both sexes). Would anyone, for example, object to it being established (through dialogue) that a character, say, disliked potatoes, and this never being referred to or made important again? The only real difference between this and, say, bisexuality, as character traits, is that bisexuality is somehow considered "important", whereas a dislike of potatoes wouldn't be. But I think a situation in which sexuality is considered an unimportant and largely incidental trait is precisely the situation one should aim for.

I would concede that if a work stated that a character was bisexual but never showed them in any relationships with their own sex, one could reasonably say that it couldn't really claim brownie points for featuring non-heterosexual characters, but provided the revealing of their sexuality is natural (i.e. not clearly there for the sole purpose of creating a bisexual character), I'd have no problem with it.

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Wardog

at 09:37 on 2009-12-07

But I think a situation in which sexuality is considered an unimportant and largely incidental trait is precisely the situation one should aim for.

Well, I suppose this leads to a larger, even messier can of worms regarding whether you consider sexuality as connected to who you are or what you do... I think the problem with portraying minority groups (Minority Warrior!) is that as soon as you start arguing that it *shouldn't* matter if someone is gay, or a woman, or black, and that ideally it's equivalent to disliking potatoes, then you're merely giving excuses for it to be badly handled or ignored.

I had a tangential thought about this whole business actually - and I wonder if the difficulty might not lie so much with the depiction of bisexuality but with the depiction of relationships. The problem is that characters, like people, may have more than one relationship over the course of a text, especially if it's a long running series. And unless you're specifically going for "this is an unhealthy relationship", then it's very difficult to give both (or however many relationships they have) equal validity.

And truthfully I don't think we do that in real life either - we look back over our past relationships and go "oh, it wasn't love, it didn't count" (at least we do once we get over them) and our current relationship and think "yes, this is it, this is the real thing."

In fiction it's even worse - in order to make a romantic relationship convicing you have to pretty jettison everything that went before it. Which means that if you do have a bisexuality character, I reckon you can't win. Because if you set them up with a person of the same sex and then with a person of the opposite sex, the implicit (although *unintended* message) will be "lol, they were really straight all along" (because this is their twu wuv) and if you do it the other way round you'll be stuck with "lol, they were really gay all along (because this is their twu wuv).

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Andrew Currall

at 18:20 on 2009-12-07

as you start arguing that it *shouldn't* matter if someone is gay, or a woman, or black, and that ideally it's equivalent to disliking potatoes, then you're merely giving excuses for it to be badly handled or ignored.

Mmm, yes, I can see that. It's all rather difficult.

I think perhaps part of the problem is that it's difficult to judge whether a work of fiction is representing any group in an unreasonable way (or simply underrepresenting it), because a work of fiction will have relatively few characters and situations in it and one could easily argue each as in themselves reasonable. Women are vastly under-represented in fiction as a whole (i.e. the majority of characters, perhaps around 70%, are male), but it's difficult to accuse most specific works of under-representing women (Tolkein is an exception, being an extreme example), because it'll have only 5-10 major characters and you could put it down to random chance or come up with a plausible reason why the majority of characters in this particular work are male.

And this is far worse with sexuality, both because it isn't a 50/50 split in the first place (so one wouldn't want to argue that half of all characters should be homo- or bi-sexual), and because a character's sexuality isn't necessarily evident (whereas their sex generally is).

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Viorica

at 19:55 on 2009-12-07The problem with "it shouldn't matter" arguments is that it skates dangerously close to "I don't see you as black/gay/female" which is basically a way for people who aren't minorities to avoid thinking about their own prejudices.

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 02:15 on 2009-12-08

In fiction it's even worse - in order to make a romantic relationship convicing you have to pretty jettison everything that went before it. Which means that if you do have a bisexuality character, I reckon you can't win. Because if you set them up with a person of the same sex and then with a person of the opposite sex, the implicit (although *unintended* message) will be "lol, they were really straight all along" (because this is their twu wuv) and if you do it the other way round you'll be stuck with "lol, they were really gay all along (because this is their twu wuv).

I automatically agreed with this statement, but I wonder if this is just because its what we're used to seeing. For example, in Friends, (apologies to anyone who doesn't watch this, I'm sure a better example will come to mind) Monica has a longstanding relationship with Richard, then they break up because she wants kids and he doesn't. Later on, she gets together with, and eventually marries, Chandler. There is never any "oh, he wasn't that great" about Richard, its just accepted that there was too big of a problem to work around, and Monica does occasionally have to reassure Chandler that she loves him and is over Richard, etc.

I think if either of the men was made a female character, you could quite conceivably play it that way and have the same kind of break up and moving on without invalidating the previous relationship. I really think the biggest problem with trying to portray bisexuality in fiction is usually that people will go "Wait, so she's straight now?" instead of "oh my god they are such a cute couple/so annoying/etc," as you normally do to a new couple on a soap or sitcom.

That and, of course, things like the *wonderful* reaction of the Sex and the City girls when one of Carrie's boyfriends tells her he has had a boyfriend or two in the past. She freaks out and can't understand why he doesn't "just make up his mind". It was a horrible response to a character who is, very maturely, saying "look, this is my sexual history, I've been tested x months ago, I want you to know so you don't have to worry." That was so frigging offensive it shocked me. (Though why I don't know. It's not as if they put any real thought into how they depict women or gay men.)

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Jamie Johnston

at 01:07 on 2009-12-09

Well, I suppose this leads to a larger, even messier can of worms...

Mmm, worms.

Just out of interest, and possibly for the sake of looking at it from a new angle, can anyone think of any bisexual characters / relationships in fiction that have been well handled?

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 20:31 on 2009-12-09Unless a relationship involves at least three people, I don't see how the relationship *itself* can be bisexual. ;-)

Characters... I think everyone has a different definition of "well handled". Among characters I think are reasonably well handled, I can name a couple that, while they are not explicitly stated to be bisexual, can easily be seen as bisexual or gender-blind.

*Rachel, from Imagine Me & You. She never names her sexuality and even explicitly refuses to label herself. She has had a long-term sexual and romantic relationship with a man before meeting the woman she falls for. Also, the reason given for her leaving her husband is not because she is not attracted to him, but because she "went crazy. [She] went crazy for someone and it wasn't [her husband]".

*Sita and Radha, from Fire (by Deepa Mehta). Again, these women do not label themselves. They are attracted to each other and begin a physical, as well as emotional, relationship, but there is nothing to indicate that either woman would be adverse to a relationship with a man. While they have not found what they need in their heterosexual marriages, this is portrayed as due to the unique circumstances they have with their husbands, not as a dislike of men in general.

I'm sure there are other examples out there, but I can't think of any right now.

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Rami

at 22:54 on 2009-12-09

Sita and Radha, from Fire (by Deepa Mehta)

That's an interesting pair of character names, especially if they're in a relationship. I'm going to have to read that book...

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http://baihehua.livejournal.com/

at 02:40 on 2009-12-10It's a movie, actually (1996). I included the director because it's not a movie most people are familiar with. It's set in India (so those are Indian names), but they speak in English. Deepa Mehta has said in interviews that she chose to film in English because it is such a common language in India that she felt it would be more true to life to film in English than to film in Hindi or another language.

You should definitely look into it, though. I think it's a great movie. If you're interested, Deepa Mehta also has two later films out, "Earth" and "Water", that address different social problems in India. They're all excellent.

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 13:19 on 2009-12-10

can anyone think of any bisexual characters / relationships in fiction that have been well handled?

I haven't watched

Torchwood

, but from what I've heard, Captain Jack Harkness is a rather well-done bisexual character.

(Very interesting discussion, by the way!)

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Melissa G.

at 14:22 on 2009-12-10

I haven't watched Torchwood, but from what I've heard, Captain Jack Harkness is a rather well-done bisexual character.

I have watched Torchwood, and Captain Jack was one of the first people who came to my head when I thought about bisexual characters. I really do read him as someone who just hits on anything that moves. I suppose people could argue about whether this is a positive or negative portrayal of a bisexual. But he definitely doesn't discriminate based on gender, and that's pretty clear.

In fact, I'm pretty sure the creator of the new Doctor Who and Torchwood is of the impression that by the time we get to Jack's time period (51st century), everyone will be "omnisexual" (his term, not mine) meaning that we won't discriminate on gender, race, or even species. And that idea is evident in both Jack and John, an ex-beau of Jack's who comes in the second season of Torchwood.

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Jamie Johnston

at 14:47 on 2009-12-10I wondered about Captain Jack too, but I've only seen him a few times in

Doctor Who

and never watched

Torchwood

(which hasn't been on the iPlayer since I discovered, to my surprise, that

Doctor Who

was rather fun). From what I've seen he came across pretty well. The Doctor's reactions give the impression that Jack's extreme flirtiness is just a thing about him as an individual rather than something related to his sexuality, and it's so light-hearted and superficial that it doesn't seem to imply any tendency toward being unfaithful if he were actually in a relationship.

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Melissa G.

at 18:37 on 2009-12-10

The Doctor's reactions give the impression that Jack's extreme flirtiness is just a thing about him as an individual rather than something related to his sexuality,

Yes, that's how I viewed it too. It wasn't Jack is a bisexual SO he's flirty. It was just that Jack, as a person, is flirty.

it doesn't seem to imply any tendency toward being unfaithful if he were actually in a relationship.

It got a bit trickier in Torchwood b/c it was a more adult show. But while he was in a relationship with Ianto, he never cheated on him despite having sexually charged moments with other characters. But you were left wondering how serious he was about Ianto, but I chalked it up to Jack being a bit of a commit-a-phobe rather than anything to do with his sexuality.

Torchwood is interesting because every character on the show has had a bisexual moment. Owen had a "devil's threesome", Tosh despite being straight had a relationship with an alien chick for an episode, Gwen had a french kiss with a girl (albeit a super pheromone induced thing out of Gwen's control), and Ianto had a girlfriend before shacking up with Jack.

Oh...uh, spoilers? Sorry.

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Viorica

at 18:57 on 2009-12-10I'm iffy on Jack as a bisexual character. On the one hand, he obviously doesn't discriminate in regards to gender. On the other, he hits on everything that moves, and even when he was in a relationship, he wasn't exactly emotionally faithful.

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Melissa G.

at 22:11 on 2009-12-10

I'm iffy on Jack as a bisexual character.

Personally, I'm with you on that. That's why I wasn't going to bring him up, but I wanted to respond to miss-morland.

I guess it comes down to if you can separate Jack from his sexuality to the point where you know that his flaws as far as relationships go are not due to his sexuality, but due to him as a person. But obviously not everyone is going to be able to make that distinction, which leaves you with a rather, as you said, emotionally unfaithful bisexual character, which is not a great example.

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Rami

at 22:13 on 2009-12-10

It's a movie, actually (1996). I included the director because it's not a movie most people are familiar with. It's set in India

Thanks for pointing it out -- I'll have to watch it (especially after reading about

the controversy

)! What actually interested me about the names Sita and Radha is the

mythological

, er,

connection

. Is Mehta preaching narcisissm ;-)?

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 19:15 on 2009-12-11

Ianto had a girlfriend before shacking up with Jack.

Well, now you've made me curious as to the portrayal of

Ianto's

bisexuality... (I really should watch that show!)

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Viorica

at 19:50 on 2009-12-11It's mentioned (shortly before they kill him off . . .) that Jack's the only guy he's ever been attracted to/dated. So it's less a matter of bisexuality as it is one of an ostensibly straight guy falling for a man once (and then dying.)

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Viorica

at 06:17 on 2009-12-12Also,

Biphobia: It's What's For Dinner

is a good breakdown of being bisexual erasure and the impact it has.

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Robinson L

at 22:30 on 2009-12-15You know, I glanced through a collection of David Gerrold's works at my local library several months back, and one of items published was the original

Next Generation

script for “Blood and Fire.” I didn't read it, which I'm kind of regretting now, because I think it would be interesting to compare the original script to the

Phase II

episode.

Not that it would in any way detract from the epic fail. Gah.

Oh, and thanks for the "Biphobia" link, Viorica.

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Viorica

at 03:53 on 2009-12-16If it's still possible to get ahold of it, could you? I'm curious as well.

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Robinson L

at 20:00 on 2009-12-18Sure thing, Viorica! The book in question is

Involuntary Human

. I warn you, however, that it may take me a while both to read the script, and watch the episode (my sound system still being KIA), so don't worry if I don't report back right away, I'm still working on it.

Interestingly enough, while I was browsing for “Involuntary Human” I discovered that David Gerrold published a book entitled

Blood and Fire

in either 2003 or 2004 (sources are conflicted on this point). According to the website linked above, it's the concluding volume of his “Star Wolf” trilogy, which I've never heard of before. I wonder how it may or may not fit in.

Kyra: Quite frankly there's a part of me that cannot compute when someone is attracted to someone I am not, regardless of gender, and as far people who are only attracted to one sex ... yikes, how do they function within such limitations? =P

Ha-ha, that reminds me of a story my philosophy professor once told me. Once, when questioned on his sexual orientation, James Dean reputedly quipped: “Let's just say I don't believe in going through life with one hand tied behind my back.”

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Robinson L

at 15:00 on 2010-04-24As usual, it's taken me a hell of a lot longer than I expected to churn this sucker out, but here it is

my epic comparison of the Phase II episode versus Gerrold's original script

. Share and enjoy.

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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/

at 18:22 on 2013-11-16

can anyone think of any bisexual characters / relationships in fiction that have been well handled?

Just necroing this thread after arriving here via Robinson's B5 comment to mention Bo from [i]Lost Girl[/i], who is definitely helped by the fact that the show is almost structured to support it.

Basically, for those of you who haven't watched (and you should because this is an awesome show) there are four main characters: Bo, a bisexual succubus, Dyson, a burly wolf-man cop, Lauren, a hot blonde doctor and Kenzi, the perky goth girl. There's also Trick, Bo's grandfather, but for obvious reasons he plays no role in the romance plotlines.

Bo sleeps with both Dyson and Lauren at different points in the first three seasons (while I wouldn't describe it as a YA show, there is a YA sensibility to its treatment of romance and none of the three participants in the love triangle stray outside of it for very long), depending on the various upheavals and betrayals of the plot, her emotional commitment to each of them is equally valid and equally strong even when their commitment to her is somewhat more doubtful. She also at least attempts to be monogamous with each of them during their periods together, even when maintaining her fidelity to Lauren causes her to almost die of internal bleeding. Meanwhile Bo's relationship with Kenzi is kept strictly platonic, despite being the most emotionally committed and faithful of all the show's inter-personal relationships, specifically to avoid the 'everything that moves' stereotype.

I'd be amazed if someone here didn't watch it considering it has a very strong female fanbase (I went to meet some of the stars at London Comic-con last month and I was astonished to see fourth fifths of the audience were women) but no one ever brings it up during discussions of shows with feminist-friendly sensibilities.

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Robinson L

at 18:06 on 2013-11-18I watched the first two episodes of

Lost Girl

on Viorica's recommendation, but didn't watch any further because I found those two, well, mediocre and kind of dull. Certainly not bad, and I appreciate all the feminist/queer-friendly stuff, it just didn't suck me in on a narrative level.

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http://scipiosmith.livejournal.com/

at 18:23 on 2013-11-18I've never actually watched the first episode, so I can't comment there, but I agree that it takes a few episodes to work up a head of steam. The first season steadily improves peaking at either episode six or eight, and subsequent seasons improve on the first in their own way (in particular the Nadia arc in season 2 is a very necessary corrective to Lauren's rather silly 'I sold my freedom for the chance to study the Fae' motivation in season one).

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Cheriola

at 22:37 on 2013-11-20I was uncomfortable with "Lost Girl" because there was so little reflection about the fact that the main character's superpower was essentially date rape. She forces people who do not want to have sex with her for various reasons (at one point, it was a security guard who was trying to stop her, IIRC) to be irrestibly attracted to her through magic / special body chemistry, and then she sexually assaults them. I mean, you can make a story about that if you want, about how she has to do this to survive, but I would expect an non-villain character to be at least as conflicted about this as your standard woobie vampire. But no, as long as she doesn't kill her victims, it's apparently fair game.

I waited and waited for the show to do some character development in this regard, but then I rage-quit at the end of season 1, because when the main character's boyfriend was assaulted in the same way by her mother (also a succubus; and the boyfriend clearly didn't want to have sex with her), everyone on the show treated this as if he had been cheating. It was all about how horrible this was for the main character and how big it was of her to forgive him. At that point I realised that the writers of this show genuinely don't think it's rape as long as the rapist is a pretty woman.

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Cheriola

at 01:46 on 2013-11-21Also, I know this is necro-ing and probably pointless, but it's a pet-peeve, so please forgive me:

I'm iffy on Jack as a bisexual character. On the one hand, he obviously doesn't discriminate in regards to gender. On the other, he hits on everything that moves, and even when he was in a relationship, he wasn't exactly emotionally faithful.

Wow, slut- and poly-shaming much? First off, the only time Jack was in anything approaching a committed relationship onscreen was during Torchwood season 2 and 3. Do we know he and Ianto had even made any promises of exclusiveness? It's not unusual for an unmarried gay couple to have an open relationship, you know. And even John Barrowman's real-life husband seems perfectly okay with his verbal flirting and chaste kissing. (Apparently they draw the line at french kissing, which Barrowman won't even do for the camera. At least that's what he told Matt Rippy (the 'real' Jack Harkness))

Now, I've given up on Torchwood after the first couple of episodes in the 2. season, so I don't know if Ianto was the jealous type once they got around to talking about their feelings and started having an actual relationship instead of casual office sex. But even if he was: You do realise that you're prioritising one partner's selfishness and possessiveness over the other partner's right to self-determination and you're judging Jack for emotions he can't help feeling, because he's not naturally monogamous and therefore being in love with one person doesn't automatically make him incapable of having romantic and/or sexual feelings for other people.

Yes, I said selfishness - jealousy means not wanting the person you supposedly love to be happy if it's with other people, and not wanting them to spend time and attention on other people, and acting like you have a right to make decisions over their body. It's a controlling impulse born of emotional insecurity (having so little self-worth that you can't trust your partner to enjoy someone else's company and still come back to you) and cultural entitlement. Patriarchal values meant for most of human civilisation that the man owned his wife's sexuality, reproductive capacity and time/attention (love was very much optional until about 200 years ago). And the wife was economically dependent on her husband, so she suffered when he left her or fathered a child with someone else. Though the wife having any moral right to expect her husband to be sexually exclusive is actually a fairly recent cultural development. And since our culture's romantic scripts are still overwhelmingly heteronormative, LGB people sometimes have the same entitlement issues even though it makes little rational sense for them. Plus, lots of people are very insecure and selfish like little kids when it comes to romance, because everything about the way our society teaches teenagers how romance works encourages this kind of behaviour. Just look at YA literature and the ubiquious love triangle. It's all about "You MUST decide between them" and no-one ever asks "Why? Why do I have to suffer losing one positive relationship in my life just because you two can't play nice together?" And almost every show and movie out there acts like jealousy is a cute 'proof of love' and a natural reaction for everyone, and that it's always justified and not at all immature or emotionally abusive, even if it leads the jealous partner to spy on their lover or try to sabotage their opposite gender friendships, good relationships with ex-spouses, or work partnerships. (I was really surprised when the main character of "Defiance" was perfectly willing to accept that his sort-of girlfriend was a sex worker and wasn't going to stop working just because she started a relationship with him. The show even briefly featured a poly married triad in one episode, as a socially accepted option in this fictional world. Though one of the main characters still got rather judgemental about it and the whole thing turned out to be a marriage of convenience situation between one evil woman and two young pretty 'trophy husbands' in need of a meal ticket and possibly more into each other than into her.)

Obviously, cheating by going behind the primary partner's back is extremely unethical, because it endagers your partner's health and life through possible disease transmission. It should be their decision whether or not they consider the outside partner too much of a health risk to continue the primary relationship. And partners who are economically linked (for example through children) have a right to say "I'm not cool with you sleeping with that other person if there's any possibility of another mouth to feed resulting from it."

But no-one, ever, has the right to forbid their partner to have feelings for or spend time with other people - and the attempt to repress these feelings doesn't work anyway, it just leads to resentment.

In this case, if Ianto is insecure enough to require Jack to be exclusive in the later seasons, Jack is clearly indulging him and refraining from having sexual relationships with other people, just like he presumably bowed to poly-phobic social norms when he agreed to say marriage vows sometime during the early 20th century. But you can't expect him to supress who he is - somebody who communicates through flirting due to having been raised in a different culture, and somebody who falls in love / lust easily or just enjoys the banter very much.

Besides, why would you want to burden Ianto with having to fulfil ALL of Jack's physical and emotional needs? In season 1, it certainly seemed like Jack had a much easier time emotionally opening up to and trusting women (Gwen and Tosh) - no wonder, given the masculinity requirements in our culture (i.e. men having trouble offering or responding to emotional intimacy because it's seen as 'girly'); and the fact that Ianto had kept his entire identity a secret and betrayed Jack twice, before they even started officially dating.

If you're naturally monogamous and lose all interest in other people once you fall in love - great! Go for your 'one and done' relationship (hopefully with another monogamous person)! But don't try to force your perspective on life on those who are naturally polyamorous. And do not presume to judge and shame them just because the dominant culture privileges your kind.

And by the way, Jack does not hit on "everything that moves". He seems pretty limited to young and pretty cis men and women and a few, mostly humanoid aliens. He did not appreciate Donna hitting on him, IIRC. In fact, on Torchwood, he's probably the character who sees the least actual action, and he's had remarkably few mentioned lovers for someone with such a long life. (Compared to, say, the "Highlander" immortals. Or the "New Amsterdam" guy and his 609 girlfriends/wives and 63 kids in 400 years.) And just because he happily flirts with a lot of people doesn't mean he actually wants to take them to bed, as well. The show even makes the point that for Jack, flirting is like small-talk.

Yes, I know bisexual people consider the 'promiscuous' bisexual character a negative stereotype. Honestly, that seems like slut-shaming to me. There's nothing inherently negative about promiscuity if it's done ethically, and Jack is the embodiment of the Ethical Slut trope. He never cheats, and his flirting, at least as far as I've seen, is usually refreshingly easy-going, non-harassing and doesn't ping as creepy. (As long as he's not being written by Moffat, though Barrowman did his best to save Jack from character assassination even then.)

Also, I can think of over a dozen bisexual characters of varying degrees of monogamousness on just my favourite 5 or 6 shows, even if most of them are just token bisexual and really lean more gay or hetero in the depicted relationships. But I can think of no positive (i.e. not evil) polyamourous characters in mainstream fiction besides Jack Harkness (and maybe the Doctor). So can you give the more marginalised group this one, please?

(... This got to be a rather longer rant than I initially expected. Sorry. I'm insomniac again.)

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Arthur B

at 09:18 on 2013-11-21I agree with a lot of your points, Cheriola, but I think it is a slight oversimplification to ascribe the idea that the "promiscuous bisexual" stereotype is negative exclusively to slut-shaming. I mean, the concept does relate to slut-shaming of bisexuals, that's definitely a factor, but I think it is also born in the bizarrely common misconception that bisexuals *can't* be monogamous - that because they can potentially sleep with both men and women, they can't ever be satisfied with just one.

Of course, there's room to discuss whether or not Torchwood makes room for monogamous bisexuals or whether it falls into the "bisexuality is a type of poly" trap, having not seen it I don't know whether it also features happily monogamous bisexual characters. But I don't think objecting to a well-established stereotype of promiscuity means that those who are objecting to that stereotype are themselves engaged in slut-shaming.

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Janne Kirjasniemi

at 15:15 on 2013-11-21Also, it might be worthwhile to point out, that while polyamorous people no doubt suffer from prejudice, saying that someone refusing to engage in a polyamorous relationship can surely be something else than jealousy or just selfishness, or maybe such jealousness is not purely a result of prejudice. If polyamorousness is a matter of how a person is, then monoamorousness is too and if such people seek a relationship together, the matter needs to be resolved by the people in question, without either of them having the option to just condemn the others feelings on the matter as selfishness(since a person's needs are selfish anyways, no matter their sexual preferences) and demand them to submit to the others wants. I mean, isn't that the whole problem with shaming, just from another point of view? People seek different things from relationships and if either party has to deny themselves something they want to appease the other then surely that is a problem in itself? Of course compromises need to be made and people will no doubt keep making them, but if polyamorous people have a right to their feelings, then surely so do those with different feelings on the matter. And while systematic abuses or restrictions to people need to be stopped(or removed), regular people will need to come to terms with each other and their various needs and wants.

It is strange though that polyamorousness as such is seen as a binary matter. Like most forms of human sexuality wouldn't it be more like a fluctuating scale? But in any case, perhaps the situation is not improved by just turning the tables but rather more acceptance of our own and other's feelings.

This whole thing about whether bi is poly and whatnot does illuminate the problem of trying to categorize human sexuality into neat categories, when actually the names we use are always just vague groupings of similar seeming behaviour. Which is not really surprising when most of the terms used in the discussion were originally popularized as medicalized terms for sexual deviancy and the neologisms always try their best to sound like the old terms, implicitly validating the existence of these clear distinctions even if the discussion itself seeks to be different. But that is a different matter altogether.

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Daniel F

at 02:17 on 2013-11-22Feel free to call me out here, but I can't help but understand it as inherently problematic to set about categorising people into those who are 'naturally polyamorous' and those who are 'naturally monogamous'. Not only am I pretty sure that people are more complicated than that, part of my understanding of what it is to be in a relationship is to have to make some effort.

That is, to me, there is a difference between affirming that it is natural and healthy to have any number of sexual instincts, and affirming that it is equally healthy to give expression to any or all of them. It seems intuitive, to me, that a person in a monogamous relationship, who consciously wishes to be monogamous, might occasionally feel a desire to sleep with a third party; but that this person also has some moral obligation to refuse that desire. I don't think it's shaming, necessarily, to say that sometimes people have sexual desires that they should not express.

I can't help but be suspicious of a line of argument that starts by distinguishing between 'them' and 'your kind'. Whatever tendencies exist are surely - as Janne points out - much vaguer than that?

I'd also dispute the idea of monogamy as selfish. The problem there seems like mismatched expectations, rather. Surely it is also - in a sense - selfish for a person to engage in multiple concurrent relationships despite knowing that this will cause their partner(s) pain. The distinction drawn seems to be about whether a person can have a right over someone else's body, but - to me, personally - I can't help but think that giving someone else a claim on your body is, um, part of

what it means

to be in a relationship. When it comes down to it, if one person feels that monogamy and some sort of mutual possession of each other's bodies is essential to a relationship, and if another person feels that it is morally wrong to ever make a claim on someone else's body... those two people probably should not be in a relationship.

And as far as bisexuality and stereotypes go, it seems to me that it is a legitimate complaint if bisexuality is universally associated with promiscuity. If I were bisexual, I can imagine being very irritated by it.

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Dan H

at 16:24 on 2013-11-24

I'd also dispute the idea of monogamy as selfish. The problem there seems like mismatched expectations, rather. Surely it is also - in a sense - selfish for a person to engage in multiple concurrent relationships despite knowing that this will cause their partner(s) pain.

I very much agree with this. The idea that expecting your partner to respect the parameters of your relationship is somehow "selfish" is one I find more than a little offensive.

My former (and in fact late) housemate spent some time in a polyamorous relationship that she did not want to be in, because her partner didn't want to stop having sex with other women. As far as I know this wasn't a particularly central part of his sexuality or sexual identity.

The whole situation caused her *immense* emotional distress (at a time in her life when she was also dealing with clinical depression and suicidal tendencies). Do you really want to tell me that *she* was the one who was behaving selfishly in that relationship?

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Arthur B

at 16:49 on 2013-11-24I would also point out that you can frame monogamy so that it's not so much about claiming rights over someone else's body so much as asserting rights over your own. "I'm only going to give you access to my soft bits in the context of a monogamous relationship" is a perfectly reasonable stance to take, and saying that people who genuinely feel that way are misguided and should reconsider their preferences in favour of something more acceptable to you opens a whole

world

of ugly doors. If you're saying it's OK to challenge people for being monogamous, it becomes more difficult to turn around and say that it isn't OK to challenge other aspects of people's preferences.

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Dan H

at 17:08 on 2013-11-24Sorry to double-reply, but I'm actually a little bit angry here. I'm also rather bothered by this:

Also, I can think of over a dozen bisexual characters of varying degrees of monogamousness on just my favourite 5 or 6 shows, even if most of them are just token bisexual and really lean more gay or hetero in the depicted relationships. But I can think of no positive (i.e. not evil) polyamourous characters in mainstream fiction besides Jack Harkness (and maybe the Doctor). So can you give the more marginalised group this one, please?

Firstly, I am not really sure that categorising groups as "more" or "less" marginalised is really appropriate. It seems perilously close to oppression olympics.

Secondly, even if it were appropriate to rank the marginalisation of different marginalised groups (and as I say, I am really not convinced it is) I really don't think "number of portrayals on TV shows" is a good way to do it. I'm pretty sure I can think of ten times as many positive portrayals of black people in mainstream TV shows as I can positive portrayals of people who play MMORPGs. Does this mean that MMO players are more marginalised than black people?

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Dan H

at 22:15 on 2013-11-24Sorry for the now triple post, but there were a couple more things I wanted to come back to.

If you're naturally monogamous and lose all interest in other people once you fall in love - great! Go for your 'one and done' relationship (hopefully with another monogamous person)! But don't try to force your perspective on life on those who are naturally polyamorous. And do not presume to judge and shame them just because the dominant culture privileges your kind.

I'm ... really confused by this one. I know a fair few people who are in monogamous relationships, I know a fair few people who are in open or polyamorous relationships (and a fair few on both sides who get really annoyed when one gets confused with the other) and I don't know anybody who stops being attracted to other people just because they're in a relationship no matter how in love or otherwise they are. I'm honestly not sure where you could have got the impression that they did because I don't even think it's a notion that is particularly reinforced by popular culture.

Your whole post seems to suggest that you believe that "monogamous people" are literally rendered incapable of having romantic or sexual feelings for other people once they fall in love with somebody (you state this fairly explicitly). Either I and everybody else I know in a monogamous relationship is actually "naturally polyamorous" or ... well ... that is't true.

You can, of course, argue that the cultural institution of monogamy is grounded in some outdated, offensive, patriarchal assumptions, but polyamory (or for that matter polygamy) is hardly a bastion of sexual equality. Hell, polyamorous relationships which involve a single man and a large number of women are so common that the community has a slang term for it (I believe the call it "one penis poly").

I think what upset me most about your post was the fact that I'm very used to a lot of these arguments being used by asshole men to emotionally blackmail their girlfriends into relationships which they are not comfortable being in - "it's not my fault, I'm naturally polyamorous", "if you really loved me, you'd want me to be happy." And that makes me a little bit nauseous.

Yes, I know bisexual people consider the 'promiscuous' bisexual character a negative stereotype. Honestly, that seems like slut-shaming to me.

I can only speak for myself here, but I really don't think it's the place of somebody who isn't bisexual to tell a bisexual person what they can and can not consider to be a negative stereotype of their own sexuality. I might also add that under most circumstances saying "I know that members of this marginalised group consider this portrayal to be a negative stereotype, but I think they're wrong" when you are not yourself a member of that group would be seen as derailing.

Having said that, I do see the point you are making, but I think you're failing to distinguish between two important but distinct definitions of "negative stereotype."

Some stereotypes are negative in that the stereotypical quality is itself inherently negative (criminality being a good example - and possibly the *only* good example, since to call most other qualities inherently negative would be ablist or classist).

Most stereotypes, however, are negative in that the sense that the existence of the stereotype leads to people treating the stereotyped group in a way that members of that group find damaging.

There are several clear, concrete ways in which the "promiscuous bisexual" stereotype is actively harmful to bisexual people. Just off the top of my head, the assumption that bisexual people are necessarily promiscuous means that if you are openly bisexual:

- People will take your romantic relationships less seriously, no matter how sincerely you are committed to them.

- People will more likely to make inappropriate sexual advances towards you.

- People will, in various ways, fetishize your sexuality, and expect you to like it. Particularly if you're a woman.

- People will assume you are up for threesomes, always.

- People will expect you to want to be in an open or polyamorous relationship, even if you don't...

- ... and they quite possibly won't believe you when you say you don't ...

- ... and if you're a woman, and you're dating a guy, when he says "open relationship" he will quite likely mean "I can have sex with other women, and so can you" ...

- ... which will often mean "I can have sex with other women, and will in practice get really upset if you do the same."

- People will assume that you are sexually attracted to them, and be offended and possibly aggressive if you aren't.

At this point it might be worth remembering that the original comment here was about a fictional character. Nobody was saying that Jack's behaviour would be morally wrong in real life. They were saying that his behaviour reinforced harmful stereotypes about bisexual people which, *as a bisexual person* they were fully entitled to do.

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Melanie

at 23:41 on 2013-11-24

Most stereotypes, however, are negative in that the sense that the existence of the stereotype leads to people treating the stereotyped group in a way that members of that group find damaging.

Yes, precisely. This is true even of allegedly "positive"[1] stereotypes, so I don't see that it's automatically denigrating the thing the stereotype is

about

to object to it.

Plus, even if you haven't been harmed in any concrete way by a stereotype, it's still highly obnoxious when people believe stupid lies about you.

[1]"Allegedly" because--let's face it--even when the assumed trait is supposedly a good/cool thing, there's probably some deeply nasty accompanying baggage--unspoken implications or associations behind it.

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Arthur B

at 13:27 on 2013-11-25Sorry for continuing to pile on, but I needed to get this out there:

Your whole post seems to suggest that you believe that "monogamous people" are literally rendered incapable of having romantic or sexual feelings for other people once they fall in love with somebody (you state this fairly explicitly). Either I and everybody else I know in a monogamous relationship is actually "naturally polyamorous" or ... well ... that is't true.

Adding a data point that this is my experience as well, and to note that "finds someone attractive" doesn't amount to "specifically wants to have sex and/or a relationship with them".

I have spent most of my life single and haven't followed up on the vast majority of attractions I have felt (even if you only count people who are real and who I have interacted with socially in real life). That doesn't mean I get to claim to be going through an asexual phase when I happen to be single and not looking, it just means that criteria like "This person is in a monogamous relationship and I'm not enough of a cad to mess with that" or "I'd rather not spend time with someone whose personality I find repellent, regardless of how sexually attractive I find them" or "I want a relationship of equals and there just aren't many people up here on the God Tier" tend to outweigh the attraction most of the time.

Likewise, it's entirely possible when you are in a relationship for both parties to experience attraction to other people but elect for going monogamous anyway for mutually agreed reasons which have nothing to do with jealousy, sexual health or money - for instance, given that maintaining a relationship with one person already requires a degree of work and compromise, I find myself reluctant to agree to the extra work, compromise, and complication which would result from bringing additional people into the mix on a practical level.

Also, I think there are compelling reasons why cheating behind your partner's back is wrong that have nothing to do with sexual health. If you and your partner(s) freely and without compulsion agreed that the relationship was going to be monogamous (or, indeed, polyamorous or open but with particular rules or requirements to keep partners informed about stuff), and you go ahead and break that agreement, then regardless of whether or not there's a sexual health dimension involved you've straight-up lied to and broken a promise to a partner, which is an ethical breach I find it hard to sympathise with.

(Obviously you're going to have situations where people feel compelled to agree to stuff they wouldn't have otherwise agreed to - hey presto, Dan provided a example of precisely such a thing upthread - but the solution to a dysfunctional relationship isn't to make the relationship even more dysfunctional, it's to end either the dysfunction or the relationship.)

Lastly, I think you can actually legitimately say you have a claim on a partner's time or attention if the two of you have actually mutually agreed to be there for each other. One of the most hurtful incidents I've lived through in a relationship was when I was dealing with the death of a friend and my partner at the time (they are, needless to say, long gone) simply

was not there

on an emotional level to give me the support I desperately needed. Respecting a partner's right to have their own friendships and interests is important and I wouldn't do a single thing differently if I had my time over in that respect, but equally if they exercise that right in such a way that it ends up hurting you then that's on them. If asking your partner to give the same priority to your emotional well-being as you give to theirs is selfish, then I'm comfortable being selfish.