#thinking about about queer space and queer spaces

[x-soapbox-x]

Also. Being normal about men makes it possible for men to be normal about women. Like if you want to be part of the solution, creating a landscape that equates being evil and being a man as the same thing is not how you do it. You can hate men as a social class, you can hate the way men are socialized, you can hold trauma from your experiences with men, but having a predetermined hate of all individual men helps to radicalize men towards right wing spaces because of the way they embrace the perceived value of masculinity (like equating masculinity and power, which also is no good). If you don’t want spaces like that to be appealing to young men, you have to make spaces that are counter to right wing rhetoric non-hostile to men. Hating anyone based around an inescapable aspect of identity sows divisions. Hate on men and masculinity and you alienate trans men, bi/pan woman who love men, queer men, young men looking for guidance from their modern displacement in society, butches, anyone genderqueer or who has a masculine history, etc. If being a man is moral, and bad, then seeing something beautiful and worth saving within masculinity becomes stigmatized and shameful. We share the world with men, with people who want to be men, with people who love and live with men. Men aren’t the problem, it’s the underlying structures built up around men that tell bio essentialist lies about what men can and cannot be. If you buy into that and start to think that men are predators or have no empathy or whatever, you are no longer seeing the world with the nuance it will take to create a better one.

i see "men bad" jokes as very similar to suicide jokes. like making them every once in a while isn't the worst thing, but if you Keep making them constantly. it DOES shape how you start thinking and you WILL become a more unpleasant and bitter person and also make people around you uncomfortable. and sometimes you just gotta choose to not make or engage with certain jokes, even if they are amusing to you, because its just not who you wanna be

[insertdisc5]

✨COOL THINGS I PLAYED/SAW/READ THIS YEAR, 2024!!!!!!!✨

✨MOVIS✨

Knight of Fortune was such a delight. karl's wife is dead-- he has to go to the morgue. to see her one last time. SURPRISINGLY funny given the theme, and incredibly sweet. AND you can watch it in its entirety on youtube

american fiction! incredible movie that made me think. what does it mean to tell "our stories"? what does it mean to show "representation"? how authentic can you truly be about your own lived experience? funny as hell too

if you havent seen Monkey Man, quite frankly i dont want to talk to you. dev patel i will watch whatever you make for the rest of time

the rest under the cut because this list got long

playtime by jacques tati. just slapstick. oh my god this was so goddamn funny

yeah you know it. i was very strong the whole time and then the credits hit and i started sobbing uncontrollably in the theater

challengers and i saw the tv glow are tied in first place for my favorite movie this year. incredibly funny and SO WELL EDITED. highly recommend watching it with friends so you can scream "OH NO HE DIDN'T" together

✨TV SHOWS✨

SHOGUN!!!!!! oh my god there is so much to praise in this show. the costumes! the actors! the story! how they integrated both english and japanese speakers in a realistic way! so good

korean reality shows are not fucking playing around. the editing and sets are truly top notch

✨BUUKS✨

-Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah! what if black mirror was actually good. AND centered the stories of black people. highly recommend

-Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac! you probably were on twitter when The Whole Thing happened. maybe you dont know the exact details like i do. what if the details were worse i also dont read non-fiction very often, surprised at how fun this was to read!

-The Chromatic Fantasy by H.A.! I've been following their work since forever, and this was a delight to read as always! THE COLORS…………. BITES BITES BITES BITES

-sad girl space lizard. hell yeah (18+ only!)

-Gritli - The Moth Diaries by Sophie Florian und Hanako Emden! this one was just so strange and fascinating. per words of the authors: "Taking on the voices of anthropomorphic animals, the authors write about labour, companionship and crushing."

✨VIDY GAMES✨

skipping balatro, splatoon side order, fields of mistria and webfishing, because you probably know about those. uuuuh

i am too stupid for Void Stranger, but My God if you're smart this game will become your favorite game ever. 2D sokoban with so many secrets

marchen line!!! nth circle never misses. the visuals here are so fun!!! the UI! the plot! the almost-automatic-censoring when you see gore, as if your mecha body took a second to load!! hell fucking yeah

"adrienne, of the devil was this year" OH WORD? THEN EVERYONE SHOULD PLAY OF THE DEVIL'S FIRST EPISODE WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR

life after magic! magical girls are now adults, and magic is disappearing. what now? the art is so cute, and the story was very engaging. thank you for the additional episode with [spoilers]

i started nine sols and i think i might be enough of a gamer to beat it

shadow generations game of the year no contest. thank you for your time

you can also look at my massive list of stuff i played/watched/etc here. i am not posting this whole dang thing

[thebroccolination]

Hi Key, your post is the second I've seen that hinted at Joss but without further explanation. He generally has a positive public perception and I only know him from 3WBF (which I liked), so I'm curious where this shift in perception is coming from recently.

Would you mind making a post or directing me to where I can learn more about his general...situation.

I apologize if this is intrusive since I know you don't like to engage in Fandom Drama and like to keep your space positive, but I don't have XTwitter and his Tumblr tag is usually quite dead.

Thank you in advance!

Why I Don't Fuck with Joss: An Extremely Academic Essay of Words and Screenshots

Hi Anon!

I normally would have DM'd you an answer to this, but since you sent the ask anonymously and you were very kind in how you asked, I didn't want to ignore you.

However, two things:

I do generally make it a policy to keep my negative personal thoughts about certain actors to private conversations or, y'know, Discord servers, just to keep it off public platforms where toxicity is already rampant. In this case, though, I think the situation is interesting enough to comment on. (Plus, y'know, I'm amazed he was even managing a comeback when he's been known to Be Like This for years.)

I didn't get a lot of primary sources for this post because quite frankly I don't like Joss and I don't want to look at his face any more than I already have. However, friends who've been following this more closely than I have were able to verify that there are sources out there for everything I'm going to mention. Just, y'know, don't use me or this post as a source. This isn't one of my Citations Included Posts, this is just a Why I Don't Fuck with This Guy Post.

So, for context, I made this post last month, and someone made a more explicitly worded reblog here that's honestly better if you're going in without any context.

Essentially, Joss has had a dodgy reputation for years, but I think because fan turnover is high in interfandom and he's never been in a BL series before, most interfans just know Joss as A Tall Man Who Likes Sportsball.

But when I got into Thai BL back in 2020, Joss was one of the first actors I heard of as ~Problematique~ so I looked into him, and what I learned made me go, "Ew," so I just keenly ignored him from then on. (General gross stuff like the Domundi boob-grabbing prank and some assorted Dudebro comments about women. I don't remember specifics anymore because he was barely on my radar, but a friend at the time who'd been in fandom longer basically told me, "Yeah, that's Joss, lol.")

Interestingly, before JossGawin became a thing, most interfans were rooting for JossLuke, but I think given how vocally left-leaning Luke has proven to be, I wouldn't be surprised if Luke saw the prospect of tying his public reputation to Joss and went, "lol no goddamn thank you."

Gawin, on the other hand, seems to be down for whatever GMMTV wants him to do, so he probably just sees Joss as a colleague he makes out with (acting is a weird job). He went to high school in western Pennsylvania, he has white relatives on his dad's side, and he hangs out with the Gym Dudes of GMMTV, so I'm sure he's completely desensitized and is one of those guys who thinks, "Nah," but doesn't go so far as to say, "Not cool, dude." The Gawin Caskey Method seems to be: throw a basketball, make out with a dude on camera, go home and eat an edible. Dismount.

Unfortunately, even though Gawin's never really made any political statements or taken any major stand for the queer community, he's gained goodwill that some people are now calling into question because of Joss.

Anyway, apparently Joss used to follow Andrew Tate on Twitter until Tate was suspended, so it seems a lot of people assumed Joss unfollowed Tate, but yeah, between the sexist comments, Boobgate, and admiring Joe Rogan, that was enough for me to physically recoil from the screen when I saw the teaser for MGB.

Okay NOW, everything from this point onward is new stuff I've learned over the past month that made me go, "Oh. So he's worse now."

Joss has apparently had that Joe Rogan quote pinned to his Twitter account since 2020, but people just shrugged it off because they like his man stomach or something? (I don't find him attractive, but even if I did, I truly don't understand how he made it this far. It feels like he's been pretty firmly canceled every year since I got here, honestly.)

I also didn't like him weight-shaming Gawin. There's some older clip of him calling Gawin fat, and I know in Asia it's more common to comment on other people's bodies and weight, but I also recently found out that he got Gawin a meat cake for his birthday because idk actual cake is for pussies? (Sorry, Anon, I was trying to aim for an objective tone but I abandoned it because I reeeally don't like this man.) And apparently a lot of JG fanservice is just Joss and Gawin at the gym so Joss can teach Gawin self-control or something? I've had their tag blocked from the beginning, so you'll have to look into that if you're curious.

Ah, and at some point in the last few months, Joss was apparently asked what his "type" is and he said something like "white, skinny English-speaking Europeans/Americans"(?) Which apparently made Asian women go, "Hey, c'mere real quick: good. Bye."

I also thought it was a huge red flag that Joss has been in the industry for years, and his domestic fanbase is still quite small. Others have pointed out that very few fan interactions with him are in Thai, and he's clearly courting a western audience both in his individual engagement and by partnering with a mixed American actor. When he did the LGBTQ+ panel last summer, apparently the reaction from Thai commenters was, "lmao why Joss?" not, "Oh yes, of course, Joss!"

So it seems like GMMTV has been trying to do a rebrand for Joss using Gawin and interfans more generally since Joss speaks English and interfans don't generally seek out the resources to do research. Remember last year when GMMTV announced that Y-MIND script competition? It was originally domestic only, but after Thai fans overwhelmingly went, "The contract terms here are wildly exploitative, so fuck off," GMMTV rereleased the promotional material in English and went, "HEY INTERFANS WANNA SEND US STUFF :D?"

That told me they really don't think especially highly of us.

On December 15th, someone pointed out that Joss didn't just follow Trump on Twitter, he also followed a ton of extreme alt-right accounts on Instagram. Not normal political figures, either. Obscure figures like Pearl, Candace Owens, that guy who was saying Your Body My Choice, and Andrew Tate's right-hand man, and more! Some of his fans tried to point out that he follows progressive Thai politicians, but as far as the American side, he only followed alt-right conservative accounts with zero liberal accounts.

Though, in fairness, someone did point out that Joss also follows famous progressive Democratic figures [checks notes] comedian Chris Rock and basketball player Stephen Curry.

So. Whoohoo for that, amirite?

Since Joss's fans weren't having much success defending him on their own, they threw some @'s at his account to get him to make some kind of statement that would somehow explain away why he was following a deep, deep alt-right fanatic like Pearl. (Spoiler: He didn't.)

The JossGawin International fan club even released the above statement to address the issue, then received such alarmingly vitriolic backlash from the JossGawin fandom for "betraying" Joss that the fanclub decided to deactivate entirely. (I have no idea if they reactivated or not, since I stopped keeping up with this whole debacle shortly afterward.)

One Thai(?) JossGawin fan actually seems to have used ChatGPT to create an English comment to chastise the fanclub for their lack of support in Joss's dire times:

Amusingly, rather than address his fans' concerns or unfollow any of the accounts causing the chaos, Joss instead just started deleting any comment on his Instagram that called on him to comment.

Five days later, he unfollowed 137 accounts. No idea how many of those were alt-right extremists and how many were just extra padding to make it look like a general cleanse, but it was at least fifty last I heard, and the fact that 1) it took him nearly a week to do anything but delete the comments calling him out, and 2) his first tweet after this whole mess was a quote-retweet of GMMTV's message welcoming Barcode into the company saying, "lol this kid looks like if me and Gawin had a baby" just goes to show how unthreatened he feels.

After all, Joss has been this way for years, and his upcoming series with Gawin is probably going to do numbers regardless. He's successfully rebuilt his stagnant career off the support of interfans, and he knows he'll be fine.

Even Foei has a show with Tay! We're all good here. \:D/

So yeah! That's why I don't fuck with Joss. \:D/

This'll be the last I say on Joss publicly.

I just figured I'd make one all-encompassing post so I can link back to this in case anyone asks why I'm not supporting any of Gawin's projects with Joss. It's a shame because I do really like Gawin, but this isn't even a hard choice for me to make.

Oh, and while we're on the subject: the director of MGB, Ark, is also Not a Good Dude by all accounts I've heard from multiple people who've interacted with him privately. I mean, he sure is queer, but he's also said to be a misogynist with some white-people-worshipping tendencies. He doesn't have the highest opinion of BL fandom in general, either, especially when you look back on his whole direction of IT'S NOT A BL Shadow. Just, y'know, another reminder that queer people aren't Virtuous or Evil by nature. We're a big ole clusterfuck of nuance, so you don't have to support MGB for Ark just because he's a queer man. I have zero proof that I can share publicly, so you don't have to take my word for it. Just, y'know, in case you were on the fence, I've heard he's a dick.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go write absolutely filthy gay porn to purify myself from writing Joss's name so many times.

[fairfoxie]

I think most antikin are children trying to bully other children to be honest. But if someone is an adult and still investing their time and energy into hating otherkin, I have to seriously question their capacity to truly accept queer people.

Not because otherkin is inherently queer (it isn't), but because it relies on trusting people with their own experiences despite outward appearances. I think it's no coincidence that the venn diagram between antikin and transphobes is basically a circle. Hell, antikin and racists go hand in hand too as both are bent on disregarding the validity of everything outside of the accepted Eurocentric societal standards. This is not even to mention the absolutely rampant ableism and mistreatment of the mentally ill that permeates every antikin space. I have yet to encounter an antikin who does not use some combination of ableism, racism, or queerphobia to make their 'point'.

If you have such a problem with those identifying as nonhuman things that you feel the need to actually invest yourself into hating us, I have very little faith that you have the capacity to take any other different human experiences seriously either. Because you can't even manage to stay quiet about a community that doesn't affect your life in any way. It's really not a good look.

And on the off-chance that you, as an antikin person, are not racist, queerphobic, or ableist? You are still aligning your beliefs with people who are. Get better.

[hypotenussy]

I think these tags are important. Thank you, @annabelle--cane

Unrelated to the tags but related to the post - I am bi ace, but for several years in my early teens I was dealing with a lot of internalized biphobia and having an identity crisis, and during that time I identified as straight. I was using Twitter back then (big mistake, I know, but at the time it was the main site my QPP used and I would follow him into the fires of Hell if the need presented itself) and my feed was constantly full of people talking about how cishets don't deserve the right to live and if they saw a cishet person irl they would send them to the hospital (sounds like an exaggeration, but I literally saw a post with those exact words) and, wouldn't you know it, that was actually shit for my mental health! It didn't do anything except make me, a repressed bi teenager who was already isolated due to neurodivergency, feel like I didn't have a place anywhere, in straight spaces or in queer spaces, and it really, really fucked with me. It didn't help me find my identity or make me more supportive towards queer people, it just made me more confused, isolated, and scared. So, uh.... don't do this. please.

Hot take but I really do think that some of y’all need to consider how/why/when/how often you’re making fun of straight people for being straight

I do it too, I’m not going to pretend I don’t make jokes about the hets, or the down with cis bus, or whatever

But I recently befriended a cis, straight dude and I have watched him be dismissed, degraded, and unambiguously insulted for the perceived “crime” of being straight — all in queer environments where he is allegedly “completely welcome” and surrounded by “friends”

This guy is not a toxic person! But I have seen him be made to feel so small and like his comfort and safety in those spaces are conditional on his silence and acceptance of being treated like a human dunk zone, and I think that some of y’all have had so much shit from straight/cis people that the second you feel like you’ve got an inch, you want to luxuriate in the perceived catharsis of bullying someone who— actually —doesn’t deserve it

And until he very, very carefully mentioned to me in private that it makes him feel bad, I didn’t even clock that I was involved in doing that, that it had become so instinctive for me to make casual jokes like that, and that— well meaning or otherwise —I had been contributing to an environment that made someone I really really like feel like shit

So, I dunno, I think maybe some of y’all should think about that too

[tmasc-confessions]

I saw a post in the transandrophobia tag which happened to mention something that really resonated with me: the idea that young transmasculine folks (like myself) aren’t seen as transmascs/men by our peers, but as “weird girls who also happen to be trans.” I’ve experienced that a lot in my everyday life, but it’s even more frustrating when i encounter a similar phenomenon in queer spaces; generally, folks are kind enough to (usually) default to they/them instead of she/her when they don’t know my pronouns, and that’s chill for me because I also use they/them pronouns, but I just had the realization recently that I’ve never had someone use he/him pronouns on me in irl queer spaces. Even though I’m always wearing my he/they pronoun pin. Even though I introduce myself using he/they pronouns. Even though I frequently refer to myself as a guy or use he/him on myself if I’m talking in the third person.

In my high school, I’m seen as a weird girl who a happens to call “herself” trans. In queer spaces, I’m seen as a weird nonbinary person who happens to call themself a guy. The “masc” part of my transmasc nonbinary identity is treated as some auxiliary thing that doesn’t really have to be acknowledged, in the same way my WHOLE trans identity is in most parts of my life. And it’s just as frustrating, not just despite but because of the fact that it isn’t straight-up misgendering and I know the people making this mistake aren’t doing it intentionally.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody talk about how transmascs/men get de-gendered, or specifically how people who are nonbinary AND transmasc/men have their masculinity ignored in favor of complete gender-neutrality. I’m honestly thinking of buying a he/him pronoun pin because maybe if I wear that, I’ll actually get called “he” and “they” in equal amounts 🙃

.

[cloudwatchwithme]

this is a very random very simple percabeth rant but i wanted to write it down :D

so i was talking about percabeth with one of my friends the other day, and we were discussing our feelings on it (keep in mind she’s gay and im queer) and how it’s not often we find white cis straight couples in fiction which are otp level?? like we’ve both been reading these since second or third grade and we were talking about hey, it’s been ages and i still absolutely adore this couple, i wonder why that is? and i know this is talked about a lot - like all the time - but i really do think it comes down to the power balance. percy genuinely really respects annabeth, and he’d trust her with not only his life but also with seeing him vulnerable. And considering he grew up in some very traumatic circumstances that’s really important, obviously. and it’s the same vice versa - everyone in annabeth’s life has left her, and she’s been overlooked for most of the time she’s been alive, and then here comes this guy with insane powers and a quest first try, and he picks her. he respects her, and treats her like she deserves. she’s not scared of him or chasing after him and he’s not always protecting her or doing the whole “yeah im normally super brooding and closed off but not with you. you’re different” male ya character cliche. and again all of this has been said thousands of times by everyone in this fandom but wow. they’re strong individual people but they’re still just a safe space for each other. and they’re don’t show their feelings in stupid ways like being angrily possessive all the time or being really overprotective?? i don’t know. they’re not codependent and their love for each other is completely mutual and they still have their own lives, even though they’re a drop everything kind of couple through and through. it’s a healthy sort of depiction of love, and it’s really fucking cool. rick did something really cool.

[wardensantoineandevka]

it is super funny, and I knew this would happen because I saw the pitfall there when I was writing those posts—which, to clarify, were about narrative analysis, not about real-world conditions, we are talking about narrative textual analysis here and commenting on commentary on media works—that many people did not understand when I said that I felt "destroy the status quo" as a phrase when employed without reference to what the state of affairs and its material systems and conditions being referenced even are, what about it is being destroyed, and how we are moving on from that is, at best suspect because it is being reduced to a cliche ideal pursued for the sake of itself until it's an ouroboros, and then these people continue to go "the status quo needs to be destroyed" full statement, end quote.

what of the status quo? what do you perceive the status quo to be? I'm not being deliberately obtuse to be obtuse on purpose, but because I've also seen the idea used in conservative and reactionary circles. for example, while the rest of this post is talking about narrative analysis, the best example I have on hand is a real-world one, the current anti-DEI movements in gaming imagine themselves as fighting against and upending a perceived status quo in video games development in which women, people of color, and queer people are "taking over" the space undeservedly. this is why I am generally suspect of that maxim as an imperative on its own and in isolation pursued unto itself for the sake of itself alone, for the mere sake of rebelling against status quo, full stop.

when I remark that I find "destroy the status quo" to be empty pablum and simplistic cliche when it is put forward without context and grounding in what the state of affairs and systems it is referring to and upending, a principle thoughtlessly put forward in a lot of textual discussions that is chased for the sake of itself, that's kinda why. because while I am ultimately commenting on a media discussion here and the pervasive use of this phrase in various textual interpretations and narrative conversations, my relationship to the phrase is unimpressed and unmoved because I've had my eye on a lot of reactionary and conservative movements that also believe themselves destroying the status quo, so I think it's better if we all actually talked about what specifically we believe is being upended, destroyed, and replaced instead of parading around this maxim as something that is inherently good, noble, and to be pursued for its own sake.

essentially, I'm saying: stop relying on a maxim to do the rhetorical lifting for you and say what you fucking mean.

[concerningwolves]

this last week really has had me thinking a lot about why Loki is popularly conceptualised as a queer figure over any of the other Norse gods. part of me thinks it's not That Deep:

Loki is a more obviously transgressive figure, both in terms of his trickster aspect and in terms of him doing stuff that explicitly crosses gender binaries (see: transforming himself into a mare and giving birth to Sleipnir in this form). He is also often represented as an outsider. All of which are things that lend themselves well to a queer reading.

These same characteristics are also present in his Marvel comics counterpart – a very popular character who, depending on the comic, may be anything between coded or canonically written as queer. Fandom also loves to blur the bounds of marvel Loki and Norse mythology Loki, gleefully playing with the two in a space that is already radically queer, so that one feeds into the other.

Rick Riordan also ran with obviously queer Loki in his Magnus Chase series, further cementing Loki as a queer figure in a fairly mainstream social arena, and attracting more people to Norse mythology with this conception of Loki already in their minds, creating another feedback loop similar to the one mentioned above.

But it's the second part of that question – why Loki over any of the other Norse gods – that I really need to scratch at rn. There is rich evidence for Odin as a queer figure, too, but this isn't something I encounter much outside of scholarly discussion. And again, it may not be that deep, because (1) the arguments purporting Odin's queerness are scholarly, so not something most people would come across, and (2) the evidence given is drawn more from archaeology and sagas, rather than the popular stories that serve as most people's gateway to Norse mythology. E.g, the main argument for Odin as queer is:

Viking society had strict ideas about how social status and gender intersected. Unmanliness was deeply taboo. Laws made later in the viking period and into the medieval tell us that a lot of these taboos were enshrined in law – e.g., wearing clothes of another gender could invite legal repercussions.

Odin practises seid, a kind of ecstatic (i.e., ritual) magic mostly associated with discerning the future.

Seid was, as far as we understand it from archaeology and other sources, something that women practised. A female art, in other words, and not something that men did.

It is therefore interesting that Odin, someone who generally embodies what we consider to be the viking ideal of manhood, uses seid.

(bonus point: Extant descriptions of seid rituals also link it with fertility, and the rituals can have an erotic air; men who practised seid could be called ergi, a serious insult that implied they were the receptive/submissive party in gay sex. This means Odin not only moves beyond the gender binary, but embodies a challenge to norms of sexuality as well)

So unless you're someone who already has this context, Odin's use of seid would just seem like another instance of magic in stories already full of magic. It's also a (somewhat sad imo) fact that modern retellers of Norse mythology tend to draw on the same set of stories, usually those from the Prose Edda or Poetic Edda because these form the neatest & most coherent sense of narrative [1]. That, and mythology retellings are usually aimed at children and young teens, the effect of which is twofold –

stories such as Odin's rape of Rind, which involve him disguising himself as a woman, are unlikely to be included because they're hard to make age-appropriate. This lessens their popularity and public prominence, so people are often unaware of them.

Retellings are heavily coloured by the teller's beliefs and politics[2], and specifically in this case by what they consider appropriate for a child: Anything queer is often considered inherently "adult" and therefore Not child-friendly. However, the story of Thor disguising himself as Freya is ok because it reinforces how men and women are separate and any attempt to cross that binary makes you into a fool; Loki is often written as an evil or even satan-like figure, which makes it acceptable to use him as an example of queerness = deviant and wrong, etc.

Still, I can't help wondering if the popular conception of Odin as the manly warrior god has been a barrier, too. In many online leftist queer spaces these days, manhood has started being seen as the antithesis of queerness; as the gross privileged oppressor gender. (Which is such a hilariously out of touch concept, considering that queer men's masculinity is attacked because of their queerness, and factors such as race, religion and (dis)ability also radically change just how much privilege being a man will grant). There is a real problem with images of gender fluidity, transness and gender non-conformity centering thin, feminine (often white!) and attractive people. Many people's concepts of "non-binary" actually just describe "female presentations but slightly to the left". In that mindset, the bearded guy with a warrior's build, who isn't typically described as attractive, cannot be queer. He is too masculine. Hyper-masculine, even – as if nobody with incredibly masc presentation can possibly be any flavour of queer. It's the entire punchline for why Thor pretending to Freya is so funny (a punchline that is just a transphobic punch for many transfem people).

So yes, I have to ask if this is part of why Loki is usually the only Norse god who gets the queer treatment in pop culture. Because it's easier to create from him a queer figure who is more palatable to modern tastes, whereas Odin still poses a challenge to our concepts of what queerness should be today, even though we have moved on a long way from the social attitudes of the viking age..

[1] all of our records of the Norse myths kind of count as retellings btw and are absolutely shaped by the social context in which they were recorded and the beliefs of the writers. E.g., Snorre represents Odin more favourably while Saxo writes him less favourably. It is very hard to know how people in the viking age thought of the gods and myths and religion.

[2] viking history and Norse mythology (or a flattened, idealistic version of these) have been co-opted by Nazis, neonazis and other groups who idolise the image of white hyper-masculine supremacy that they see in these, too. I think the public perception of viking culture has been recovering but misconceptions about who the vikings were & how they lived still linger, and the impressions of 20th & 21st century bigoted attitudes that were superimposed onto Norse history are still visible.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

"We need more diverse queer representation!"

You cannot even handle queer jews.

[thelostgirl21]

Okay, now that video makes me feel even more uncomfortable with his silence on those issues.

Because, by contrast, I remember this interview:

GAY TIMES: There will be a few homophobic haters out there, people who think a queer storyline is outlandish in a world of basilisks, dopplers and chernobogs. We saw this recently with The Last of Us. Is this something you’re anticipating or are you not entertaining all of that anti-LGBTQ+ tomfoolery?

Joey: In this fandom, there is a very vocal negative space. That vocal negative space is actually the minority, I think. The thing that I’m most concerned about and will do my best to counteract is when discourse becomes bigotry. Then, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. I think I’d log onto Twitter and battle them all off myself. There is going to be inevitable backlash but what we’re doing is worth it.

https://www.gaytimes.com/originals/the-witcher-joey-batey-hugh-skinner-queer-interview/

So, it's unlikely that he's unaware of the presence of those toxic fans, when other co-stars are very aware of it, and ready to state that bigotry directed at others is never okay.

Although, I should mention that this interview (the video you showed) seems to have been done in Season 1 (if we look at the clips they are playing).

And Cavill seems to have understood the question as meaning how does he feel about people seeing his own interpretation of the character in a negative light.

I'd be curious about how he'd answer if someone asked him about it today; while being explicit about them specifically referring to the toxic hatred that has been directed towards the way the female characters have been put front and center on the show, the diversity of the casting choices, and the decision that was made for Jaskier to be portrayed as a "personizer" rather than a "womanizer", so to speak.

Would he still attempt to go "well, you know, people are just passionate about it", or admit that "regardless of how passionate some of those fans may be, bigotry directed at specific groups of people, the cast, etc. like that is never okay."

Because I've met quite a few of those actually passionate fans he's referring to. People that genuinely love and prefer the game - as is their right - and might be sad and upset that Netflix chose to give priority to the books and their own vision / adaptation of the books rather than integrate more lore from the games into it.

They aren't toxic, and they aren't the ones going around bashing minorities and making it some huge morality issue about how the show is not respecting the BOOKS' integrity, and SAPKOWSKI's vision, while clearly defending elements only found in the games (falsely claiming that it belongs to the book), and holding sexist, racist, queerphobic and even ableist remarks.

When we are talking about toxic fans, we are talking about toxic fans. Not passionate and disappointed ones!

Those are two very different categories!

Do toxic fans still have the right to their sexist, racist queerphobic and ableist opinions? Yes. But people that stand against those harmful views have a certain responsibility to clearly state "treating others the way you do is wrong, I don't agree with it, and I'm opposed to it."

And this is where having an influential actor - whose voice is constantly being misused by those toxic fans - remaining silent about it, gets very close to endorsing those views, especially if in the past Cavill has basically said that "it's not toxic, it's just passionate".

Like okay, maybe in Season 1 most were still "just passionate" for the most part, as it hadn't yet been made entirely clear what the direction of the show was going to be (and how much importance Ciri, Yennefer, Francesca, etc. would have in it).

But you've still got that very vocal negative space that has since grown, and that now see Cavill as their "champion of the manosphere", that are absolutely awful online, and feel validated by their Geralt of Rivia's silence.

If you look at 1:28:15, Henry does show support for his main co-star's performances, but he does so by suggesting that their characters tend to be oversimplified. Which is technically okay, because he's entitled to be dissatisfied with the show's writers interpretation of certain characters.

But again, that dissatisfaction is still indirectly suggested rather than stated.

But suggested in such a way where he has the "courtesy" of making his co-stars appear like victims/hostages of a show that is "oversimplifying characters" (a.k.a. failing the source material™), so they can almost be seen like THEY are too afraid to speak out against the "big bads" because they need the money and the job.

So it does sadly make that very vocal negative minority feel validated in their interpretation of Cavill having left because the show was "becoming too woke", etc.

He did also wish Liam Hemsworth well, and the little of what he's ever clearly stated has always praised his co-stars (the main ones, at least).

But, at some point if you've been made aware that you've got the freaking manosphere worshipping you, where does it become your responsibility to say "I know these men interpret my behavior as saying I support their bigoted views and frustrations with the diversity of the cast and the place given to women on the show, but I don't."

The thing also is that, even if he was to say something now , would these people then invent some story about him having been threatened by Netflix with legal actions for standing for his beliefs, etc.?

They've created such a persona for him, that would they even be willing to believe that he's not the alpha male anti-woke dudebro they believe him to be?

But, at the very least, he'd be standing for what's right, rather than looking like he's willing to sell his soul to the devil if that means staying on top.

So, my own personal perception of him?

Somewhere between A and B.

I don't blame him. I don't hate him.

Self-preservation is human.

He's not publicly nor explicitly endorsing those toxic views.

But I can't help but feel like he lacks the courage to do anything against it, because he'd rather prioritize his own popularity and safety above doing the right thing.

Taking a stand against bullies means risking having them turn against you.

And Cavill has often spoken about having been bullied and called "fat Cavill" as a child.

What is sad about that tale, is that the way he says it, you get the sense that instead of having learned to be proud of being fat as a child, and realised that those people were just assholes, he "won" and "showed them" by working and training hard to achieve the standards of physical beauty that those bullies likely held in high regards.

And some people do protect themselves from bullies by allowing them to think that they are on their side (even if they aren't).

As much as he wants to be Superman in real life, I still see him as a child that never outgrew being a victim in a sense, and that will still want to protect himself by avoiding to provoke aggression from bullies directed towards him.

He might secretly agree with certain sexist views of society (A), but I've a feeling that a huge chunk of the issue is closer to (B).

Not because he's got a narcissistic personality disorder per se (he hasn't raised any clear enough red flags for me to diagnose something like that from him), but he would rather have the monsters "on his side", than become the target of their ire, and continue to reap the benefits in terms of them supporting his career.

He's human, not Superman. Humans are messy and scared and sometimes self-serving in the choices they make.

I don't blame him, but I'm not comfortable with the way he's chosen to handle those toxic fans, and I don't support his methods, either.

And even there, all I know from him is the little I've heard and seen in interviews. It's highly likely that his motivations for not saying anything are even more complex than I can imagine.

I've been thinking about The Witcher books and tv show recently. Because half of the things that make Geralt seem cool and edgy in the show just don't exist in the books.

In the show he's always so stoic. Most of his exposition has to be told by side characters implying things and you just have to gage his reaction to decide if it's true or not. In the books however, he gives a full lore dump to anyone who's remotely nice to him.

Random Character: So how've you been?

Show Geralt: Hmmmm.... 😒 😔 😒...

Book Geralt: Terrible actually, thank you for asking. Monster hunting is dying out and I have zero transferable skills. Yennifer's left me again and Jaskier's off god knows where. Overall I suppose it could be worse, but that's the life or a Witcher. Also, my perfectly good leather jacket got ruined in a fight the day after I bought it :(

[cosmicredcadet]

I think i just need to express that the culture surrounding QPRs right now made me think that i couldn't have strong bonds with my friends. Society told me i cant have strong bonds with friends because that was only for romantic relationships. Then i went into aro spaces and this idea was reinforced using QPRs instead of romantic relationships. it was "You can still have strong bonds with people without romance! It can just be a QPR instead!" "QPRs are MORE than friendship so you can have STRONGER BONDS than you would with friends."

it made me think that the relationships i wanted with my friends HAD to be something other than friendship for it to be as strong as i wanted. If i wanted to be the first person in someones life i had to enter some sort of committed relationship. if I wanted someone to care about me as strongly as i did them then it would have to be a relationship that was "more" than friendship.

I thought I wanted a QPR because i was told the only way to get that care and security that I wanted was to enter into a relationship that was "more" than friendship. because friends didn't care that much. because friends didn't live together their entire lives. because friends were never the priority relationship wise. and it took me years to realize that i didn't want any partnership and i shouldn't have to be in one to want these things from a friend. these things CAN be something friends can do. but i found that out on my own. because the aro community kept saying "you want a QPR" when i just wanted a friend who finally saw me as a priority in their life.

[fossilizedhysterics]

guess who finished tlok tonight and immediately had this come to him in a vision!!!!

[aluria-sevhex]

something about. masculinity as a desirable default. the idea of one rejecting masculinity so fully is incongruous. to embrace femininity is to be errant, and an errant thing is far less likely to exist. i find it rather curious how common "[character] transitions and changes nothing" headcanons are compared to how often it happens in real life. to be fair i do need to be more active in queer spaces in my non-online life, but i don't think i've personally met anyone who's an example of this. typically transition comes with. change.

transfemininity is one who is higher on the hierarchy choosing to reject such status in favor of a personal fulfillment at a high price, and such a concept is. incongruous. but if the character changes nothing, perhaps that helps to ease the mind a little and perserve the cultural masculine default.

You know it really is interesting how “[character] transitions and changes nothing” seems to only ever be applied to the idea of a character becoming a trans woman. Just an observation.

[transmaverique]

amab and afab, if they were used as shorthand for the actual full phrases that they signify, with emphasis on the "assigned" part, and an understanding that they are enforcements of normative (ie, dyadic and cisgender and binary) sex, would be like. really useful. but people took the terms and started using them as shorthand FOR normative sex instead of the ENFORCEMENT OF normative sex. so when other trans people (almost always dyadic trans people) ask for your agab they are almost always asking for your Original Genital Situation. your starting point, so to say. and the reason FOR asking is also almost always bc they are trying to also enforce a certain kind of normativity within queer spaces (which is stupid bc being queer is inherently non-normative but here we are). like, you cant be a lesbian if you're ftm, bc you ARE m, so if you ARE a lesbian, then that means you're lying about some aspect of your identity. does that make sense?

it is always always always incredibly.... i do not trust dyadic trans people that use cagab terms, even moreso than i do not trust dyadic trans people that just use agab terms. agab is also coopted intersex language, but the "coercive" part of cagab SPECIFICALLY refers to medical "intervention" of intersex characteristics, such as "corrective" surgeries and hrt. i am deeply fucking suspicious of any dyadic trans person that uses those terms exactly the same as described above, even moreso if they do so bc "all gender is coercive".

like. yeah. that's true. but you use these terms to erase and overtake intersex discussions on the medical abuse of intersex infants. and i cant help but wonder why you would feel the need to do that.

[theladyinwhite13]

the whole “all cis men are bad and therefore all women are perfect and can do no wrong” (regardless of a persons actual beliefs or actions) ideology that i keep seeing in queer spaces is extremely toxic and unhealthy--especially coming from a community that generally criticizes gender and it’s accompanied stereotypes

and also all this does is refuse to acknowledge that abuse CAN and DOES happen in lgbtq relationships, the only difference is that by refusing to talk about it, people don’t know how to identify it, because no. abuse only comes at the hands of cishet men to cishet women right? but ignoring that something is happening is never a progressive way to address it.

and its wild that a community that can agree that gender is a societal construct will also use gender stereotypes to suppress people WITHIN their own community, even when it means being transphobic and biphobic