#to be SO EARNEST and SO REAL with its representation

[lenin-it-to-win-it]

nothing like going to the tumblr tag for a book you just read out of curiosity and finding the authors HARD CORE vent posts like Instantly 

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

When I watched OFMD this year, I literally knew three things:

It was called Our Flag Means Death

It was a pirate comedy

It had been cancelled

I didn’t know Rhys Darby (‘that Murray bloke from Conchords’) or Con O’Neill (‘the weird guy from Chernobyl’) were in it until they came on screen. And please don’t stab in me in the face, but I had never heard of Taika Waititi. I’m very much not the target market for this show. Although I will say I think it’s universal in its exploration of the human condition. So if you’re human, the show is for you.

I knew nothing about budget cuts, editing decisions, or even at this point any circumstances around why it had been cancelled. I had not an inkling it was a romance. I had no notion it was going to overtake my life to such an extent.

I watched one episode a night for 18 nights (I know, I know… I binge-watched it immediately afterwards over two days, and haven’t stopped since). I also had no-one to talk to about the show as I watched the 18 episodes. No-one I knew had ever heard of it. I really was a blank canvas.

And this is what I thought. Other than finding Calypso’s Birthday a little uncomfortable on first watch (and that’s largely because I find torture, even the OFMD variety, difficult to engage with - I always skip the opening of 206 now), I saw no difference between the seasons in terms of artistic merit. It’s possible that because I didn’t experience an 18-month hiatus, and build up my own version of what season 2 should be in my head, I didn’t have any expectations to be knocked down. I just engaged with what they asked me to watch.

I fell in love with this show at ‘My name’s Stede. I’ll be your robber here today.’ I fell in love with Stede Bonnet when he did his little Scrappy Doo air-punch in episode two.

With regard to season two, The Innkeeper affected me so much I honestly think it altered my brain at a structural level. More so than The Chain sequence which is when I think this show started affecting my brain chemistry.

I also loved the development of Stede and Ed outside of their personas. The couch scene in Fun and Games made me believe in them as a couple in ways I hadn’t quite in season one because they were growing and being real with each other. I thought their arguments were so well-written. Man on Fire has one of the most authentic representations of couple miscommunication I have ever seen on tv. And I think Mermen is really good in doing what it needed to do, and did it well. How do you end a tv series that gives a satisfactorily emotional ending, but doesn’t give away everything in case there’s another season?

Ed’s journey in particular just ripped my heart out and then glued it back together. And seeing Stede continue to develop his very nonlinear understanding of the power of his earnestness and gnc self, whilst still sometimes wrestling with notions of traditional masculinity… I needed to grow a second heart.

When I learned of the financial and time constraints later on, I was shocked they had achieved such a high standard of tv.

Imagine my shock when I discovered the Canyon…

It’s fine if you don’t like season 2, or season 1, or OFMD at all for that matter. But if you want me to say season 2 isn’t any good, or as good as season 1, then you want me to say something that I have never felt to be true. When you experience it holistically like I did, it all hangs together beautifully.

[jotadoul]

i'm trying to summarise the way i engage with the fiction i really enjoy, like, the divide between enjoying its presentation at face value and enjoying pulling it apart to see how it works. in trying to talk about it through text it's sorta hard to avoid coming off as pretentious instead of earnest, so just know the crux of this is that i'm both fun funny and whimsical and also deadly fucking serious.

contains spoilers for escaflowne and jjba. and i guess metal gear?

i love to feel. i love melodrama. i love art which seeks to consume you, to share a body with you, briefly, to remind you what it is to feel a feeling. not in literal form (and melodrama is usually taken to mean "flat", lacking subtlety) but a fantastical representation of an ache deeply felt— and in that way it becomes more real than anything. the desperate dejection of the father in INTO THE WEST. the hard and physical, breathless, and then suddenly floating, drifting mood at the end of HEAT.

i've never been much of a shipper or whatever because most of the time, with the stuff i really love, focusing on that feels like a distraction. i don't enjoy Ace Attorney through the lens of phoenix/edgeworth, because i find their canon (and implications therein) friendship (along with larry) so riveting, i want to follow that thread to its many conclusions. if that makes me sound like a joyless crank, um... well, i'm not.

my JJBA OTP, namesake of this blog lol, is a personal delusion yes, but the reason why it struck me the way that it did is because it's based on a moment in JJBA which is then repeated with other characters going forward— a turning point between two people (this is key to it also, that it suddenly turns intimate) which expands the story right out from under you, a painful rugpull, a literary move. it's not solely about the plot expanding— the plot of stardust crusaders remains the same— but the entire work expands because the author has suddenly revealed that there was always more going on, and to stay on your toes. shaking your foundation. everything is the same and everything has begun to change. that's what grips me about it, that's why i find it so romantic, and i mean that in a classical sense too.

going back to Ace Attorney, most of those turning point moments are expressed/developed by the story of the familial bond between maya and phoenix. because that is/coincides with the actual plot, i don't really find myself inventing new "what if?" relationships because i'm so satisfied by the presentation of the facts.

i think the storyline of MGS3: Snake Eater falls into this too. you know what your mission is, and can expect what will happen, but the heartbreak of finally fulfilling what it promises feels completely new once you reach it. the Boss is like the peak example of characters who are aware of their narrative, aware of the role they're made to play by forces beyond their control, and despite being correct, must suffer for it. in my own work i tend to call this The (trans) Male Cassandra, because that's the type of guy i keep writing, almost like i have a vested interest in doing so. it's in this one way that i think characters like n'doul and jotaro are similar, and that's not only rare, but the way it's presented is rare too. especially for a story like stardust crusaders. but from there on, because of it being in stardust crusaders, i can see the future more clearly, and i can hold the story to a higher standard, because it's also holding me as a reader to a higher standard.

spoiler | the way n'doul reacts to jotaro, what he says about him, admires about him, laments to him, tells us more about how we should see jotaro. the way jotaro reacts to him does the same thing. in this singular fight, first jotaro is freaked the fuck out, then they're both having fun and mutual respect is earned and acted upon. when we realise jotaro means to keep n'doul alive, the reader is abruptly put in a position of knowing what's about to come before jotaro does. he should, but he doesn't, because, for this one moment, he thought something else was possible. even the type of death is different (suicide) and jotaro's reaction is different (shock/horror.) we saw rules, we suddenly see exceptions to rules, we knew what to expect, suddenly those expectations are changed— and the immediate tragedy of possibility denied. watching him try to do something we know isn't going to work out also serves to make him seem younger, and putting this in sometime before the fight with dio is a good reminder that he's human.

spoiler | it's a big part of what compels me about folken, as well as what i find bottomlessly heartbreaking about him. death seems to be a necessary component of the role of the seer/cassandra, but escaflowne shows us how desperate and dire the escape from fear and violence is. this being folken's ultimate aim above all else (to free van from the cycle), and hitomi pleading with him saying if he dies, then van will be all alone... hitomi is telling me why it doesn't make sense, and the story then sets it up such that it lacks even the paltry comfort of closeness, if not catharsis, for van. at that point in the story, i can't help but find it cruel in a way i don't find n'doul to be, or even the boss. cruelty is done to the boss in the storyline, the internal world is cruel to her. you can critique the "fridging" or whatever, but it isn't a departure. it doesn't unravel the story, it's key to it, for all time.

i was telling my partner that when it comes to something like Metal Gear or Ace Attorney, the quality of the thing imo speaks entirely for itself. if someone doesn't like it, or focuses on only some minute aspect of it, or goes off on a mad one interpreting signs and symbols that imo aren't there, the thing speaks for itself so loudly and plainly that any difference of opinion rolls right off my back.

then with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure it's similar, where i think araki's career and evolution of maturity in his storytelling and contemplation speaks for itself too, but my experience in the fandom (going way back now) was of people who claimed to enjoy it admitting they neither read nor even watched it, and were in no way capable of or interested in taking it as a piece of art. instead it was something to consume through someone else's summary, as fast as possible. which made having genuine conversations about it difficult when i'd try to talk about textual aspects of the series. conversations were dominated by moralising and headcanons. so compared to the above, i do feel more moved to defend it on that basis.

there's a nasty habit of presuming araki is a fucking slapdash idiot and that none of his choices have any internal coherence, which is plainly wrong, rude, anti-intellectual, and past a certain point, probably racist. the man has written books about his approach to writing manga and there's decades worth of interviews for more. but the game of telephone people play with JJBA in lieu of any sincerely felt relationship to it is a barrier i have a hard time talking through. so while it bothers me and i still try to talk it up, ultimately i have to shrug this off. we're having two different conversations.

then with Escaflowne i feel like i have to defend her with a knife LOL.

i know this isn't literally true, but having seen and read and talked a lot over the years, it seems like a huge chunk of people on earth are coming to it with either preconceived notions and expectations or preconceived notions in the form of feelings crystalised at grade school age. the latter isn't a criticism, it's life, it happened to me. if your feelings crystalised simply but positively, i do believe it was for a reason; you felt something and couldn't make heads or tails of it then. or you attributed it to something which then becomes something else later.

i'm not going to pretend there's no alternative to liking escaflowne, lol, i understand disliking it. however, dislike shouldn't preclude one from respecting it/taking it seriously. i talk about this below, but designating a piece of art— particularly from a time period in which art was funded, lol— valueless, especially foreign art, isn't something i personally want to be caught doing.

preconception of any kind is hard to disentangle because it must be tested. i think it was like that for me, and now with my adult perspective i can really easily point to what about it stirred and stuck with me because i have a map of creative work from then to now which points to it. (particularly in writing, if not art, though i think the film particularly informed my sensibilities.) and i'm still surprised by many things i missed. even if emotionally they landed, conceptually they didn't. which is why i really believe that in key respects it Is that deep.

i see people compare it to magic knight rayearth, but it's simply the truth that escaflowne sought to accomplish different things than rayearth and for a different audience. rayearth's narrative in the manga and anime is furibund in a way escaflowne isn't. escaflowne's masterful approach to pacing means episodes can fit a lot in them without being hectic— what frenzy there is, it's sustained only within the scene for which it's appropriate. but it doesn't have the same bounce as rayearth. there's breathing room. it differs structurally. escaflowne's story is in great part shown not only through character parallels, but scene parallels, done back to back in direct poetic contrast. so from that, i understand it's only being compared in terms of genre, but in terms of genre, escaflowne defies shorthanding. and as time goes on, that's more and more impressive to me. elevator pitches don't do much for me, and "[IP] meets [IP] x [trope]" takes me out instantly. inability to summarise it concisely (without ignoring some key component) is to me a credit to its form, not a shortcoming.

the problem is, like JJBA, it takes time to show someone what makes escaflowne's deft feats of emotional storytelling stand out. even though everyone agree the soundtrack is beast mode, for some reason it's harder to believe that escaflowne deserves that soundtrack. deserves its all-star team of artists. deserves its film. as if to say, you, the viewer, also don't deserve to witness (and are encouraged not to think about) this great joint effort, this great coalescing of ideas.

its staying power isn't immediately recognisable in still images. among things i'll mention further down, lack of time/patience and preference for secondhand experience is a real problem which affects art as much as anything. the art may not appeal to everyone but with how much art i hope fellow artists (in particular) have been exposed to, i need them to come to grips with the possibility that outright aversion to style might be a juvenile bias relative to where they're at in their creative career. if you're a professional artist, and the most technically skilled you've ever been, and you can't recognise or value work different from your own, or amateur work, there is a gaping deficiency in your skillset. unwillingness to engage in "low culture" is as tedious to me as unwillingness to engage in like... theory or whatever.

like great people, great works of art are often reviled in their time, then smoothed out and rebranded, defanged, resold. discussing art and examining ones own responses to that art is i think essential for the spirit and those around you. it's infectious and influential. it's actually, like, good and important to be self-serious sometimes. there's a totally insufferable cowardice in refraining from emotional indulgence. not just making "weird art," but feeling it. admitting your influences. admitting what you wish you could do. and trying.

and i really think even if you don't like the art, there are other aspects that succeed. i'm interested in film enough that i can point out all the camera work, shifting of perspective, timing, that make the series uniquely filmic, utilising techniques we associate with live action. that should be interesting to you not just on its own but because it isn't something we tend to have reason to expect from anime (because anime can tell a story through other means) nor expect it to be carried throughout so consistently as a crucial part of what we're meant to understand. if you don't like the plot, i still think the means of the plot expanding are executed with clever creativity. but it's the same problem: this requires time, and this comes through in motion. the visuals of the series are informed, altered, recontextualised, by the sound and the silence. someone has to be willing to see it, not past it.

escaflowne is a huge exercise in inference.

and it rewards for that reason— it rewards care and attention. because it doesn't beat you over the head with exposition, there's room for more nuanced storytelling. i think that is The enduring magic of it, what it demands from the viewer as a participant in the experience. it's not passive. or, its seeming passivity as a story/experience is a deception. i have full faith in the writer and team that the metaphors, symbols, parallels are exactly as intentional and significant as they are, because they are what sells the meaning of the story— but even at the time it stood apart for the same reason it's difficult to get people into it now, which is that we've since rapidly moved into such an age of western literalism and graceless lore and total lack of respect for art as craft, as work, as language. art as not simply aesthetics, but art as communication. when what's being communicated becomes simpler and done through simpler means, in as simple a process as possible, and only references the aesthetics of the past to imply history/thought without having to think, and in turn buries history.

one has to deeply, earnestly want to communicate something. and be willing to work to accomplish it, risks and all. the risks are necessary. failure is a teacher, and in that way, failure ceases to exist. and i don't say this stuff because i think it's easy. i am bad at working. i am bad at staying afloat. the same qualifiers as always: the work is hard, making time is hard, the work you like may not be what you're naturally inclined to make, not all forms of work are accessible/possible for all people, communication comes in many forms, and it's not only work to communicate, it's also work to learn how to become fluent/familiar with someone else's communication style/method. but that process fascinates me. it's a challenge. i'm not always up for it. but i can't help wanting for connection. i value the time i allow myself to sit inside something for however long it takes to process. if i dislike something, i want to understand my reaction and see if i can understand the method and motivation in which it's told, and if that clarifies something. i'm always hungry to understand. art is also fearless for me— the craft, the labour, if nothing else, makes me closer, more familiar, with the world, including the people i admire. sentiments like this mean so little to me. i don't imagine my inspirations/aspirations in defensive RPF like this and if i were treated poorly by someone i admire, i wouldn't admire them, because i don't admire that behaviour. and, their disapproval of my work wouldn't sway me. but i also don't approach art, or artists, even my favourites, with the goal of permission-seeking.

bearing in mind how much physical and mental effort it takes to create art, i am completely comfortable meeting/respecting it when it's shown to me, and, completely comfortable ignoring something disingenuous and soulless. escaflowne does not need a remake, no matter how much more "content" you might want. look at the anime remakes of recent years, they're horrifying. the source of your nostalgia already exists— it doesn't justify a hollow reanimation.

in a similar vein, i also don't need or yearn for it to be gay or trans just because i am, because my identity comes from myself, and the experience of being me is expressed in the art/stories i make. absent of my response to it, the media i enjoy is, to others, as representative of me as a blank sheet of paper. i don't cultivate my interests based on what i think will best represent me As Gay. i don't cultivate my interests based on the checkboxes of a scene i'm trying to fit into. transness is inextricable from me, but the things that look and feel like transness to me do not to other people. this doesn't make it lesser.

folken's narrative could effortlessly be explored as a transsexual one even if just because it mirrors what in my own life feels intrinsic, inseparable from transness, in the only way i've experienced it. but it's my own art that i hope speaks loudest to the nature and quality of my soul and ethics/ethos. you should demand better. but knowing when to demand that of yourself, not others, is important and affirming. shipping etc. is your own imagination, so you've already accomplished part of the work of creation. not all, but some!

it feels too easy and unfair to insist the series would be "better" if it were less heterosexual, as if profound pain and romance can only affect you if it's a 1:1 recreation of yourself. you are always bringing yourself into what you love. and you can aspire to it. you can be shaped by it. you can be dissatisfied and seek resolution, but eventually you're going to hit a wall where there are no more answers, because they were never intended to be answered in the first place. what's your next move?

i like thinking about art and i like making it. i have insane, baseless faith in my motivations and, if not my execution, then my interest in learning how to execute them. it isn't enough for me to have my interests, ideas, inspirations floating around in the realm of the hypothetical. i demand more. at the same time, i should settle for less, and i'm making a serious effort to learn how so i can avoid burning out (if that's even possible when capitalism is designed to be punitive and disabling.) but i also know i won't be satisfied by languishing. art has been the singular constant in my shitty, chaotic life— by making, i'm also making myself more real.

i'll always be able to laugh at Ace Attorney as much as i'm able to be held in the cinematic grip of, in particular, the drama of the last case of the 3rd game. and i'll always be able to think about eli snake hanging out with his 3 dipshit dads and whipping machine parts off of mother base and zipping around in heelys til he eats shit. as well as thinking about how beautiful it is that david snake fulfills the role/will of the boss in a way of which the same dipshit dad is incapable. i'm invited to play and also to contemplate the critique of the american war machine. i'm not saying this because i think this is a unique ability, lmfao! this is very simple, this is the baseline.

what i AM saying is... what a treat it is to love escaflowne. to enjoy such well-considered art, indulging in the wholeness of the vision. it can't be overstated just how much effort went into its creation— to have not only a series but a chance to revisit in the form of (possibly? definitely?) one of the most lavish anime films ever made. even my ample critiques come from a place of trying to meet and respect the art from its position, in its own internal context, its place in the world, and in my life. if i'm a good artist/writer, it's because i saw escaflowne when i was 12.

and that's why i wield the knife. lmao

[animefeminist]

Genre conventions and a gentle story of recovery in My New Boss is Goofy

Content warning: discussion of abusive relationships and workplace trauma

Minor spoilers for My New Boss is Goofy Episode 1 – 6

When you think of “mental health representation” a light-hearted slice-of-life series probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. It’s certainly not what I expected when I pressed play on a series called My New Boss is Goofy. Yet underpinning this fluffy office comedy is an earnest story of trauma and recovery. This being a fluffy comedy, there was a real risk that the protagonist’s trauma might be belittled by being filtered through the conventions of its genre—in other words, played off as a joke, treated as “no big deal,” or simply not addressed at all in favor of maintaining a comfy low-stakes vibe. Instead, the protagonist’s experience with an abusive workplace and the lingering physical and mental effects of this trauma are depicted with care and authenticity. As is the process by which the protagonist begins to heal now that he’s in a safe place—and now that he’s the main character in a sweet, low-stakes story where genre expectations basically guarantee he won’t get hurt again. Rather than ignoring or downplaying themes of trauma in favor of maintaining slice-of-life genre conventions, My New Boss is Goofy uses its positioning as a cozy slice-of-life story to tell a gentle, but still meaningful, story about mental health and healing.

The series follows 26-year-old Momose, who has just quit a horrible job with a boss that was verbally, physically, and emotionally abusive towards him. Anxiety racks Momose as he starts at a new workplace. Will his new manager beat him down in the same ways? The lingering stress of his past job and the fear that history will repeat itself is so bad it’s causing him stomach pains and he’s teetering on the knife-point of panic for most of the first episode. His new boss, however, is nothing like his old one: despite seeming very competent and serious, he’s an adorable airhead. This is the set-up for the comedy that is Momose’s new office life.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #672

Top Ten MCU TV Shows 2024

Once more, with feeling, we return to the MCU. Last week I ranked my favourite MCU movies – the third time I’d done that in the nearly thirteen years I’ve been writing this dumb blog. Time passes, tastes change, and Marvel keeps making more movies. But one thing I’ve never done before is rank their TV shows.

There are two very good reasons for that. One is the simple fact that Marvel Studios haven’t really been in the TV-making business all that long; y’see, I’m not counting MCU-adjacent series such as Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil, or Jessica Jones; and as good as X-Men ’97 is, I’m also not counting the many animated series based on Marvel comics. No, I’m very specifically referring to the Marvel Studios/Marvel Television productions that are explicitly set in the MCU; so, basically, the ones they’ve made for Disney+. As a result, I can only go back as far as 2021’s WandaVision; and in all that time, they’ve only recently slipped past ten total productions (eleven series and two one-off TV specials). So I couldn’t really have done this list very much earlier regardless.

And the second reason is that I never thought of doing it till now.

So what we have here is something very simple: a top ten ranking of my favourite MCU TV projects. I say “projects” there, and “shows” earlier on, because I’ve decided to include their two TV specials into the mix here. The line between “short film broadcast on TV” and “one-off TV programme” is a very blurry one, but I do think both the Guardians Holiday Special and Werewolf By Night fall into the latter category, and therefore I think I should include them in a ranking of TV shows, rather than shoe-horning them into a movies ranking. But that’s all there is to say, really; this is a top ten of my favourite MCU TV.

Do not adjust your set.

WandaVision (2021): MCU’s TV adventure really exploded out the gate with this stunning, genre-bending, convention-defying mystery. Utilising TV tropes and formats perfectly, it gave us the tragic downfall of Wanda, allowing a slow-burn and rather uncanny conundrum to unfold week-by-week, a fantastic use of episodic TV. Mysteries, guest stars, new characters, big Avengers; it had it all, and some great theme tuns. And it set up…

Agatha All Along (2024): maybe it’s not quite this good, but my mind’s full of it right now. The best MCU show to give us an unfurling mystery since its predecessor, once again we have a drip-feed of revelations that often lead to more questions; once again we have a cool crew of characters to fall in love with. Some terrific acting, some great songs, some real emotional heft, and some overdue progressive representation. Glory at the end.

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022): at once light, breezy, and throwaway, and yet also incredibly emotional and potentially essential if you want to know these characters. Something of a hangout mini-movie, it’s a knockabout yuletide lark, but also manages to bring a tear to the eye with honest characterisation and earnest, old-fashioned love. Also has not one but two genuinely very good songs.

Ms. Marvel (2022): debuting a character so perfectly formed and perfectly cast, this is Iman Villani’s show and she knows it. Kamala Khan is a joy from start to finish, and her down-to-earth world with its down-to-earth characters is a refreshing change from the MCU’s gods and billionaires. Like Black Panther before it, simply telling these stories through the lens of another culture instantly makes them feel fresh and exciting. I hope we see more Kamala and her family very, very soon.

Hawkeye (2021): essentially a PG-13 Shane Black movie turned into a TV series, this is in many ways the perfect superhero Christmas film. But, er, a TV series. World-weary Jeremy Renner – finding new shades of Clint even now – contrasts beautifully with firecracker Hailee Steinfeld, with lots of great banter and warm feelings. But it doesn’t skimp on action, with some fantastic fights and one outrageous single-shot set-piece involving a car and a ton of trick arrows. More please.

Loki (2021-23): I think you could argue that the only MCU shows thus far that essential to the overall narrative are maybe this and WandaVision. Here we totally unpick not just the central character – and Tom Hiddleston’s multi-faceted, many-layered performance is possibly the best in the entire franchise – but also reality itself. The design of the TVA is extraordinary, and when it goes weird – multi-Lokis, time-slipping, the works – it’s a wibbly-wobbly joy. And it has arguably the best single episode – certainly the best finale – of any MCU show.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022): Marvel is often funny, but Marvel doesn’t often do outright comedy; this, then, is a rare gem. A snappy, progressive sitcom in superhero clothing, we have a stand-out central performance, a ton of great cameos, lots of genuinely hilarious jokes, and some utterly bananas fourth-wall-breaking meta-gaggery. It cost a fortune and was, I believe, considered a bit of a disappointment, so we’re probably not getting any more. Savour this sweet miracle for what it was, and be grateful.

Werewolf By Night (2022): unashamedly echoing a particular style in a way not really seen apart from the sitcom pastiche of WandaVision, this is a love letter to all kinds of classic horror, with lots of high contrast shadows and keylit screaming. Manages to be a creepy and grisly thrill-ride, but also give us some nice emotional pay-off with Man-Thing at the end.

Moon Knight (2022): a show by turns masterful and frustrating, we’re here seeing something that sadly happens a lot in the MCU: a failure to stick the landing. The magical shenanigans of Khonshu are one thing, but the highlight here is the multiple personalities of Marc Spector/Steven Grant, and how their perceptions of the world colour not just our perceptions of the show but also Moon Knight himself. Meanders a bit with a woolly ending, but some of its highs are stratospheric.

What If…? (2021-2024): a really bold swing for the fences, this is an exciting adventure show that showcases different characters in new and interesting ways. Whilst you could argue that, with the whole multiverse to play with it’s rarely all that inventive or strange, it’s nice to see, say, Nebula as a detective, or a more playful T���Challa. The animation is often very good, and the way the stories dovetail is interesting. Apparently this year’s third season will be the last. Let’s hope it goes out with a bang.

[tu-es-gegg]

i fucking .

i hate that it feels liek, at least in the trailer, no one thought of minecraft earnestly. like they looked at screenshots and gists of the game and went "haha ok we can make this for the kids" like oh my god, playing minecraft survival is such an experience because your are dropped into this uncharted land that is just generated and theres so many thigns to discover, but ultimately the decision on how to play the game, the end goal of it all; thats entirely up to the player.

and early game, its so serene, calm as you explore for resources, whether its the caves or above ground, then nightfall hits and then its a fight for your life out in the wilderness. and its the management of what you have and what can you build witht e blocks you got, and its the horror of the big caves (esp with caves and cliffs) that are filled with goodies but also monsters, its the joy of making something out of the stuff you gathered out of your own efforts, the exhiliration of going through the laundry list of progression from the nether to the end and then comes the fight against the ender dragon. the end poem.. a piece of literature that tell you that the player is everything and anything it desires to be, the player is the universe and the universe says i love you because you are love.

minecraft is so earnest in its gameplay loop of "do whatever you want" and its been that way for years in terms of its main java version. theres no undertone of "needing to cater to a demographic" because minecraft is for everyone and mojang for so long have worked with that.

this minecraft movie trailer just...reeks of corporate. liek it comes from the mind of some business exec that scoffed at teh screenshots and short blurb of the game, and took all the fuckass tiring industry standard of photorealistic and choosing to live action just so they can have physical actors' pretty celeb faces in the marketing and also so they can abuse the vfx/cgi teams in teh middle of animation unions as if world is hard enough...

like anyone who plays minecraft understands this is an unrealistic game, trees fuckign float so why is it live action???, it should be ANIMATED BUT NOOooooo they want better pay i guess we better loophole with vfx teams too

its like worse because its doing an isekai plot and like,. dont understand why, is it just for the actors to do a "why the hell everything a square XD" or for them to laugh at minecraft mechanics being not to real life? is that it you want your "good writing points" for that? you want a gold star for being sooooo clever?

im so unbeleivably upset but it jsut frustrates me that outsider views of minecraft is that its just a "silly blocky kids game for kids" like they think they can make everythign into cubes and think that makes a good minecraft representation, when that is not ever the case, what makes a good minecrat rep is understanding the source material, hell just PLAYING THE GAME IS GOOD ENOUGH and i doubt anyone here has even played the game or at least done so with earnest attempt to understand the game's core values

im sorry im bitching so hard but i lvoe this game, i have played this game for years and watched people play it for even longer, im so sick and tired of people putting minecraft in a box when its so much bigger, its a game of so many possibilies just from vanilla, but people who dont even play the game dont respect it's openess and hoensty in that freedom that is the central part of the game. they jsut see bight coloured squares and think its just for the kids who are dumb and stupid enough to buy anyhting thats a cube.

[sailoryooons]

Happy August Agust! For the fic request, how about some Yoongi fluff - Fae warrior Yoongi, while out on patrol, finds a human baby alone in the woods

❀ Pairing: Fae!Yoongi (ft. other members)

❀ Summary: Yoongi finds a human child in the most unlikely of places and discovers that perhaps he isn’t the most terrible father figure afterall. 

❀ Word Count: 1,754

❀ Genre: Fantasy, found family, fluff

❀ Rating: SFW 

❀ Warnings: Abandoned child in the woods, a little bit of tough love, Dad Yoongi who is like I’m Not Dad, vague world building, Yoongi teasing his kiddo, unedited!!!! 

❀ Published: August 4, 2023

❀ A/N: Okay this is my first attempt at kid fic and I tried to keep it short and sweet. I really wanted to add the members in like one giant family and like all these uncle vibes and influences and GOSH I think this turned out very cute! Thank you SO much for requesting, I adore you and you always brighten my day with your thoughts and comments!! This is unedited!

❀ Disclaimer: All members of BTS are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios.

| Masterlist | Ask |Hali’s Happy Agust |

Crickets sing their nighttime hymn as Yoongi rides along the road. The moon is a full, silver coin in the sky, painting the world in pale gray light. The evergreens on either side of the road glow blue in the light, their shadows long and stretching in haunting shapes. 

Yoongi does not fear the woods, no matter how dark the spaces between the boughs. He’s patrolled this route hundreds of times and he’ll do it a hundred more. Each night, he rides along the southern border, keeping close to the tree line that separates the fae and human territories. 

For the most part, Yoongi’s nights are boring. He watches packs of direwolves move through the trees and goblins chitter as they run through the bushes. Sometimes, he spots a redcap heading toward the human territory before seeing him and fleeing back into the fae country. 

Rare are the times he sees humans. The humans don’t dare to cross the southern forest that splits the continent in half. Though some villages and cities deep in the human lands no longer believe in the fae, the northerners near the border know that the fae are real and just beyond the trees. 

The time of war against the humans has long passed, but the memory of the fae is enough to haunt human tales and superstition over campfire. 

A soft cry catches Yoongi’s attention. He sits a little straighter in his saddle, tilting his head toward the forest that stretches between the two countries. The back of his neck tingles and just when he thinks it’s nothing more than a distant echo on the when, he hears the distinct sound of crying.

Spurring his horse into a fast-walk, he heads into the tree, following the sound. It sounds distinctly like the cries of a child, worry forming like a pit in the bottom of his stomach. 

It only takes a moment to find a bundle of blankets at the foot of a tree. Sliding from his horse, Yoongi feels his heart thundering in his chest, anxiety setting in as he slowly approaches the bundle. Instinct tells him he’s going to find exactly what he expects. Dread sets in when he looms over the bundle and peers down at the round, tiny face of a crying baby. 

A mess of dark hair sits atop the child's head. It’s swaddled tightly in wool blankets, but the bundle rocks as the baby has a fit. Yoongi crouches down slowly and reaches out gently, swiping the silk-soft hair from the side of the baby’s head. He swears under his breath when he sees small, rounded ears. It is the tiniest of babes, the runt of the litter.

Minutes pass. Yoongi stares down at the child that now cries in earnest, its wails sharp and punctuated with gasps from its mighty little lungs. Looking around, he sees no sign of parents. No footsteps, no horse tracks, nothing. 

A few yards away, Yoongi spots a circular ring of mushrooms and he tightens his fists. He could have spotted the faerie ring right away, but the babe was set down away from it, out of sight. Yoongi knows he’ll have to alert Namjoon immediately that someone has swapped a child with a changeling.

With a heavy heart, Yoongi reaches out and plucks the child from the ground. He bends down slightly and inhales, smelling lilac and milk. He realizes that the baby is a little girl, with plump cheeks. She opens her eyes and looks at him, their dark depths shining with the reflection of the moon.

Yoongi has no idea what to do with the child. But knowing he can’t leave her on the ground to die, he sighs and cradles her to his chest. Immediately, her cries stop. Her heartbeat thrums against his chest as he turns to his horse, careful as he mounts with the child in his arms.

“You’re only staying with me for a night,” he mutters at the babe, who has yet to take her round eyes off him. “You’re going straight to Jin in the morning.”

-

“Nari,” Yoongi sighs heavily, putting his head in his palm. “You have to eat your vegetables. I don’t care if you don’t like them. You can’t be a little runt forever, you have to grow strong.” 

“They smell weird,” she complains, shoving around the greens on her plate. Her wild, black hair is plaited down her back thanks to Jimin’s nimble fingers, and she smells like the lavender and oatmeal soap that Taehyung gifted her. “I don’t want to.”

This is one of the hardest parts of life with Nari, Yoongi things. What turned into housing a babe for a single night transformed into a life that Yoongi doesn’t yet know how to define. 

He remembers that first night. It was awful. The baby had cried all night, screaming with a rage that Yoongi did not know that human children possessed. He’d half-convinced himself by morning that the baby was actually a demon disguised as a human and had every intention of telling Seokjin to take her to a monastery in the human lands.

But then the sun had risen and Yoongi was reminded of a song about the dragonflies and lilies that his father used to sing to him. As the words came back to him, he found himself singing them quietly under his breath and for the first time that night, the baby was silent. Watching him. Curious. 

When Seokjin had finally arrived at the house, Yoongi found himself too enamored by the dark eyes and the blinding smile when he’d sing the baby and bounce, finally unlocking the secret to her silence and joy. 

Now, he doesn’t know how to get her to do anything. Nari is as stubborn as she was when he found her, and now that the five year old has a voice, she can talk back to him. 

“Let’s make a deal,” Yoongi sighs. He doesn’t know where a human picked up such a fae habit, but Nari perks up at the sound of a deal. She does nothing without compromise and is always looking to needle him into a bargain. She’d be a very good trickster, he thinks. “You eat your vegetables every night, and I will let you start training with Jungkook and I in the mornings.”

She narrows her eyes. “And with Uncle Hoseok in archery.”

He rolls his eyes. “And in archery.”

Nari extends her tiny hand over to him. “I, Nari of the Min Household, swear to hold up my end of the bargain by blood and bone.”

“I, Yoongi of the Min household, Sentry of Hala and Shadow of the King, swear to hold up my end of the bargain by blood and bone.”

Leaning over the table, Yoongi shakes her hand. It feels so small and fragile in his, but she grips him tight, squeezing her little fingers as much as she can. When she lets go, she gives a self-satisfied smirk and stabs a piece of broccoli and pops it into her mouth.

“I actually like when you use more salt,” she says around a mouthful. “These are fine, though.”

Only until her happy humming as she eats does Yoongi realize he’s been played.” 

-

“Stop crossing your feet,” Yoongi calls, crossing his arms over his chest. He watches you with laser-like focus, tracking your movements as your right foot circles behind your left. “You’ll get knocked on your ass if you keep doing that. Side-step, but keep your center of gravity wide, Nari.”

“I’ll knock you on your ass,” she mutters, correctly her foot work before bending at the knee and taking her stance again. Jungkook is across from her, wooden sword held up, grin on his face. “Jimin crosses his feet.”

“Jimin is the best swordsman in the kingdom. You are a little runt who can’t disarm Jungkook.”

To anyone else, it might seem mean. Perhaps it is. Yoongi doesn’t know how else to motivate her. Like Jungkook, Nari is a perfectionist with a vicious pride, driven by the need to do everything with the perfect execution. Like Taehyung, though, she is stubborn and hot headed. 

Jungkook leaps forward and the connecting thwack of wood against wood rings out again. The two of them fill the small clearing behind Yoongi’s cottage with clacking. Yoongi keeps his eyes trained on them, ignoring Namjoon and Seokjin who come piling out the house with Hoseok and Jimin behind them. 

Nari doesn’t break her concentration despite her audience. If anything, being under the full weight of her little family makes her swing at Jungkook harder. Yoongi sees the way her movements blend together, keeping a rhythm and flow of motion but no discernable pattern. 

When Nari spins under Jungkook’s wooden blade and uses her small size to her advantage to keep spinning and get to the side of him, bringing her wooden weapon down on his wrist and making him yelp and drop his sword, Yoongi straightens. 

While Jungkook yells about his injured wrist, Nari grins and looks over at the group of men gathered on the steps. Yoongi ignores them all as they cheer, shooting compliments at the beaming child and applauding her for disarming Jungkook.

Taehyung comes in through the gate, brows raised. “What are we cheering for?”

“I disarmed Uncle Jungkook!” 

“Did you? Do it again, I want to see!”

“No way,” Jungkook cries out. “She’s got a demon swing for a twelve year old. That shit hurts!”

“Jungkook,” Yoongi warns, making the younger blush and bow his head. “Language, please.”

“Yeah,” Nari teases as she picks up his dropped weapon and hands it to him. “Language.” 

Jungkook takes the weapon back from her with a scowl and she beams, flashing him perfect rows of teeth as she bows. Yoongi chuckles as Jungkook mutters under his breath, bowing in return before Nari turns and scampers over to Yoongi, her face red with effort and brow sweaty. 

“Did you see that, dad?” she gushes. “I disarmed Jungkook!”

Yoongi’s heart seizes at the word. It’s used so rarely between them. Something unavoidable, perhaps. For so long he had her call him Yoongi until she was finally corrupted by Namjoon and Seokjin to call them by family names. Dad. Uncle. Her family.

“Yeah,” Yoongi hums, opening his arm up as she plops down on his knee, tired. “It was very impressive. He deserved the smack on the wrist, well done.” 

“Aren’t you proud?”

“Yeah,” Yoongi smiles. “I am, Runt.” 

[hero-israel]

Now 30 years after "Schindler's List" came out, I give you the worst article ever written about it.

Join me for a wallow in the depths of Extremely Online lefty pseudointellectualism and Awareness Raising.

"For all its pathos and earnestness, the movie is too glib in its handling of the Nazis. The concentration camp commandant, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), is a sadistic monster who performs cinematic and dramatic acts of brutality to signal to the viewer that he is pure evil."

Yes, the movie sure was unfair to Amon Goeth. It's not like there was historical evidence of him doing exactly what they showed.

"In real life, when Nazis and their ilk are trying to gain power, they often lie about their motives or their goals, and use dog whistles to rally support. They talk incessantly about black crime rates, or, in the Nazis’ case, about Jewish crime rates, in order to create a consensus for strong-arm law-and-order policies."

The Nazis were just a warm-up act for the REAL threat: Republicans!

And, just like with Goeth, I guess this movie doesn't actually show what Nazis were like in real life. I guess when Adolf Hitler promised in 1922 that he would exterminate all the Jews, that wasn't real life, that was a wandering variant from "Across the Hitlerverse." And speaking of superhero movies:

"But you don’t need to deconstruct Nazi ideology or understand racist dog whistles to condemn the Nazis in “Schindler’s List.” You just need to watch as Goeth takes up a sniper position and shoots anyone in the camp who happens to pause for a rest. It’s no harder than rooting against Lex Luthor or the Joker."

This drivel was published 5 years ago, so the author had to have been like 17 at the time and is just barely out of college now, right? Right??? (*checks*) NO WAY, HE'S 52, ARE YOU FOR REAL??!

"The Jewish people in the film don’t try to resist or kill their German oppressors. They don’t even express much in the way of hatred or resentment... Jewish people are always object lessons, never conscious teachers. No Jewish character criticizes or explains the evils of Nazi propaganda. These Jews never talk about how they experience prejudice, or what they would need to fight it.... the Jews around Schindler only beg him to save their relatives, or praise him for his bravery. They never insist on their rights."

Well, there was that Jewish architect in the camps who talked back to Goeth for a second about how the barracks would collapse and he immediately had her killed. The movie is about people having been ALREADY ghettoized by a for-real genocidal regime once the genocide program is under way. Where was there supposed to be a dramatic lecture? And what Jew would have given one, to which Nazi, in which fucking ACTUAL GHETTO?

Again and again, this screen-addled, zero-life-experience baby WHO IS SOMEHOW 52 YEARS OLD WTF fails to confront the horrors of true Jewish history because his only frame of reference has been Twitter arguments about how sleeping with a mattress is secretly white supremacy.

"The targets of fascism are the people best able to express what is happening to them, and what they need to fight it. But “Schindler’s List” presents victims as supplicants. It doesn’t model any way to show support for journalist Jemele Hill, who fell out with her network for saying that Trump is a white supremacist. It doesn’t push you to show solidarity when anti-racist activists demand that Confederate monuments be taken down. It doesn’t tell you that anti-fascist actions are important — even when they disrupt someone’s meal. The virtuous victims in “Schindler’s List” never protest. Because of this kind of representation, it’s easy for people to claim that protesters aren’t virtuous."

.........Or! OR! Hear me out here. Or maybe, just maybe, there could be another reason why the Holocaust doesn't look like a good match for someone being fired from ESPN, or for well-fed comfortable people protected by the rule of law yelling at a White House press secretary. Without checking - without doing even a five-second Google search - I am willing to declare as an absolute immutable fact of the universe that Noah Berlatsky considers Sarah Huckabee Sanders to be more dangerous, more fascist, and more Nazi-like than he does Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The overall mentality is that real life must be a screenplay - according to Berlatsky's written cues. Real life must be cinematic - according to Berlatsky's direction. And anything that differs from Berlatsky's internal script - "AOC uses the Infinity Gauntlet to stop voter ID laws which are the new Nazism" - is simply not credible as real life, as real history, and must be discarded and replaced by more of what he saw on Twitter.

After a long lecture, of course.

[lailoken]

hello Lailoken. I've been practicing my craft for over 6 years now and I've spent so much time researching, experimenting and worshipping. I take my craft very seriously. but no matter how hard I work, I can't seem to see my gods and spirits visually. I feel them in omens and in the way magic works when they're called on, and I even interact with them in dreams. but no matter what I do, I can't see them manifested visually when awake. do you think i'm doing something wrong? 😔

I'm sorry you're struggling with these doubts, dear Anon, but know that you are not alone. I have had multiple people express similar concerns to me in the past. The thing is, what you are describing about your interactions is what actual communion with numinous wights looks like for the vast majority of seekers!

I'm not totally sure how the concept of spirits taking consistent physical shape has become at all widespread, though my guess would be that much of it comes from very literal readings of mythology and representations of spirits in fantasy media. The truth, however, is that such interactions with spirits are not the norm by any stretch of the imagination. I won't claim that this isn't the case for anyone, as I don't like to claim certainty of most things, and people can be quite unique. But to be extremely frank, if you are seeing a lot of practitioners talking about seeing their spirits as if they are clearly and physically visible, they are almost certainly lying in order to self-aggrandize or experiencing some sort of psychosis. I realize that's a fairly serious statement, but I firmly stand by it.

Can spirits be gleaned as if physically seen? Yes, I think so. There may even be some people who are more prone to seeing such things than others. But I think those sorts of experiences are extremely rare, and people who say otherwise should be treated with wariness.

In my lifetime of practice, I have had visual experiences of this sort only a handful of times, and none of them was anywhere near as cinematic or dramatic as some might claim. I have seen hazy, luminous, and humanoid shapes in the periphery of my vision when working with the Fae, which were gone as soon as I tried to look at them. I have seen shadows coalesce in the benighted woods to take on the hyperrealistic look of an eerily grinning face, only to dissipate as candlelight revealed the scene further. I have seen the foam of running water take on shockingly distinct animal shapes when working with a river spirit, which turn to rushing foam again as soon as I focus on them. Aside from one bizarrely palpable experience I had as a young child—which has never been repeated, despite my explorations— these are what physical manifestations look like for me, and even these situations are few and far between.

When my Kith interact with me, I, too, experience it through omens, feelings, and dreams, and they are not any less real or powerful for it. In fact, I would argue that dreams are the place where one has the best ability to truly interact with spirits in a tangible way; its just a matter of training yourself to recognize and interpret different types of dreams. Working on lucid dreaming can also be extremely useful.

So, to answer your last question: no, I don't think you are doing anything wrong. It sounds to me like you are cultivating a meaningful and honest relationship with your spirit kith, and I encourage you to keep at it without comparing yourself to others on the internet. After all, it's difficult to determine when someone is offering earnest wisdom or just playing dress up, but you know your own experiences.

[mae-i-scribble]

I've recently read through all of fabiniku (my life as an ordinary guy who reincarnated as a girl or something like that for the english title) and it's just been such a fun and genuine time that made me so much more endeared to the series than I thought I was going to be going into this. And for me it touches on a very important part of representation and the argument that queer people will inherently tell queer stories better (spoiler alert i think this mentality is simplistic and unrealistic). Because full disclosure, yeah the author of fabiniku is not someone i assume is the best ally on the planet, and i dont even know if she's queer or not. Her author notes have some pretty :/// stuff in them about trans identity and the idea that being trans is a fetish or childish choice. However, there could also be translational errors messing up what exactly she means, and I can't exactly translate myself, so there is some doubt in that regard. But regardless of the author's opinions, none of that changes the very genuine and heartfelt story she is telling with Tachibana in fabiniku.

(putting the rest under a readmore bc its getting longer than i thought)

There's a reason fabiniku got its reputation as one of the queerest isekai's to ever isekai and that reputation is well deserved bc holy shit yeah these bitches gay and trans as hell. Fabiniku does something with its queer narrative that I personally really appreciate: it sidelines the queer themes. Now this may seem contradictory, but for me, I don't always want queer stories about being queer, I want the queer elements to be a part of the narrative without it being focused on them. And fabiniku absolutely delivers on this. It isn't the story of tachibana finding out he's trans and jinguuji finding out he's gay but also kinda technically bi now- it's a batshit insane isekai romcom about 2 best friends realizing they have feelings for each other. Of course, those queer elements are still very much there, but they're entrenched in the characters, not in the author saying "see this aspect of identity, i want to use these characters as a vehicle to tell a story about it." (Not that there's anything wrong with that, its just a difference in writing goals and how one goes about writing themes/stories)

Fabiniku was never trying to be anything profound or meaningful in terms of queer representation, its mostly a gag manga with some large overarching story beats, but the author's earnestness in portraying the romance and personal growth gives the series a real heart that 1)makes it enjoyable unlike some other comedy based isekai and 2) stops it from being offensive representation. Tachibana is a guy who finds himself becoming a girl one day without and warning, and his slow journey into realizing what exactly he wants in regards to his gender identity is never used as the butt of the joke or mocked. (I'm using he/him for tachibana bc literally as of a couple chapters ago we just got him admitting he may not want to go back to being a guy, he's still on the first steps of his trans journey). In the same vein Jinguuji's love of Tachibana is never truly treated as "only now bc tachibana is a girl, no way did jinguuji love him before nope nope." (yes the initial premise suggests this interpretation, but as the manga grows on it is increasingly clear that both these 2 loved each other before this isekai shenanigans began).

There's a lot more words in my head, but Im gonna wrap it up here. Fabiniku is hardly "perfect" representation, but it is telling a meaningful story with a lot of love put into it regardless. Blaming its mistakes on the author not being trans or gay while ignoring its strengths is useless nitpicking. I saw a post saying it would be a much funnier manga if a trans person wrote it, which is such an illogical point to make that I just had to go ????? at my screen for a minute. There's a lot to talk about with this story, and that's what you took away from it?? And im not saying there aren't criticisms to be made, I still think Jinguuji's arc should have been about him realizing that even if he didn't like women, it didn't change the fact that he was attracted to Tachibana- would have made for a more in character arc for him but again, the author was never intending for anything more than a romantic comedy manga, so I won't hold it against her too much.

Anyways everyone go watch or read fabiniku you won't regret it its so fucking good

[fappellmoan]

ok everyone i watched lemonade mouth and do revenge tonight. i wanted to share my notes from lemonade mouth or at least the highlights. (edit from later jk i posted nearly every thought soooo sorry) not much to say abt the other one it was okay. lemonade mouth is my baby though

wen is such a hater

queer as hell movie

i like that this movie doesnt talk down to its audience it's still silly but it treats each character like a full person and it's earnest

flashes into their lives to get to their destiny to meet. i heart storytelling

TURBO BLAST.

'use your voice' ok dyke. sounds like jo maskin

'this is the underground (in all caps)' oh this is so rife with queer pleasures

principal brennigan.... what does this say abt society.....

this is so like gay club queer joy i know a place moment fates colliding queer utopia

music is everything adn everything is love btw

none of the girls are in competition for any of the guys and in fact are arguably queer coded. i mean overall obv the group is

showing the power of queer joy

like MUNA

random little commercial jingle was so catchy

people that have known and paid attention to each other forever and challenge each other to be their best selves through their very existence soulmatism. olivia and wen btw

WEN IS SUCH A HATER LOSER

dynamic lighting <333

'just because you cant see the agony doesnt mean it isnt there' ok gayass

'i could start a revolution' broccoli close up. hilarious theyre just fuckin around

naomi scott brings a comfortable bisexuality to her characters. me when im just saying shit

SOMEBODY.im gonna kill myself.

HAYLEY BG VOCALS OKKKKKKKKK

'or cher' get his ass mo

stella is a true action forward activist im obsessed with her. she and hazel callahan bottoms should team up and rig the school with bombs

lemonade mouth is such a sincere true inside joke for a band name they are all so lovely. theyre my losers club

Determinate. Get determined! Revolution

bridgit mendler egot when

'i like when you smile' theyre just giddy weirdo soulmates

taking away pride?????????? (lemonade)

corporate buyouts. capitalist ownership and what that entails

control

wen who cant deal with change whos living in honor of his mother's memory and his sense of idealistic family and those rigid definitions and olivias odd broken family and beautiful unconventional relationship with her grandmother and opened up raw vulnerability that she tries to protect but exudes in her songwriting largely inspired around and by him

adult babies. ok

FAGGOT BRENNIGAN!!!!! sorry

idk if this is a strange observation but it's relieving that it's not a huge deal for the boys to go in the girl's bathroom to be supportive and lovely to their friend

lemonade. symbol of hope revolution pride also fruity

i used to live and breathe for mo's little bass shimmy

disability representation ayo

mo's back vocals okayyyyyyy also the little dance!!!!

distributing lemonade to the masses!!!!!! proletariat comrades!!!

why r they literally revolutionaries im screaming

'political tirade' 'complete'y disruptive' slayyy

'decisions i make are for the good of this school' ok fascist

flagging

Dante's pizzeria -> HELL!?!

'maybe... we do matter' 'of course we do' ok yippee gay people <3

shes so gone... i just felt so understood

naomi has such a beautiful voice. the naomis should combine naomi scott produced her own shit it would be sooooo cool

olivia being forced to accept her full grief for her mother

friends are everything btw

seeing things in the clouds... natural human inclination to find purpose in everything

'i wish my dad would ignore me' REAL. it's complicated

dad in prison - i feel like they didnt touch that sort of thing often on disney idk maybe sometimes

BRIDGIT IS THAT GIRL.

more than a band. love and community and god in other people

these are my bestest friends btw

'im not pretending to be what im not for anyone anymore' ok gayass

they are such DORKS <3

MO SLAYING EGREGIOUS CUNT IN ALL THE CHAOS

theyre all so linked together in fate and time

oh bridgit is about to slay so immensely shes amazing

bridgit mendler school of acting

gabe saporta ass outfit stella has on

THEYRE FIGHTING COPS WITH EACH OTHERRRRRRR

music center of the universe and love

theater kids <3

okay that hug made me cry

'that is the limpest wrist fist bump i have ever seen' - lydia (about charlie and his brother)

there was some coming out to your family in that hug

fucking good lighting

lemonade mouth school of acting

fucking up that guitar i cannot lie im obsessed w that performance of determinate at the end it makes me cry every time and also that guitar is soooooo

this guy is cooler than steve harrington yeah i still just have stupid beef with that stupid fandom

kiss on the cheek is so sweet <333

he brought her a kitten. he brought her a kitten. he brought her new life/a feeling of rebirth of coming into yourself and just living. not perfect but okay. they could do peeta and katniss who will follow you to your ruined home and plant a garden there. i threw my pen across the room and screamed over this btw.

SHE MET MEL LEMONADE MOUTH

queer utopia

faghag pair

charlie = afycso, naomi scott ~ dianna agron, wen ryan ross pretty odd outfit

okay goodnight <3

[denimbex1986]

'The film: Writer-director Andrew Haigh (Looking, Weekend) has always had his finger on the pulse of contemporary LGBTQ+ storytelling and the queer experience, but All of Us Strangers sets a new high bar. The contemplative, dreamy drama follows Adam (Andrew Scott), a gay man who shares a massive apartment complex with one other resident, Harry (Paul Mescal). When Harry and Adam strike up a connection, it spurs Adam’s memories of his late parents — played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell — as he imagines conversations they never got to have after they died in a car crash when he was only 12.

Scott earned raves for his melancholy performance and his quicksilver ability to transform himself into a child of different ages purely through his acting choices. He made the rounds at all the major awards season events and did heaps of interviews, but he still largely missed out on nominations outside of the Golden Globes and Spirit Awards. Though they received even less awards love, Bell and Foy both turn in remarkable performances as parents out of time and space fumbling through their earnest efforts to love their son. Haigh was also in the adapted screenplay mix for his take on Taichi Yamada’s novel but never quite broke through. And while he isn’t as central or as flashy as Scott, Mescal is also riveting.

Why it wasn’t nominated: To be honest, this one is a real head-scratcher. The film is perhaps a bit more poetic than strictly linear, which simply doesn’t connect with some filmgoers. Not to mention, Scott is widely beloved in the industry and put in the WORK on the awards circuit (we’d like a collage of his snazzy suits this season). But he was also snubbed for his brilliant work in Fleabag by the Television Academy, so go figure.

All of Us Strangers also could've benefitted from a release date that didn't bury it near the end of December — it had a successful festival circuit run, so why not get it in theaters sooner and maintain the momentum?

From a strictly financial perspective, one could argue that Searchlight didn’t invest in All of Us Strangers’ campaign as much as they did for Poor Things, which secured 11 Oscar nominations. Often, smaller studios (or indie branches of bigger studios) don’t have the biggest budgets for FYC campaigns and they have to put their money behind what seems to be connecting most with voters (in this case, it was Poor Things, not All of Us Strangers). Poor Things is arguably a more provocative and wildly stranger film, but it does center on the coming-of-age of a conventionally attractive young woman.

Which brings us to the possibility of a grimmer truth: Despite massive strides in the industry when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation on screen, sometimes the Academy can still seem, well, homophobic. At best, they seem to only get excited about films related to the AIDS crisis (bonus points for straight actors playing AIDS victims. See: Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club). Famously, Brokeback Mountain lost out on Best Picture to Crash, still widely considered one of the biggest, most frustrating Oscar upsets of all time. At the time, pundits blamed older voters who didn’t want to vote for a gay love story. Nearly 20 years later, we would hope the Academy would be past that. But maybe the power of queer love still just isn't enough.

Why history will remember it better than the Academy did: Like so much of Haigh’s work, All of Us Strangers is an essential entry in queer cinema. Not only because of the sensual, heartbreaking love story at its center, but also because of the ways it distills the challenges of a particular generation to straddle the line of Gen Z’s openness and acceptance with the more closeted, repressive upbringings they endured. Scott’s Adam is actively trying to find his place, caught between the more unapologetic model of Harry’s sexuality and his loving, if lacking childhood.

Through the lens of sexuality, All of Us Strangers unpacks the primal need to be better understood by our parents, while also acknowledging that sometimes love is the best they have to offer. Grief is a thorny subject for filmmakers, in part because it’s such a unique and personal experience for each of us. No one mourns in exactly the same way (and that’s not even accounting for what society deems the “proper” way to do so). All of Us Strangers is deeply affecting in its melancholy, its intricate study of the furrows and sense memories of grief. The bruise it leaves on viewers’ hearts should linger long after this year’s Oscars.'

[herculeskosta]

ˏ⁀➷

HERCULES KOSTA ( he/him ) is a THIRTY year old DEMIGOD who currently works as a PERSONAL TRAINER at UPPERCUT CLUB GYM. ( hannah , twenty-eight , she/her/hers , bst ) .

STATS.

FULL NAME : Hercules Kosta .

AGE : Thirty .

DOB : 21 June .

PRONOUNS : He/him ( male ) .

NATIONALITY : Greek / American .

SEXUALITY : Heterosexual ( open to change ) .

POWER(S) : Super strength

HEIGHT : 6'2" .

EYE COLOUR : Brown .

HAIR COLOUR : Golden brown .

PROFESSION : Personal Trainer and Co-owner of Uppercut Club Gym .

LOCATION : Evermore ( 2 bed apt ) .

FAMILY : Amphitryon Kosta ( adopted father ) , Alcmene Kosta ( adopted mother ) , siblings ( none ) , biological parents ( unknown ).

PETS : Greek shephard, Laila .

PIERCINGS/TATS : None .

SMOKING/DRUGS : Yes / no .

BIO. ( skeleton )

HERCULES should have been a hero at high school. He was tall, fit, cute ( if he could trust his mom’s word, which he unfalteringly did ). Sure, he was a little naive, but movies told him that didn’t really matter. He had HEART, and he could lift his dad’s truck up to check its suspension like it was nothing. Yet for whatever reason, a nice smile and an earnest introduction just brought him ridicule and distrust. THE THREATS NEVER CAME TO PASS — not once a punch from the strongest guy on the football team couldn’t land, and Herc remained standing as if it was a fly that pummeled into his chest. Still, his hidden power just painted him more of a freak. He was ostracized, stigmatized but, most prudently, he was CONFUSED. Why didn’t he belong here, in this world where kindness, strength and sincerity were supposed to be celebrated ? OUT IN THE REAL WORLD, it started to fall into place . His get-go attitude was appreciated ( when it benefited the other party ). His strength was admired ( when it came with a wink or win for the team ). He found that helping people helped himself and, truthfully, he didn’t mind that. In fact, he figured that's how the world should work — karma, or something akin to it. BUT HERC’S NAIVETY will forever be his Achilles' heel. He trusts too easily and, worse, he refuses to entertain the idea that believing the best in people could ever be a character flaw. He’s not all brawn and no brain, he just doesn’t want the world to CORRUPT him the way he’s seen it corrupt others. He wants to make his parents proud. He wants to make Phil and Peyton proud. And if the risk is a lifelong representation as a dumb jock, so be it. When he finds his place, everyone there will love him for who he is. THOUGH HE DOESN’T KNOW IT, Evermore is the most at home Hercules has ever felt. The people here are a little odd, just like him. He goes to the gym regularly, he helps people who need it, his parents are fed and content, and he feels inches away from … belonging? But that hope doesn’t sit alone, and a looming fear drips like a slow poison into his bloodstream. Something dark is following him, and he worries he won’t be strong enough to face it head-on.

HEADCANONS .

Hercules currently lives in a small, modest apartment, just twenty minutes driving distance from his parents, AMPHITRYON and ALCMENE. His parents were honest about the circumstances of his adoption when he was ten years old, but he’s never seen them as less than his mom and dad, and he’d lift the world for them. Still, on quiet nights he does ponder the details of his biological parents — why they let him go, and if they might explain his supernatural strength.

Though his name’s on the lease for UPPERCUT CLUB, he’s not exactly ‘business minded.’ Phil deals with pretty much everything ( and deals is exactly what he does ). Hercules is the FACE, and it’s a job not done by halves — he’s a little embarrassed, actually, to see photos of him in tight gym gear plastered all over the shop, in local magazines, and grinning nervously from the gym’s Insta stories.

Hercules has a Greek Shepherd called LAILA, named after Lailaps, the myth of a magical dog who was destined to always catch its prey. When he saw the story on the little white card at the shelter, he felt an immediate connection with her — a creature with a gift that, under the wrong influence, could easily become a curse.

Over time, he’s become very settled into routine. He blames Phil’s training regimes, mainly. He’s up at dawn, protein shake and egg on toast, 10K run with Laila, food shop for his ma and pa, PT sessions and group classes, dinner in Uppercut’s office ( meal prep from Sunday ), and home in time for some light TV. It’s almost, sort of, dare he admit it, boring ? And something inside of him yearns for an extra drip of danger in his daily life.

He’s a SOFT ROMANTIC and extremely inexperienced. Catch this boy blushing and stuttering at the mere glance from a pretty lady but, if ever the time comes, he’ll be at the door with flowers trying his damn best not to mess it up.

[itz-bug]

Saw blue beetle today !!!! And i am happy to say it was very good and fun :D definitely go see it if you can

Gonna talk about it lots under the cut! To be honest, this post is more for me to just record my own thoughts for myself, but you’re welcome to read if you’re looking for the movie opinions of a certified Blue Beetle Enthusiast, or if you’re desperate to feed on the Ted Kord crumbs the movie leaves for its viewers. (To be honest most of it is me talking about Ted sorry. hes my bbygirl)

- very minor spoiler warning -

First things first:

Jaime was so good!!!! His character was so sweet and earnest, and they aged him up to around 22 (he’s literally just graduated from college), which I think makes him a very unique superhero. He’s just returned from school as a first gen college student and feels like he’s finally in a position where he can provide for his family, only to realize he’s still totally unprepared for the real world.

Speaking of family, the Reyes family is the backbone of the film, and each of Jaime’s family members is given their time to shine. Another breath of fresh air for comic book movies! Not only does the hero have a family, but the family consists of fleshed-out characters who all bring different strengths to the group. I liked Milagro a lot specifically. Like Jaime, she’s also been aged up and is now probably 17-18. I thought she was written super well. She’s sarcastic and relaxed, and her relationship with Jaime is perfect sibling representation. Milagro is given a surprising amount of emotional moments, adding to her depth but also not taking away from any of Jaime’s development. Honestly, if you’re on the fence about going to see the movie, go see it just for the Reyes family dynamic. They’re seriously all great.

The other main supporting character is Jenny Kord, Ted Kord’s daughter. Jenny is smart and resilient, and I enjoyed her a lot, despite her bearing very little resemblance to Ted personality wise. I know why she exists: to push the plot and act as the link between the two blue beetles. She’s also Jaime’s love interest because of heteronormativity reasons. Still, I thought her character was done very well. Jenny is half brazilian and thankfully NOT Beatriz da Costa’s daughter. Her relationship with either of her parents isn’t explored much. Her (unnamed and presumably unimportant) mother died when she was young, and Ted disappeared off the face of the earth when she was only eight— I think. To be honest, the timeline confused me a little.

Anyways, Ted Kord is portrayed very interestingly in the movie. Not in a necessarily bad way, though. Ted makes zero physical appearances in the film outside of a single, vague painting of his likeness where he has a mustache and maybe a beard (wow!). That being said, his face is totally unremarkable and unrecognizable. Which is fine. I’d almost prefer them to keep him vague unless they give him a full-fledged appearance.

BUT, there is a scene where Jaime has to change clothes, and Jenny offers him some of Ted’s old clothing, and Jaime walks out in a bright blue windbreaker tracksuit. It’s totally 80s, totally silly, and totally Ted. The nod towards not only Ted’s outrage fashion sense but also his 80s dad vibe was very much appreciated.

There are lots of little moments in the film where Ted’s silliness seeps through. His lab is one example. Jaime describes Ted’s gadgets as “batman but if he had ADHD.” In the Bug, the computer has a female robotic voice that addresses him as “Teddy,” which Jaime’s uncle compliments as sexy. Ohhh the Bug. Easily one of my favorite parts of the film. It’s beautiful. It looks just like it’s comic book counterpart, with the little trapeze rope swing and everything. It also has a “beast mode,” where, when triggered, the Bug plays 80s rock and starts destroying everything around it. It’s also capable of poison gas farts. Perfect. Ted’s personality shines through everything he’s left behind, giving me hope for whatever might be in store for his character on the big screen.

The only reservations I have about Ted’s transition to film would he his relationships. His sister, Victoria, functions fine as a villain but isn’t anything special. She’s a capitalist. She’s evil. Like Jenny, lacks similarity to Ted himself. As for Ted’s dead wife (sad but also it’s hard to care), Jenny describes her mother as the one who “showed Ted the world was worth protecting,” which doesn’t sit quite right with me. For one, it seems weird to make a dead, non-comic-canon character so relevant to Ted’s superhero origin, and also, I think Ted deserves a little more credit than that. I’d like to think he’s always been a good guy, plain and simple. It also means Ted couldn’t have been a superhero for very long, which I think detracts from his coolness. I think Jenny even said Ted became blue beetle when she was a young girl, so it sounds like he couldn’t have been a hero for more than like 10 years? It just seems like a strange and unnecessary change to make. Then again, I realize most of the people watching the movie care very little about the second blue beetle, so I guess I can’t complain too much while knowing the intended audience.

That’s not gonna stop me from talking about boostle though!!!!! Unfortunately, Booster Gold is not so much as even hinted at in the movie, which I kind of get but still mostly hate. It just feels wrong to have a movie where Ted Kord’s career is one of the driving plot points and Booster is nowhere to be found. They are a package deal, DC!! I wasn’t even really expecting a verbal mention of him. Literally just a gold star somewhere in the lab, or a pair of yellow visors, or a blue and gold poster, or SOMETHING.

The life of a boostle fan is one of disappointment.

Still, the optimist in me is saying to hold onto hope. There’s a Booster Gold series in the works, so maybe DC is saving up for a totally reinvented blue and gold origin, or there’s some connection between the two that has yet to be discovered. Hopefully. Surely DC wouldn’t be stupid enough to overlook one of its most iconic duos? haha?

Okay. This post has run a lot longer than I thought it would. Ultimately, Blue Beetle is a very good movie that does the characters of Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes justice. It’s fun and silly but also heartfelt. Even though there’s a few minor things I’m hung up on (because I’m insane), Blue Beetle did a lot of things right, and I feel like this movie has been one of the best comic book adaptations yet. Here’s to hoping we see a live action Ted one day, and he doesn’t totally suck ass.

[thisisatesttai]

Why the superhero genre needs The Boys

The thing I love about The Boys is what it says about the people who tell us they are the heroes.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe implies to us that people like soldiers and billionaires and Walt Disney are heroes, this is part of its ultimate narrative. It gives us an idealized version of these people which, in-universe, holds up; we understand why these characters are making these decisions, it’s still a well-told story. But the association is not-so-subtly drawn between these institutions and the heroics of the characters. If we can imagine that Tony Stark is a billionaire who’s trying to do right by the power he already has, we can believe that Bill Gates is, too. I mean, Elon Musk had a cameo in Iron Man 2. That’s why we need a show like The Boys.

Which is hosted on Amazon so don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s a replacement for real-world action, it just happens to be able to say something about it.

Everyone on The Boys is someone we’ve been told is a hero. A-Train is an athlete, Starlight is a celebrity, Homelander is the police and the military and the government all rolled into one, and we see how they use and are abused by that power and that tells us about those institutions. We can see how the real life Tony Starks see the world as Vought sees the world.

The Starlight plot is honestly my favorite, because my worry going into a show like this is that it would be decidedly anti-superhero. You see, I like superheroes. God damn it I love superheroes. If you’re going to repurpose the conventions and tropes from my favorite genre and associate it with the horrors of the real world, it’s easy to make the case that the genre is the problem. I mean, that’s how Internet discourse works, anyway. But in Starlight, we see a fully earnest representation of what a superhero is meant to be. She genuinely believes in herself and wants to use her power to help people, but she’s a victim of these structures, too. So the show becomes about how those power structures will squash any kind of genuine act of heroism.

Now, these are all things that are present in the comic. But one worry that I have with these kinds of deconstructions is that they stop there. Even the most optimistic reading of Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns--let alone something like Wanted--stops there. But The Boys goes on to examine how ultimately, everyone is a victim of this situation. A-Train is a victim of trying to hold onto his ticket out of poverty. The Deep is a victim of stigmatisation and male posturing as much as he is a perpetuator of it. Everyone at Vought, from Ashley to Stillwell to Stan Edgar is struggling to survive in this abusive system just as much as anyone else. The structures are what needs to go.

Even Homelander, a monster by any metric and the mouthpiece for the ideology that creates these power structures is ultimately a victim as well. He believes with all his heart that might makes right and fights every day to make sure that it stays that way, and we can see how that fight is killing him. How the things he longs for get farther out of reach the more he clings to his position of power. (Spoilers for season three btw) Even though he’s created this ideal, there’s still someone who embodies that image better than him. Soldier Boy is a more manly, more rugged, more confident version of Homelander--and even he was just like Homelander, with someone disappointed in him. It’s a cycle, and that cycle is the problem.

All that gives some context for Butcher's persona. Butcher represents the worst version of what The Boys could be. He rejects the power structure that gives Homelander power, but keeps all the ideologies that created that structure. You gotta be mean, you gotta be tough, you gotta do whatever it takes by any means necessary. And he may be right in this scenario, in the short term, because of the situation they’re in, but he has no concept of a world after that. “Scorched Earth” and all that. It makes me really apprehensive as to where they’re gonna go with his character in the next seasons, because he is being given every reason to double down on that. Things could get really interesting, but I worry they’re gonna get too repetitive on the way.

And then there’s Hughie. I love how he presents the real-world practice of this philosophy. Starlight is the answer to the Butcher question of where you draw the line and still accomplish what needs to be accomplished, but in Hughie we answer the question of how this heroism translates to a world where we don’t have superpowers on our side. His conversations with Starlight and his support of her are something we can carry into the real world as an application for the metaphors at work in the series's allegory. Maybe it’s because I just like thinking about Everything Everywhere All At Once, but I feel like at the end of season three, Hughie is learning the ideal that Waymond represents. He--and really, all the Boys except Butcher--show us how caring for the people around you is really the only form of heroism that exists. As long as we’re paying attention to each other and trying to make each other’s lives easier, we can identify our enemies and dismantle what they’ve built. Sometimes that requires violence because the situation is particularly desperate, but it also presents alternatives.

Anyway, The Boys is really good cape shit for a world that has a lot of mediocre cape shit.

[gorey-gorella]

It’s a genuine shame that you think academics like Cathy Cohen aren’t worth listening to because they supposedly use too many “buzzwords�� (another silly anti-academia fear mongering term) or “get to the point quickly enough”... It’s obviously important to consider the positioning/background of your sources, but Ieft-leaning ones tend to be more in line with facts than right-leaning ones, especially notorious grifters like Shoe0nhead.

You keep bringing up observable reality as if it exists in opposition to my positions when it’s not. As a fellow atheist, I also acknowledge that subatomic particles not being observable by my eye does not make them any less real or measurable. Things like systemic racism have numerical evidence and historical context.

I called your description of the left exaggerated because you clearly do not understand what “be gay, do crime” even means (i.e. associating it with gays thinking they’re above the law as a whole as opposed to it’s actual meaning of participating in civil disobedience/good trouble to create more just laws/eradicate unjust laws).

Mike is literally one of the creators, safe to say he knows what ATLA stands for better than you do.

A show can be leftist and also critique it. The video game Disco Elysium is communist but critiques communism. Also, a monarchy is still a form of government and the show doesn’t need to display a one-to-one governmental representation of its ideology to hold said ideology (After all, suggesting Mike is advocating for monarchy would be a silly lack of media literacy). Furthermore, saying that authoritarianism isn’t bad on its own is interesting, to say the least… Also, while liberalism, leftism, and libertarianism may have some overlaps, they are all distinct and you seem to keep conflating them. I think it’s similarly interesting that you think Airbenders were too pacifistic, but label the entire anti-fascist movement as too extreme (i.e. support more active forms liberation for fictional characters, but not for real oppressed people). ATLA promotes balance as a means to prevent/resist authoritarianism and fascism, not to endorse centrism.

Of course not all right-wingers are exactly the same, people across the board are individuals. Some extreme right-wingers love Trump and some hate him because they’re also not a monolith. However, at its core, the right is united by inherently harmful and dehumanizing ideologies.

I’m obviously left-leaning and I own that. Bias is impossible to avoid, being a centrist is still buying into certain forms of propaganda, so the best one can do is align themselves with whatever position is most in line with facts/has the most consistent and harm-reductive worldview. I am, however, not caught up in culture war bull like worrying about people’s gender identity. You genuinely think the left is out to “eliminate masculinity” or whatever that means when it’s all in your head and you responded in earnest to a shitpost. No one is force-feminizing men against their will and you seriously need to change your media diet if you think that.

Buzzwords aren’t a leftist thing. If a right winger is saying top many buzzwords, I tend to tune off from them, too.

I never said anything in my other post about the left holding men down and making them wear a dress.

My point was that the left hates men who are mentally dominant and have their own opinions in any way. They don't actually care for men being able to express their feminity. They just want men to submit everything. Most 'feminine' men I see on the left are either gay and act exactly like stan Twitter users or just completely submit themselves to the left, and they drink, 'respect women juice'.

They may be 'joking', but I can tell its based on their own beliefs. Especially since one of the comments was on the person's side and was all like, 'The misandry truthers' like if misandry clearly doesn't exist.

As I said, it's not like I don't use data at stuff at all, I just don't use the ones with buzzwords, half-ass data, and clearly with an extreme bias. Cathy Cohen has a clear bias of wanting to make blacks and lgbt people look like victims of everything.

I'm not rejecting data or academia. I'm rejecting studies that are clearly agenda-driven and full of emotional buzzwords. Bias exists in academia, and that's why I won't blindly accept someone like Cathy Cohen, who constantly frames minorities as helpless victims of everything.

Mike literally can be flawed. And just because years later, he quoted some dumb shit doesn't mean that ATLA meant that back then.

I never said Mike meant that we should become a monarchy, I meant that the show, in general, was anti-extremes. That's why they didn't dismantle the monarchy, he may disagree with it, but it's not an extreme in it of itself, that's why the monarchy wasn't destroyed.

Just because Mike DiMartino is the creator doesn't mean his later political takes rewrite the themes of ATLA. The show is about balance and resisting extremes, not about pushing a single political ideology. Creators don't get to dictate how we interpret their work years later.

Antifa is a garbage movement. I am anti-fascist. That doesn't mean much. That doesn't say much about my beliefs. Saying your anti-fascist does really mean anything. Antifa is a radical, dangerous movement that harms those they disagree with.

I literally agreed it was anti-fascism. It's just not completely anti-auth, or else, the Firelord and Royal system would be dismantled all together.

The right thinks the same thing of the left. They think at its core, all the left and libs are trying to destroy everything they love.

For me, centrism makes the most sense because it's not on one side. It takes in all perspectives.

Centrism isn't propaganda-it's about taking a balanced view and rejecting extremism on both sides. It allows me to evaluate issues based on logic and evidence, not just tribal loyalty to a political camp.

I call out the night's bullshit too. Where did you get me saying I'm worried about that? I'm saying the left never has cared about men(exactly why the right can easily brainwash them on being on their side).

The left ignores men's issues, which is why the right has such an easy time pulling men into their camp. The left only 'cares' about men when they fit their agenda, and that's why many men feel alienated and brainwashed by the right.

Also, Mike and many other creators can be stupid, especially in the future. He could just be following the dumb modern trends now.

I'm not sure if Mike quoted it 2016(the time of Trump) or in a later year, but ATLA was made in 2005 and ended in 2008. That's years from even 2016 and even more years from a year above 2016.

Clearly, back then, it was anti-extremes. His newer opinions don't change what ATLA, the TV series, was all about. It was about harmony.

I mean, wow, nothing says anti-auth like continuing the Firelord and Royal system, even in LOK.