#volceldom

[communistkenobi]

brain damage mission impossible posting

okay there are 72 fics listed as Ethan/Julia on ao3 despite her being his canonical wife. Which like on a baseline level I understand because she’s not a character. she’s a symbol meant to represent Ethan’s desire for domestic quietude, something that is perpetually out of reach because he’s the mission impossible guy who saves the world. every time he tries to be a normal person some evil entity threatens to destroy his life by kidnapping his wife/parents/etc. But the idea of a hot/cold relationship with Julia, or them as perpetual lovers without any promise of marriage and family or even exclusivity, is never entertained in these movies, which I think cements Julia as firmly not a character. She’s not even really that important to Ethan when viewed in this context, because there’s no shades of grey allowed - he’s either a full time spy or he’s a retired husband. He won’t even take “scraps” in the form of casual sex or infrequent clandestine loving hook-ups, even in contexts where that wouldn’t put her in any danger. the only two horizons of possibility for him are marriage or volceldom. the films make the case that you can’t really have any work-life balance, but the “life” part of that equation is just full-package white heterosexuality. And they don’t even make it seem that appealing honestly, like in the third movie when Ethan tries to retire he’s clearly not comfortable and on edge all the time and abandons it at the drop of a hat (almost killing Julia in the process). But every time she appears in these films after they break up he is deeply distraught about it - like god does Tom Cruise sell the “we can never be together” look of abject longing he does whenever their characters collide. He sells the intense emotional stakes despite the lack of normative sexual desire to go with it.

Because what’s also crazy is that Ethan as a character doesn’t really express any sexuality in general - most of it is extremely restrained, confined to caressing a woman’s face or accidental physical closeness (like landing on top each other during a fall, etc). It’s always hinted at but never really develops into anything, and even in later films where it’s clearly shown that he and Ilsa have something going on, they barely touch. Like most of it is communicated through emotional glances and long pauses of them staring at each other. Clearly the misogynistic spectre of “men and women can’t be friends without eventually fucking/dating” is present in this, but the conclusion of that heteronormative configuration is never paid off with sex. And this is despite women’s bodies being shown off constantly in these films, like there are a lot of unjustifiable and disgusting shots of women’s asses and legs especially, but they are pure “eye candy” for the audience, they are rarely if ever framed as being attractive from the perspective of Ethan, the principle POV character of every film and the character that audiences are clearly supposed to connect with.

And in those moments where women’s bodies are on display but Ethan is not paying attention, there is a clear separation between the director’s and Tom Cruise’s vision of these films. Like he is entirely in control of them at this point given he is the driving force behind them, all of these films are sold on Cruise doing some insane stunt like holding his breath for six minutes or climbing the exterior of the tallest building in the world or him doing 109 HALO jumps to get the best footage for a mid-air struggle over Paris. He does shit no other actor does, he sells it by making it ‘real.’ The films also narratively revolve around him - he is, to use direct quotes, “the living manifestation of destiny,” “the embodiment of chaos itself” and so on. He is the emotional and narrative centre of gravity. Ethan’s emotional states, his desires, his tribulations and internal conflicts, they are all that matter in these films. Basically no one else is a character. And he doesn’t fuck in any of these movies! He's a hot-shot spy but he isn’t a ladies man. Women fall over themselves for him but he’s not interested in them. The only exception is Ilsa, but that is clearly the result of her saving his life multiple times and their emotional trust in one another. Like these films have action movie levels of misogyny, sexual objectification and narrative discarding of women and all of that, but our main hero doesn’t really “partake” in any spoils of triumph or whatever gross horseshit is usually in these things. So to me this indicates a general lack of desire on the part of Cruise to “indulge” in any of these tropes, something he has the money and power to force on screen if he wants it to happen (which is what happens in many movies! Including these ones, only you just see a woman’s ass disconnected from any character’s sexual intention - the sexual intention is purely presumed on behalf of the audience).

I think this is aesthetic evidence that Tom Cruise is gay. But I still don’t really care about any of the guy characters either because they also aren’t characters, so Benji/Ethan is entirely uncompelling to me in a way that Ethan/Julia isn’t, not because cookie-cutter heterosexuality is “more interesting” but because there is something weirdly restrained and emotionally repressed about it that feels strangely uncomfortable with its own cookie-cutterness. so personally if you want to do Benji/Ethan in an interesting way I think you need to contend with the bizarreness of Ethan/Julia, OR, you deal with the narrative tension of Ethan/Julia itself by focusing on it. I am obviously biased in that I am extremely partial to a good “lovers doomed to be forever apart” thing (and these movies are NOT good examples of this), but their relationship is purely emotional and purely based on repression of a desire for intimacy as opposed to sex, which feels weirdly out of place in an otherwise titanically normative action film series. AND ITS MAKING ME CRAZYYYYYY!!!!!!!

[ksiezniczkadepresyjna]

just dawned on me today that in order not to immedieately fall in love with every xyz i meet i need to become an xyz myself. cause im not gonna be so impressed anyumore and i'll be able to pursue stonecold volceldom in peace 🙏

[celflags]

Pancel Flag

Pancel: pan individuals experiencing celibacy.

[lesbiancharliedalton]

nearing 2 months of volceldom

[hag1969]

Why does this shit never end ever ever why do i not believe myself extreme trauma csa cw in tags

Sorry to freak out online im not ok