#but he does explicitly no-homo himself. that is very much a thing he does in the film.

[heartofstanding]

God, you know, I wish I liked My Own Private Idaho much better than I did (which is... not very) because on paper, it's everything that should appeal to me and yet...

[technicalthinker]

I feel like debating who Loki was talking to when he said "For You" in the last episode, is missing the point of the scene. And people referring to it as "cowardly" and a "no-homo" moment is just?? Baffling to me tbh because like;

First of all, it is obviously intended to be to both of them? If they only wanted to make it about Sylvie, Mobius wouldn't be there. If they only wanted to make it about Mobius, Sylvie wouldn't be there. If they wanted to make it about everyone they would've just framed it more equally, he does do it for all his friends ("for all of us"), but they have that scene to highlight these two specific relationships. The framing is quite clear, they have him take a last look at all of his friends before going down the stairs, but Mobius and Sylvie runs after him to have a final significant moment.

Which absolutely makes sense and is consistent with the show we have seen so far, s1 and s2 combined, which is what I love about it. And it was to be honest a surprise! Going into this season, I had little hope for Loki/Mobius interactions, just didn't want to expect too much since S1 had a lot of their connection, but that could've been it. I was shocked when s2ep1 was full to the brim with Loki and Mobius scenes? And then they kept reinforcing every week that they care about each other, is a funny duo to watch, and are important to one another.

And despite this, I expected the rug to at some point be pulled, especially compared to Loki's relationship to Sylvie. No matter people's personal viewing on the show, she is still cited as a love interest by showrunners and is just portrayed as that by the narrative a lot of the time. Sidelining that, even in s2 when the romantic hints are more vague, she's still a very important person in Loki's life. She played a central part of the plot and Loki's own character development of understanding himself.

So to me, I was surprised seeing Mobius and Sylvie side by side in the end. Both being framed as The important people in Loki's life. Then, however you wanna see in what ways they are important is up to you, but they are the people he keeps coming back to for advice and self-reflection. You can frame it as "oh it should've been only been Mobius and they added Sylvie to downplay it", which, I just disagree with (If they wanted to go for explicitly canon Lokius they needed to set that up even more earlier in the season but that's a post for another day). Sylvie is still like, a constant in the narrative and driving force of s1, even if s2 changes things around a bit, and imo it would be inconsistent if she just vanished here. I guess I am used to media that downplays a meaningful dynamic between two dudes in more aggressive ways, which they absolutely could've done, and would've taken me out of the story to be honest... but they didn't, Mobius and Sylvie got to be side by side in the end and that imo validated the Loki/Mobius dynamic way more than downplays it.

TLDR; The "For you" was for both Mobius and Sylvie because why would you frame it that way otherwise, and having them side by side like that validates Lokius way more than downplays it in a "no-homo" way considering the full context of the show.

[sofyachy]

Watching the end of Good Omens Season 2 felt like watching the moon landing, and I think I've finally figured out why. It's not the first time there have been outed queer characters on TV shows. It's not the first time there's been a queer love scene / kiss on TV. That alone isn't ground-breaking.

But for my entire life, I've consumed media that put the hetero couple into the main spotlight with token queer background characters, a lot of them killed off in a "bury your gays" trope. Or I've watched an ongoing series and developed queer ships that always left me a little disappointed when the romantic tension I perceived on screen was quashed with the introduction of a chemistry-lacking hetero love interest, or even simply brushing off the characters as "they're just good friends, because No Homo."

I've gotten used to this. I've come to expect it -- to always look deeply into the subtext, analyzing what's going on underneath the dialog and actions. Are these characters gay? Here is my 20-page literary analysis paper in which I go over every line, every detail, to argue that there's justifiable reason to believe something there that's not blatantly spelled out in words. (I literally did this with Hotspur in my graduate-level Shakespeare class because I absolutely needed someone to agree with me that this married character was so very, very gay, despite a surface-level "no homo" reading.) And it's still never "proof" -- just my opinion, which I can shout into the void until I'm hoarse.

And isn't that just what we do in slash fandom? We write our own endings. We refashion the stories we love to override that little disappointment that the original work gives us, as much as we still love it.

With Good Omens, there was already a strong fandom pairing Aziraphale and Crowley. I read the book after watching both seasons, so I can't say how strong that fandom was before those came out. But one of the things that struck me about the book was that there wasn't nearly the same vibe between the characters as there was in the first season. Hell, they weren't even the central characters of the book. And while the book says that people assume Aziraphale is gay, it's quick to say "but he's not; angels aren't sexual." No homo.

He and Crowley are...maybe friends? Associates? But there's certainly no scene with Crowley crying into a bottle of whiskey after Aziraphale disappears in the way he does in S1. It's like Book Crowley isn't allowed to have queer feelings because No Homo, especially not when he's maybe-friends with a maybe-homo. And it's not really surprising, considering the book was written in the '80s -- when gay rights was pushed back 20 years due to the AIDS epidemic.

And even with S1, it wasn't blatantly spelled out that either of them were queer. The aforementioned line about a gay Aziraphale didn't make it into the script (though he does refer to himself as "the Southern pansy"). We got some excellent scenes to rile up the fandom with somewhat-romantic dialog and actions. Still, on the surface, the reaction could still easily be "Hey, that looks maybe-possibly kind of gay? If you look at it just right. Here's my 20-page essay explaining why they're gay." And at the end of the season, Aziraphale and Crowley simply dine at the Ritz. Nothing explicitly gay there, unless you dig for it.

And then Season 2 said, "Hold my beer." And we got a full season of slow-burn romance at the forefront. The business with Gabriel was a ruse; the whole thing was about Aziracrow and their relationship from start to finish. We started out with the expected subtext, suggestive dialog, surreptitious glances. I remember thinking, "this is nice; I'm glad we're getting more time to just enjoy these two on the screen together." And then it kept building, and building, and building.

And finally, Episode 6 gave us "YES, HOMO." And after a lifetime of never seeing one of my ships amount to anything on screen, there it was, in all its devastating glory. They went there. That's what felt like the moon landing to me. It's something that seemed so far off to be impossible until it wasn't.

[coralhoneyrose]

Really depressed and disappointed with the handling of the groom Robin unit. The moment I saw the theme of the banner I was nervous that there would be some sort of line somewhere in his dialogue, or the paralogue, or tempest trials that was going to explicitly pull some sort of "no homo" nonsense with Chrom. I was mildly comforted when I saw the meet the heroes text talking about the blue rose corsage that maybe I was worrying over nothing. But then sure enough, we get a throw away line where Robin comments on Chrom getting married to someone else.

It feels like a slap in the face after all the ship bait the last year. One of the most wonderful things about their DoD duo unit was that NO WHERE in any of the promotion or dialogue for that unit was there any sort of friend zoning. They were referred to as "partners" and while it was intentionally left ambiguous enough that people could still try and read it platonically if they wanted, there was DEFINITELY nothing de-confirming it as being romantic. And then with Robin's legendary unit too it really went out of its way to leave open the interpretation that L!Robin was married to a Chrom. And I'll admit, I think the fact that Engage had so many same sex pairing options made me cautiously optimistic that IS was starting to do better with how they handle this stuff.

So for them to then turn around and make a point of having Groom Robin comment that Chrom got married to someone else just...it makes me feel exploited honestly. It feels very much like they knew they could capitalize on shipper's money with those other units and so they allowed the potential reading of Chrom and m!Robin as being a romantic pairing for as long as it was convenient and profitable for them. And then as soon as it wasn't fitting the narrative they were trying to build in order to make money they immediately revert to discounting it.

Cause that's the other thing that gets me. They didn't HAVE to have Robin comment on Chrom's wedding at all. They could have very easily just not mentioned it and left it up to player interpretation. But no, they decided to expressly make a point of emphasizing that the Chrom from this Robin's world is married to someone else.

And I know for a lot of Chrobin fans this isn't necessarily even incompatible with their head canons. A lot of fans are happy to imagine that Chrom might initially marry someone else to have Lucina and then ultimately divorce them and marry Robin later in life. But personally, I have always found that idea tremendously depressing and I am not a fan of that narrative at all. I am not interested in the idea of Chrom making himself miserable in a marriage to someone he doesn't love and I do not like the idea of Lucina having anyone else as her parent except for Robin.

There are other workable explanations too--multiverses and different timelines means that some Chroms could be married to Robins and others aren't. Or Chrom and Robin could be poly, for example. I'm not saying there aren't any mental jumps you can make in order to force this dialogue line to be compatible with some version of Chrobin being together. But even if there are explanations that work, I think it's pretty transparent what IS was trying to do in including the line in the first place. The intention of it is still to wave a little banner in fan faces saying this Robin is not married to Chrom and that Chrom actively *is* in a relationship with someone else. And the fact of the matter is that line DOES shut down any and all versions of how *I* like to envision the pairing working. So of course I'm going to be disappointed.

I'm well aware that the nature of any head canon is that I shouldn't be surprised that canon isn't catering to my personal imagined story line. Especially when Chrom and M!Robin can't get married in original Awakening. I know that.

But again....engage and the DoD unit, and Robin's legendary and even 3H to a lesser extent all made me cautiously optimistic that they were starting to handle things differently. For the last *year* they have very expressly been making a point of allowing my little preferred headcanons to be viable, and actively feeding into them in a lot of cases. In point of that, there has been so much hopeful fan speculation that if they ever make an awakening remake years down the line, that they probably WOULD allow m!Robin and Chrom to S-support. And this feels like a very clear indication to me that no, they wouldn't do that actually, they are only interested in teasing m!Chrobin when they can profit from it in a gacha game, and are perfectly happy to turn around and try and invalidate it again after. And now I just feel stupid for getting my hopes up and thinking they wouldn't do this.

Frankly, it completely ruins any ability I would have had to enjoy this unit at all. Which sucks, because his art is lovely and getting new content of a character I love SHOULD be a wonderful positive thing. I can try and ignore the line and pretend I guess, but honestly it's going to be hard for me to divorce all these upset feelings from it. Maybe with a little more time and space. Idk.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

You seem to be the centre of knowledge on all things Trust. I'm trying to work out, is Primo canonicaly gay, or is it a fandom interpretation?

(No special authority here, just one person with an obsession. :-))

It’s fandom interpretation. We don’t get any definitive information about Primo’s sexuality in canon, because there’s no dialogue about it and we never see him in an explicitly sexual or romantic situation with anyone. (Which is, in itself, a choice that says something. We’ll get into that shortly.)

There are two canonically queer-coded characters in Trust, Jahangir and Dennis, who have a handful of scenes together and a very sweet subplot, with a happy ending, among the various upstairs/downstairs storylines at Sutton Place, Getty Sr.’s estate. Someone could write a delightful post-canon fic about them running a garden center together and bopping around London’s gay scene in the ‘70s, and it wouldn’t even be an AU. (I mean, not me, I want the garbage, but someone could write this and I hope someone does!)

As for whether Primo was intentionally subtextually queer-coded by the show creators or by Mr. Marinelli’s specific acting choices...well, I don’t know what their intentions were. But he wasn’t explicitly straight-coded, and he very easily could have been. They could have made him married with a son of his own. Or they could have made him a greasy ‘70s playboy. Or they could have had him show one (1) instance of sexual interest in a woman at any point in the show, just for the No Homo of it all. But they did not. And between the other Calabrians who place a lot of importance on traditional family structures, marriage and children, and the Getty men, who use their money and notoriety to surround themselves with women, Primo stands out for fitting neither of those patterns. And honestly the more you learn about his world (rural southern Italy and specifically the ‘Ndrangheta subculture within that) the more he stands out as different and other.

Like, why isn’t he married? He seems to be at least thirty. This is a world where people get married young (women getting married in their teens is not uncommon) and where marriages are used as part of business deals and alliances between crime families all the time. Regardless of whether Primo ever looked twice at any girl in the village...he is the nephew of a capo who has no sons. Even if Salvatore decided Primo wasn’t a suitable heir, you would think he would at least consider him useful for marrying off into some alliance that would strengthen Salvatore’s position or get him something. And so either Primo successfully resisted that (which frankly seems unlikely if that’s what Salvatore wanted to happen), or Primo is considered such damaged goods as to be unsuitable marriage material. And let’s be real, Salvatore’s standards for what makes a good husband cannot possibly be high; interpersonal violence or substance abuse problems or indifference to the wife that’s chosen for him wouldn’t be dealbreakers, so what actually is going on there?

Why does he live in Rome, or at least spend a considerable amount of time there? This is before the ‘Ndrangheta is a global crime empire. Sure, they have people in other places, but their base of power is in Calabria, and Salvatore’s base of power is in the village. If that’s what Primo wanted to claim for his own one day, why move away? And yet he lives half a country away in a big anonymous city, which to me just screams “escaping a conservative rural area where everybody knows your business and your business is not acceptable to them.” Or, alternately, “sent away because you’re an embarrassment that no one wants to deal with,” but personally I think it’s the first one.

And like, possibly the most interesting choice to me is that at this point in his life, he’s decided not to pretend. He could have chosen to fake his way through a performance of traditional male heterosexuality, as many a queer person has. And the fact that he’s mostly given up on trying to fit into this mold (although I do think there are subtle code-switches in the way he presents himself when he’s around Salvatore vs. when he’s alone, among strangers, or among people he has power over) says a lot about where people’s expectations of him are at. Like, no aunties are trying to get him to dance with a nice girl at Francesco’s confirmation party et cetera et cetera. To me that says that people in his hometown have kind of given up on him fitting a certain mold, written him off as un-includable in the structures of mainstream society, and no one says it, but everybody knows why. And this seems to me to be one possible explanation of why he is somehow so unacceptable to Salvatore as an heir, despite obviously wanting his approval and being very good at crime.

So, no, there’s nothing explicit in canon. But to me it’s these things, much more than the mannerisms or the clothes or the Drama, that say “being queer in an environment that doesn’t even want to acknowledge that as a thing that exists.”

[theshedding]

Lil Nas X: Country Music, Christianity & Reclaiming HELL

I don’t typically bother myself to follow what Lil Nas X is doing from day to day, or even month to month but I do know that his “Old Town Road” hit became one of the biggest selling/streamed records in Country Music Business history (by a Black Country & Queer artist). “Black” is key because for 75+ years Country music has unsuspiciously evolved into a solidly White-identified genre (despite mixed and Indian & Black roots). Regrettably, Country music is also widely known for anti-black, misogynoir, reliably homophobic (Trans isn’t really a conversation yet), Christian and Hard Right sentiments on the political spectrum. Some other day I will venture into more; there is a whole analysis dying to be done on this exclusive practice in the music industry with its implications on ‘access’ to equity and opportunity for both Black/POC’s and Whites artists/songwriters alike. More commentary on this rigid homogeneous field is needed and how it prohibits certain talent(s) for the sake of perpetuating homogeneity (e.g. “social determinants” of diversity & viable artistic careers). I’ll refrain from discussing that fully here, though suffice it to say that for those reasons X’s “Old Town Road” was monumental and vindicating. 

As for Lil Nas X, I’m not particularly a big fan of his music; but I see him, what he’s doing, his impact on music + culture and I celebrate him using these moments to affirm his Black, Queer self, and lifting up others. Believe it or not, even in the 2020′s, being “out” in the music business is still a costly choice. As an artist it remains much easier to just “play straight”. And despite appearances, the business (particularly Country) has been dragged kicking and screaming into developing, promoting and advancing openly-affirming LGBTQ 🏳️‍🌈 artists in the board room or on-stage. Though things are ‘better’ we have not yet arrived at a place of equity or opportunity for queer artists; for the road of music biz history is littered with stunted careers, bodies and limitations on artists who had no option but to follow conventional ways, fail or never be heard of in the first place. With few exceptions, record labels, radio and press/media have successfully used fear, intimidation, innuendo and coercion to dilute, downplay or erase any hint of queer identity from its performers. This was true even for obvious talents like Little Richard.

(Note: I’m particularly speaking of artists in this regard, not so much the hairstylists, make-up artists, PA’s, etc.)

_____

Which is why...in regard to Lil Nas X, whether you like, hate or love his music, the young brother is a trailblazer. His very existence protests (at least) decades of inequity, oppression and erasure. X aptly critiques a Neo-Christian Fascist Heteropatriarchy; not just in American society but throughout the Music Business and with Black people. That is no small deal. His unapologetic outness holds a mirror up to Christianity at-large, as an institution, theology and practice. The problem is they just don’t like what they see in that mirror.

In actuality, “Call Me By Your Name”, Lil Nas X’s new video, is a twist on classic mythology and religious memes that are less reprehensible or vulgar than the Biblical narratives most of us grew up on vís-a-vís indoctrinating smiles of Sunday school teachers and family prior to the “age of reason”. Think about the narratives blithely describing Satan’s friendly wager with God regarding Job (42:1-6); the horrific “prophecies” in St. John’s Book of Revelation (i.e. skies will rain fire, angels will spit swords, mankind will be forced to retreat into caves for shelter, and we will be harassed by at least three terrifying dragons and beasts. Angels will sound seven trumpets of warning, and later on, seven plagues will be dumped on the world), or Jesus’s own clarifying words of violent intent in Matthew (re: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” 10:34). Whether literal or metaphor, these age old stories pale in comparison to a three minute allegorical rap video. Conservatives: say what you will, I’m pretty confident X doesn’t take himself as seriously as “The true and living God” from the book of Job.

A little known fact as it is, people have debunked the story and evolution of Satan and already offered compelling research showing [he] is more of a literary device than an actual entity or “spirit” (Spoiler: In the Bible, Satan does not take shape as an actual “bad” person until the New Testament). In fact, modern Christianity’s impression of the “Devil” is shaped by conflating Hellenized mythology with a literary tradition rooted in Dante’s Inferno and accompanying spooks and superstitions going back thousands of years. Whether Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, Scientologist, Atheist or Agnostic, we’ve spent a lifetime with these predominant icons and clichés. (Resource: Prof. Bart D. Erhman, “Heaven & Hell”).

So Here’s THE PROBLEM: The current level of fear and outrage is: 

(1) Unjust, imposing and irrational. 

(2) Disproportionate when taken into account a lifetime of harmful Christian propaganda, anti-gay preaching and political advocacy.

(3) Historically inaccurate concerning the existence of “Hell” and who should be scared of going there. 

Think I’m overreacting? 

Examples: 

Institutionalized Homophobia (rhetoric + policy)

Anti-Gay Ministers In Life And Death: Bishop Eddie Long And Rev. Bernice King

Black, gay and Christian, Marylanders struggle with Conflicts

Harlem pastor: 'Obama has released the homo demons on the black man'

Joel Olsteen: Homosexuality is “Not God’s Best”

Bishop Brandon Porter: Gays “Perverted & Lost...The Church of God in Christ Convocation appears like a ‘coming out party’ for members of the gay community.”

Kim Burrell: “That perverted homosexual spirit is a spirit of delusion & confusion and has deceived many men & women, and it has caused a strain on the body of Christ”

Falwell Suggests Gays to Blame for 9-11 Attacks

Pope Francis Blames The Devil For Sexual Abuse By Catholic Church

Pope Francis: Gay People Not Welcome in Clergy

Pope Francis Blames The Devil For Sexual Abuse By Catholic Church

The Pope and Gay People: Nothing’s Changed

The Catholic church silently lobbied against a suicide prevention hotline in the US because it included LGBT resources

Mormon church prohibits Children of LGBT parents to be baptized

Catholic Charity Ends Adoptions Rather Than Place Kid With Same-Sex Couple

I Was a Religious Zealot That Hurt People-Coming Out as Gay: A Former Conversion Therapy Leader Is Apologizing to the LGBTQ Community

The above short list chronicles a consistent, literal, demonization of LGBTQ people, contempt for their gender presentation, objectification of their bodies/sexuality and a coordinated pollution of media and culture over the last 50+ years by clergy since integration and Civil Rights legislation. Basically terrorism. Popes, Bishops, Pastors, Evangelists, Politicians, Television hosts, US Presidents, Camp Leaders, Teachers, Singers & Entertainers, Coaches, Athletes and Christians of all types all around the world have confused and confounded these issues, suppressed dissent, and confidently lied about LGBT people-including fellow Queer Christians with impunity for generations (i.e. “thou shall not bear false witness against they neighbor” Ex. 23:1-3). Christian majority viewpoints about “laws” and “nature” have run the table in discussions about LGBTQ people in society-so much that we collectively must first consider their religious views in all discussions and the specter of Christian approval -at best or Christian condescension -at worst. That is Christian (and straight) privilege. People are tired of this undue deference to religious opinions. 

That is what is so deliciously bothersome about Lil Nas X being loud, proud and “in your face” about his sexuality. If for just a moment, he not only disrupts the American hetero-patriarchy but specifically the Black hetero-patriarchy, the so-called “Black Church Industrial Complex”, Neo-Christian Fascism and a mostly uneducated (and/or miseducated) public concerning Ancient Near East and European history, superstitions-and (by extension) White Supremacy. To round up: people are losing their minds because the victim decided to speak out against his victimizer. 

Additionally, on some level I believe people are mad at him being just twenty years old, out and FREE as a self-assured, affirming & affirmed QUEER Black male entertainer with money and fame in the PRIME of his life. We’ve never, or rarely, seen that before in a Black man in the music business and popular culture. But that’s just too bad for them. With my own eyes I’ve watched straight people, friends, Christians, enjoy their sexuality from their elementary youth to adolescence, up and through college and later marriages, often times independently of their spouses (repeatedly). Meanwhile Queer/Gay/SGL/LGBTQ people are expected to put their lives on hold while the ‘blessed’ straight people run around exploring premarital/post-marital/extra-marital sex, love and affection, unbound & un-convicted by their “sin” or God...only to proudly rebrand themselves later in life as a good, moral “wholesome Christian” via the ‘sacred’ institution of marriage with no questions asked. 

Inequality defined.

For Lil Nas X, everything about the society we've created for him in the last 100+ years (re: links above) has explicitly been designed for his life not to be his own. According to these and other Christians (see above), his identity is essentially supposed to be an endless rat fuck of internal confusion, suicide-ideation, depression, long-suffering, faux masculinity, heterosexism, groveling towards heaven, respectability politics, failed prayer and supplication to a heteronormative earthly and celestial hierarchy unbothered in affording LGBT people like him a healthy, sane human development. It’s almost as if the Conservative establishment (Black included) needs Lil Nas X to be like others before him: “private”, mysteriously single, suicidal, suspiciously straight or worse, dead of HIV/AIDS ...anything but driving down the street enjoying his youth as a Black Queer artist and man. So they mad about that?

Well those days are over.  

-Rogiérs is a writer, international recording artist, performer and indie label manager with 25+ years in the music industry. He also directs Black Nonbelievers of DC, a non-profit org affiliated with the AHA supporting Black skeptics, Atheists, Agnostics & Humanists. He holds a B.A. in Music Business & Mgmt and a M.A. in Global Entertainment & Music Business from Berklee College of Music and Berklee Valencia, Spain. www.FibbyMusic.net Twitter/IG: @Rogiers1

[thebad---catholic]

My problems with AOS

Well here I am, 10 years late with an opinion no one asked for, but I have to write this down and throw into the void so that I can be at peace. I’ve been salty about this film franchise for a very long time now. This will mostly focus on Star Trek (2009) with the other two movies sprinkled in.

1. Starfleet

Honestly where do I even begin? In TOS, Starfleet was modeled after the navy (idk how accurately, but Roddenberry was in the air force so I’m assuming he’d know how all that works). You can get a feel for the chain of command, and everything feels natural with character ages and things like that. There’s a procedure for everything.

AOS Starfleet feels more like a high school club than an interplanetary exploration organization. Jim is supposed to be twenty-five when he gets the rank of captain- after he was almost expelled for cheating. He has no idea how to operate or run a starship. TOS Kirk moved through the ranks of Starfleet and was promoted on merit and leadership skills- he worked for his position.

Why was Jim the only person who knew what was happening when Nero showed up? Was there any requirements to joining to Starfleet other than get on the shuttle? Why did the linguist not know the difference between Vulcan and Romulan when they’re the linguist? How did Pike bypass the chain of command to appoint Jim Kirk as First Officer which was an obvious show of favoritism to someone was about to be thrown out of the academy? Why the fuck was he allowed to keep the title of captain? What the fuck?

Speaking of Jim.

2. Jim Kirk’s Character

I...don’t like Jim’s character in this film. It’s not terrible for a younger version of Kirk, but like I said though, there’s no reason Kirk should be this young. And in this one he’s just kinda a douche.

We know from TOS that Kirk gets around, but he genuinely cares for his exes, and in general respects women. He uses sex appeal as a strategy, but more than anything this comes off as a subversion of the femme fatal trope bc Kirk is a man. In the movie, he’s just a standard action movie protag who has lots of sex just because.

The scene when the Orion woman says she loves him and he replied “that’s so weird” is just...so weird? Like I can’t imagine Kirk doing anything in that situation than backing off and explaining that he doesn’t feel the same way. The scene continues with him hiding under the bed when Uhura walks in. Watching how the camera angle makes Jim out to be a voyeur made me uncomfortable then and it still does. It could be explained that Jim is trying to figure out Uhura’s identity or that he’s listening in and people look at who they’re listening to but like...she was in her underwear. You shouldn’t look at people while they’re getting undressed, especially when they don’t even know you’re there? Is that a hot take? Apparently.

In TOS there’s this really nice scene in This Side of Paradise(S1E24) where the whole crew is high (again) and has abandoned ship, leaving Kirk to tend to things. We see Jim move around the ship with a little clip pad and make the proper checks. This is a captain who knows his stuff. That is the Kirk we should have seen if we’re going to see Jim become captain.

AOS kirk goes through a standard “stop being an asshole” arc commonplace for male protagonists, but this happens well past the point he should stop being an asshole. Either the AOS series should’ve been a prequel with Jim becoming captain at the end of the trilogy, or he should’ve been older with a completely different arc- maybe coming to terms with his rank? Imposter syndrome? Learning to trust his crew and building trust with them? Building a friendship with Spock and McCoy? There’s a lot to work with here.

3. Spock and Uhura’s relationship

Why. Like why. For what. Por Que.

I like giving Uhura a bigger role, I don’t like making her a love interest to do that.

It doesn’t make sense for either of their characters. Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, linguist expert who handles all transmissions to and from the enterprise- an icon of black women’s representation is now demoted to Spock’s nagging girlfriend. This bothers me more than a little bit.

It manages to make even less sense for Spock. A hallmark of Spock’s character is his duality. He struggles to combat his emotions and the human half of him. His repeating character arc in TOS is coming to terms with humanity while upholding the Vulcan way of life. Having him in an established romantic relationship before this arc is supposed to happen just makes for a boring romantic subplot about a relationship that shouldn’t happen and that I don’t care about.

TOS Vulcan culture is kinda shitty. Explicitly patriarchal and stuff, and also kinda racist against humans. The source of Spock’s inner conflict is not himself but a society that views him as lesser for being half human. However, one thing that I can certainly understand from a “logical” (logic in quotations bc racism and sexism is fucking stupid) people is ritualized arranged marriages. It just...makes sense to me that Vulcans would simply have their mates chosen for them and then marry that person and be done with it. Neat. Logical. Conformity.

This makes Spock and Uhura’s relationship even stranger. Why would Spock go so against conformity that he dates someone before he truly comes to terms with himself? Even if they throw out ponfarr and arranged marriage, it still doesn’t work but now it especially doesn’t work.

My personal theory is that Spock and Uhura’s relationship was established purely to make shippers shut up. It’s no secret Spirk is the most popular ship from TOS. I have no doubt they knew this while writing the movie. So to quietly wrap a no homo on Spock and Kirk’s friendship, they use Uhura as a prop to do so.

The teacher/student dynamic should only be relegated to fan fiction and the throwaway line about oral sensitivity makes me cringe. Every. Time.

4. McCoy

Karl Urbans performance is easily my favorite part of this movie. He captures DeForrest Kelley so well it hurts. He made Leonard Nimoy cry. His chemistry with Pine made McKirk go from the most underrated triumvirate ship in TOS to rival Spirks popularity in AOS. His scenes with Zachary Quinto are just *chefs kiss*.

So why doesn’t he have more of a role? The triumvirate is missing a third.

In particular, there’s a scene where Uhura, Kirk, and Spock make their way down to a planet to talk to a Klingon. I can’t remember which movie it was or why, but Spock and Uhura were bickering and Kirk remarks “can we do this later?”

The line was funny. It would’ve been golden if it was McCoy and not Uhura.

A fantastic performance by an underutilized character in a movie where that character should’ve been at the forefront.

5. Representation

I am skeptical of any movie that advertises diversity. Nonetheless, it made me happy to know Sulu was going to be gay. This is Star Trek after all, known for its diversity and large LGBT fan base, and an homage to George Takai who’s a gay man irl. So whatever.

The fact that I wasn’t expecting much says a lot about the current state of LGBT rep in media but this blink-and-you-miss-it shit is really starting to get to me.

I mean he jus- he doesn’t even give his husband a KISS. Like why.

6. Destroying Vulcan

WHY. Oh god why.

This isn’t Star Wars, JJ. We don’t do that here.

Imploding Vulcan was the most god awful shock value bullshit plot device I’ve ever seen in a movie and it was done entirely to make Spock sad. Besides the gaping plot hole of “why did Nero go back in time to destroy Vulcan when he could’ve just saved Romulus” I’m just grasping to find a purpose for this particular event. New fans don’t care at all about Vulcan while I was enraged that they would do Amanda that dirty.

It’s not just that they did that, it’s more that they did it like that. Vulcan’s destruction should’ve caused a federation wide meltdown as the biggest catastrophe in the entire franchise. If they were gonna make the stakes so pointlessly high, they should’ve treated the destruction of Vulcan exactly how they would treat the destruction of earth. There a million ways to treat that event with more gravity and million better plot lines that don’t involve G E N O C I D E

7. Miscellaneous petty bullshit because I’m a baby

-lower the fucking stakes Jesus Christ

-Don’t like the set. It’s bright and white and boring and gives me a headache. You don’t need a remake of the old set but like have fun ya know? Shit looks like an Apple store.

-Christine and I are the same in that we are both soft and are thirsty for Spock. Imagine my surprise to learn she wasn’t fucking there. Same with Janice but I’m more pressed about Christine. I don’t even remember the name of that blonde doctor lady who is Not Christine but i didn’t want her.

-The costumes in AOS look boring but still don’t feel like a uniform either. I deadass think Chris Pines outfit in the SNL skit looked better than the actual movie (minor adjustments needed)

-I didn’t notice this at first but someone pointed out that women’s uniforms don’t signify rank and now I can’t not see it. I don’t...think this movie treats women good? Or McCoy? Or just people who deserve better?

-Lens Flare

-I get why they did it but I don’t like that they misquoted the opening theme to say “no one” instead of “no man”. I probably wouldn’t have even notice except they gave the line to Uhura. Comes off as just a touch too “yay feminism” which is really rich coming from that treated Uhura like an object to be looked at when she wasn’t too busy being Spock’s emotional support gf, and completely cut two women from the main cast.

8. Conclusions

If I could describe these movies in one word it’d be generic. Which sucks because Star Trek far from generic.

They’re fun to watch but not think about. It was nice that I got to see a Star Trek movie in theaters. I just wish it as the same Trek I saw on TV.

[shkspr]

i was thinking about the similarities between tenrose (+ninerose) and a/c and i had a thought - rtd would’ve done a really great job with a/c. i feel like he would actually portray what neil retroactively claims he was trying to portray aka non-conventional romance.

i dont think these two asks were from the same person but every time i tried to answer them, there was a lot of overlap in my responses, so i’m putting em together

it’s interesting bc i feel like there’s no real consensus as to whether or not it’s baiting? like ive seen a lot of twitter folks for example say that it’s really clear they’re in love and they don’t need to kiss or anything to affirm that. idk i feel really conflicted bc im seront valid arguments on both sides of the debates. it’s definitely not like other baity ships i’ve come across before, that i can say.

this got reeeeeaaaally long so tl;dr: i don’t hate neil, i love the book and the show beyond human comprehension, but i do think it’s baiting and i am a bit upset about it. authorial intent should not stop anybody from interpreting or responding to it in whatever way they prefer, but it is important in the discussion of baiting and representation. i’m not waving a pitchfork, i’m just a gay person critically enjoying a piece of media. 

okay so… for me, what’s on the screen is not the issue, you know. a/c is very like tenrose, in a lot of ways. ten & rose never properly kissed, they never properly said “i love you,” there was never anything explicit in the show that said they were in what we would consider a romantic relationship, except for quips that could be written off as jokes (like “that was our first date”). 

and it does help that it’s a het ship, so there’s less…conscious denial of it, i think. but also. rtd and julie and david and billie and everybody involved has said time and time again that they were in love. bc that’s what was written. and it was obvious. it was clear, on the screen, that they were in love, even if they never explicitly said it. and it was never a question, it was just the truth. 

and with the exception of a few qualms (like the fact that they like… never touch), i think a/c is the same. it is obvious, from what was written and how it was acted, that they are in love. the issue, for me, is firstly, that neil fully knows how important this relationship is to a great number of his fans, and chose to ramp up those aspects of the relationship in the show to a ridiculous level, knowing that people would see it like that, took it right up to the precipice without allowing one toe over the line, and still says it isn’t a romance.

and secondly, that he’s patting himself on the back for writing it, for appealing to the audience like that, for the support of the relationship, not realizing that people support that relationship in spite of him. the other day he retweeted a tweet calling it a “slow burn love story” and it’s just like… you can’t write a fantastic romance, claim it isn’t a romance, and then congratulate yourself for writing a fantastic romance. it’s not fair.

it’s kind of like. some months ago, i saw a post made by someone saying that they saw themself in a&c because they were asexual, and they appreciated that a&c have a clearly profound connection without it being overtly sexual. and that is valid, absolutely, that fan: valid. but then i saw neil had either liked or reblogged it, i don’t remember, and that made me uneasy, because… he didn’t write a loving asexual relationship. he wrote a relationship that he knew would be interpreted by many as a romance, and included several jokes at their expense, and then chose to no-homo it basically by saying they don’t have sex. that’s not… that’s not representation of any kind.

neil’s favorite line is that what’s on the page/screen is canon, and he supports fans having headcanons and whatnot, but canon is canon. and that’s. true, obviously. but it’s not a coincidence that the show is so much more out there with the romantic aspects, and it’s not a coincidence that it still just barely manages to not be “canon.” and while i’m at it, i’d be remiss not to mention that it’s not a coincidence that it’s only the gay relationship that gets this treatment.

like, i’ve spoken about this before just as an issue that i have with the book in general, but it gets even more upsetting when considered alongside aziraphale and crowley’s relationship. newt and anathema have no chemistry whatsoever. the narration from his pov mentions several times that she’s hot, and that’s it. she shows no signs of liking him, at all, and he shows no signs of liking her beyond a superficial physical attraction, and he has zero qualities that would make it worth her even considering him as a romantic option. but we’re supposed to accept that relationship, because it’s canon.

shadwell and tracy also have literally no chemistry. he’s useless and mean and racist and treats her like garbage, and one of her only defining character traits is that she… likes that about him? like literally their entire relationship is him being awful to her, and her doing things for him because he’s a grown man who can’t feed himself, for some reason. and we’re supposed to accept that as a relationship, too, because it’s canon.

crowley and aziraphale have a 6000-year-long relationship full of trust and understanding, overcoming obstacles, bonding over their love of humanity, choosing each other over their loyalties to their respective sides, saving each other, helping each other, knowing each other’s interests and quirks, showing each other, over and over again, that they love each other. that’s the story that was written. so you’ll have to forgive me for being a bit put out when the writer tries to simultaneously insist that he didn’t write it like that and that he did write it like that, somehow. 

listen. i’m not saying i’d prefer it if the relationship was toned down. i’m not saying i’d prefer it if neil was going full rowling and claiming that they’re both canonically straight, or some shit. i’m not saying the relationship is worthless if they’re not making out. i’m just saying… i guess the bottom line of what i’m saying is: purposely dialing up the gay subtext in order to appeal to fans of the relationship without making it canon is literally the definition of queerbaiting. even if you repeatedly state that it won’t be canon, it’s still baiting. you’re using the relationship to reel in viewers who will be grateful for those table scraps because we’re in no position to complain, right?

and it is different from other baity ships, in my opinion, because it is a genuinely very well-written love story. like the only example of baiting i really have expertise on is probably bbc sherlock, and that is different. it’s different because neil knows how to write a love story, and he knew he was doing it, whereas moffat does not know how to write a love story, and he wasn’t trying to. he was just trying to write a weird friendship with a wacky homophobic remark thrown in once an episode, to appeal to fans who would gnaw at that bone because we were starving. 

neil, on the other hand, has dangled a picture of a feast in front of our eyes and it’s like… it’s good art, it’s just not good food. it’s good writing, it’s just not good representation. and i, a gay fan, feel alienated and invalidated by the fact that he knew that was exactly what he was doing. it’s just a bit of a cop-out, is all, and i’m a little disappointed in how he’s handling it in his interactions with the fandom, but that’s not new. 

[five-wow]

alriGHT so i watched 9x11! and i wasn’t blown away by any means but i kind of liked it? or maybe i just think so because i’d prepared myself for even worse things? so here’s my semi-liveblog:

steve and danny reunion!! it was good!!! that hug was oddly bro-ish in its constant backslapping (steve’s hurting, so just hold him, danny??? let yourself be held for a second, steve???), but the words were less no homo, at least

steve’s been there for a month, whoa

and then catherine comes out of the house and i was like, oh gosh, i’m a little scared of what they’re doing here

but... they were torturing a guy inside. they’re not even pretending that was a lovenest somehow they were just. straight up torturing a guy for information

then they’re at the airport getting ready for the plane and they meet up with junior and wade gutches, and look, i love catherine, okay? i’m not a huge fan of cath/steve at this point in the series (meaning i’d love for them to still be friends but i want the writers to please, please let all romantic connotations in that relationship finally die), but catherine, i love. but the way she’s acting all familiar with junior and wade suddenly? that was so awkward to me and i liked her “call me catherine” thing towards junior in principle but it was just... really awkward (and i’m not even completely sure why, but i think it just grates on me that this is a way that they’re making it look like she’s been involved in steve’s life when she seriously hasn’t for a long time. it’s unfair to almost all the characters)

then they’re ON the plane and steve has this flashback to his first night with greer and obviously she’s bad, we know she’s bad, but ??? they’re really cute here

except for the bit where she tried to get him to join the cia. that’s not steve. just let him eat his chinese and smile for once without trying to push him in some way pls.

and then the flashback ends and catherine asks him where he went mentally and he didn’t actually say “to that time i had sex with the woman i now hold responsible for the tragic and traumatic death of yet another parent figure in my life” but oh boy

(side note, at this point i’m very confused about if they’re trying to give us steve/cath vibes or not. on the one hand there’s the way she appeared in the episode and the things they made danny say about playing house, but on the other here’s steve, sitting literally right next to catherine, lost in thought about his sex-filled weekend with another woman, and they made cath the one to ask him about his thousand yard stare which... i don’t know how to interpret that)

adam: “i still remember getting love letters in high school.” tani: “oh, of course you do. look at you, that face, those dimples. i’d have been all over that in ninth grade.” fdjkfdjk i loved this. (and their case so far seems pretty interesting as a sideplot! it’s just that i can’t pay as much attention to that because i’m trying to keep this commentary away from war and peace lengths)

i love that harry’s first line in this entire episode (and the way he greets steve) is a warning about how terrible the cocktails at the bar are. that’s definitely harry

“oh and um, for the purposes of this operation, you two are married.” oh NO harry what are you doing

danny’s extremely unsmiling “mazzel tov” gives me life though

okAY harry is really giving me a rollercoaster ride here. now he’s saying steve looks “absolutely magnificent in that tux”, making cath say that steve’s spoken for and danny accuse harry of being a kiss ass. ??? SO much to unpack there omg

okay so in the end this undercover as married thing that steve and cath do lasted for two seconds and was really just slapped on. it served barely any purpose and i’m relieved they didn’t linger on it because i never wanted it in the first place, but it was also super weird, because if you’re going to put something like that in your canon episode, then at least do something with it. read some fic, h50 creators, and learn how it’s done

catherine asks steve how he’s doing! and that’s really good because people should ask him that more often, except, uh, why is she doing it now? i get that this might have been easiest to work in for the writers, but... she was already at the ranch when danny turned up, so i’m assuming she’d been with steve for a couple of days at least of that month that he’d been there? so... she decided to just wait until right in the middle of their mission to try to talk to him about his crippling feelings of guilt over joe’s death??? why, writers???

greer once said unfair things about steve to cath (out of pure manipulative jealousy, it seems) and all catherine has to say about it is that it was before she and steve started dating and that she didn’t believe anything greer said anyway and that’s good. let’s keep the unnecessary drama out of this (for once)

djfkd danny’s role in this episode (after that very first scene) seems to just be “sit/stand next to people who are competently hacking stuff, look serious, and say maybe two lines of quips”. first with harry, now with catherine in some van

um. this whole storming of the building and killing a bunch of people to avenge joe’s death is an unsanctioned mission they’re undertaking because it’s personal, right? that’s why it’s such a weird team with no backup? so... when the police turned up (even if it was as a favor to harry), shouldn’t they have arrested all of them, including cath and danny? haven’t they been doing a bunch of illegal stuff?

i did like the twist that harry’s random pretty woman in the city that he alluded to earlier is actually a super competent police woman, though. that’s nice.

this scene all the way at the end is where steve is wearing joe’s super soft looking warm jacket!!! i love him in that. it looks so comfortable.

aaaand wade is telling steve to find himself a good woman. why is everyone always so eager to meddle in his love life omg

wade also says that steve won’t follow wade’s advice to give retirement some thought? which is pretty hilarious after steve and danny spent a year and a half misguidedly trying to open a restaurant specifically as a retirement plan. but no, steve has never once thought about retirement, not ever

wait oh god “you still don’t know, do you? joe wasn’t just a father figure... my mentor. he brought you into my life, catherine.” ... are we doing this? we’re doing this. it was all going so well until now.

a flashback! that we’ve already seen once! of joe telling steve to ask cath out! oh god!

oh. but. there’s also this new bit of steve in the hospital after his mission with joe, calling cath to ask her out for the first time, and that’s kind of sweet. that’s okay. (as long as it stays in the past.)

WAIT. catherine: “what took you so long?” listen, this might be just me, but i associate those exact words heavily with that episode in s7 where danny and grace are taken hostage at grace’s school dance and steve rescues them and then, as they’re walking off into the sunset, danny goes “what took you so long, huh” just after he invited steve for a hug, a kiss, or to pick a base. hmmmmmm.

oh!! the flashback ends and we get catherine close to crying, saying she’s glad steve took joe’s advice back then, and steve agrees and they hug and then she just... leaves. there’s nothing that feels like “let’s start our thing back up” in what she does, she’s just glad that they had that time together and she says she’ll see him next time and that’s it? THAT’S ALL I WANT.

are they going to ruin it by making steve think about joe’s more recent advice to find himself a woman and making him associate that with catherine too? they probably are, aren’t they

THEY DID NOT. WHOA. not yet, anyway, but for the moment i’m 100% satisfied.

no, i’m not, there’s a lot of things about this episode that i missed (danny was just window dressing? wade and cath got a goodbye scene but harry didn’t? frank’s daugther appeared literally five seconds and i thought we’d see at least very slightly more of her than that but apparently that was all? the case back on hawaii got wrapped up really suddenly?) BUT i’m still very, very relieved on the whole by the way they handled the steve & cath thing. it could still be read as romantic, but it wasn’t explicitly so. for the most part they acted like exes who are friends and that’s just. that’s just exactly what it want for them??? i’m glad.

[jamescurcio]

White Lines, Black Magic

This came up on various public groups when I was doing my research for Masks. I wanted to share it with you, because I think it’s an interesting, and generally good, take. 

David's Dark Doings - And How He Escaped To Tell The Tale David Bowie's Station To Station and the "Berlin Trilogy". By Ian MacDonald

"I ran across a monster who was sleeping by a tree. And I looked and frowned and the monster was me" (David Bowie, "The Width Of A Circle", 1971)

EMI's latest batch of mid-price Bowie reissues, discs released at full price in 1990-1, consists of the 1976-8 sequence, Station To Station, Low, "Heroes", and Stage. It might have been truer to his career to have made a foursome of Low, "Heroes", Stage and Lodger - the "Berlin Trilogy" plus their complimentary live album - and to have corralled Station To Station with his other "American" albums, David Live and Young Americans. Never mind. As it happens, EMI's decision highlights a little-understood juncture in Bowie's development: the transition between the two The Man Who Fell To Earth albums, Station To Station and Low. Bowie's modus operandi during the Seventies was transformation, acting out the suburban dream of escape into glamorous "otherness" - hence his popularity among a very specific audience  segment (and the total blank he registered with those for whom escape was not an issue). This method held good until Young Americans, even though that album's associated transformation - white boy on Soul Train - was less the usual Brechtian device than an identity-crisis on the part of the artist (or the Actor, as he then referred to himself). Uprooted from his native context in the cultural artifice of Europe, isolated in a largely unironic and cultureless alien land, Bowie was forced back on himself, a self he didn't much like. Weary of the artistic transformations which were now getting too close to home, he fended off self-examination with mental diversion, reading obsessively from a portable library and deadening his growing sense of emotional emptiness with cocaine and booze. David Live is, in effect, a station-stop in this journey on the old Oblivion Express, an evening's snapshot of Bowie's deepening malaise.

With Station To Station - its title partly suggested by Bowie's 1973-6 touring schedule which, due to his fear of flying, mostly consisted of travel by train-the Oblivion Express reached another halt. But, this time, Bowie, rarely one to repeat himself, refused another David Live stop-over. Instead, he got off the damned train. A sonic "dark night of the soul", Station to Station is to Bowie what On The Beach is to Neil Young's album, rooted in the folk-blues tradition of American "authenticity", remains too musically raw for wide appeal, whereas Station, if only superficially, is one of Bowie's most glamorous discs. However, the superficial view of Station to Station doesn't tell half the inner story of the album, a recherché work which, despite being recorded at Cherokee Studios in the hyper-American suburb of Hollywood, is essentially European.

The key to the transition between Station To Station and Low (whose covers both employ images from Nicolas Roeg's the Man Who Fell To Earth) is that it does not coincide with Bowie's usual sort of artistic transformation: the persona swap. Bowie's final mask, the Thin White Duke, travels no further than Station to Station. There's no mask, no persona in Low. Just a rather gaunt young man in a "styleless" dufflecoat, looking sideways to the viewer as if in a police mugshot. Some would say that this is merely because Bowie then ceased touring for a while (appearing live only as Iggy Pop's keyboard player), and consequently had no need to invent a new stage character. In truth, Bowie's temporary low profile, coded in the cover of Low itself, was forced on him at a time when an interlude of retreat for recuperation and regrouping was the only alternative to a full-scale crack-up during the recording of Station to Station, a period of which he claims to recall almost nothing. Mental breakdown still appeared to be impending in May, 1976 when, returning to Britain from his sojourn in America, a seemingly stoned Bowie acknowledged the British press corps at Victoria Station with what most of those present took to be a Nazi salute.

Britain was then witnessing the electoral rise of the neo-fascist National Front, and Bowie's proclaimed ambition to be the country's fascist dictator was naturally, those of us who were fans chose to read Bowie's stance as ironic. Neither was wholly correct. Like Neil Young's republicanism, Bowie's brand of fascism, while it embraced irony, was basically serious; or was taken seriously by a certain hermetic compartment of his mind, wherein it dwelt. The rest of him - what passed for the normal lad from Brixton - was deeply uneasy about it; so uneasy that he included on Station To Station a song open to God in case the demons evoked elsewhere in the album should get out of hand. Bowie's fascination with Nazism was never conventionally political. Rather, it was one aspect of a personal cosmology traceable in cryptic songs like "Cygnet Committee" (Space Oddity, 1969), "The Supermen" (The Man Who Sold The World, 1971), "Big Brother" (Diamond Dogs, 1974), but most explicitly in "Oh! You Pretty Things" and - particularly - "Quicksand" on Hunky Dory (1972): "I'm closer to the Golden Dawn/Immersed in Crowley's uniform/Of imager/I'm living in a silent film/Portraying Himmler's sacred realm/Of dream reality." Eagerly absorbed from the omnivorous reading with which the self-taught Bowie, insecure in his intellect, then shored up his self-esteem, this personal cosmology was rooted in the Gnostic myth of the Fall, viz: we human beings are born into this world from a higher dimension ("heaven") which we forget upon entering the sphere of material existence. Hence, homo sapiens is a half-finished thing living in a state of waking sleep he calls reality, but which is actually a kind of delusion. Only those "awake" on the physical plane, the "enlightened" ones, see reality as it truly is. As such, they are supermen. Now that "home sapiens have outgrown their use", such mental supermen are set to inherit the earth. As a young man, Bowie was impatiently obsessed with the inefficiency of our unenlightened minds ("We're today's scrambled creatures, looked in tomorrow's double feature"). As a result, he viewed the majority, unaware as they were of their plight, with a blend of tolerant irony and frank contempt ("the mice in their million hordes"). Elaborating on the Gnostic myth, he cross-bred Nietzsche's Superman - "The Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud" is a sort of pop Zarathustra - with esoteric motifs in the writing of Madame Blavatsky and the teaching of the American mystic, Gurdjeff. Both allude extensively to mysterious "Masters": enlightened super-beings who supposedly guide human affairs from mountain fastnesses in Tibet and the Hindou Kush ("the men who protect you and I"). Blavatsky's writing, along with those of Eliphas Levi, gave birth to the late 19th-century Occult Revival which in Britain produced the magical society called The Golden Dawn, whence Aleister Crowley emerged, and which in Germany created the occult basis of Nazism, epitomised in Himmler's vision of his SS as an Arthurian company of immortals, incarnated to bring order to the physical plane. Though he made plenty of pro-Hitler statements around 1975-6, Bowie ultimately remained sane enough to distinguish the ideal of an order-bringing élite from the Nazi reality. He was, he would occasionally claim, a Nietzschean, his "fascism" being conceptually benign (if nonetheless arrogant). He favoured a New Order not of domination, but of enlightenment: rule of the "asleep" by the "awake". The main snag was that he was doing too many drugs. Imbibed along with piles of prime Colombian, books like Pauwel and Bergier's The Morning Of The Magicians (1971) and Trevor Ravenscroft's The Spear Of Destiny (1973) had, by 1975, led Bowie into a remote headspace where even UFO's were part of the plot.

During the LA sessions for Station To Station, the Fuhrerling (as Bowie drolly refers to himself in a demo of "Candidate" on the 1990 reissue of Diamond Dogs) was archetypally "torn between the light and dark". At one point the journalist, Cameron Crowe, found him burning black tapers in the seeming aftermath of some ritual magic that had gone wrong. "Been having a little trouble with the neighbours," said Bowie, evidently not referring to the people in the apartment next door. Michael Lippman, a friend of Bowie's during this period, remembers him describing strange nightmares. Lippman gave him a gold cross. Bowie later asked him for a mezuzah (a parchment in a glass tube, inscribed with the divine name Shaddai, which Orthodox Jews keep nailed to their door to ward off evil). The title track of the album is packed with occult references and allusions to the Gnostic myth of the Fall. A mention of White Stains, Crowley's very obscure first book, shows how deeply Bowie delved into the golden Dawn background; indeed, the lyric suggests that he also studied The Tree Of Life by Crowley's pupil, Israel Regardie, a brilliant treatise on the magical use of the 13th century Jewish mystical system, Quabala. In Quabalistic language, the Gnostic myth of the Fall can be expressed as "one magical movement from kether to malkuth" (Kether being the sphere of the Godhead, or Crown of Creation, and Malkuth being the sphere of the physical world, aka the kingdom). These spheres (sephiroth) lie at opposite ends of the glyph known as the Tree of Life, which Bowie is seen drawing on the back of EMI's reissue of Station to Station. Seems he thought of the sephiroth as stations - "standing places", as in the Stations Of the Cross (which have their own occult interpretation). Sadly there are 14 Stations Of The Cross but only 10 sephiroth. (The Christian sign of the cross, though does "map" onto the Tree..) The song, "Station to Station", also has a Shakespearean resonance. Prospero the magician (and incognito duke) in Shakespeare's most mysterious play. the Tempest, surrounds himself with books, among which is his occult grimoire. At the end of the play, he abjures magic and "drowns" his book of spells. In "Station To Station", the Thin White Duke - Bowie as a cocaine-frozen Prospero lost in his (magic) circle, tall in his room overlooking the ocean (Prospero's Island "cell" transported to the coast by Los Angeles) - despairingly reviews his repertoire of illusions. "Such is the stuff from where dreams are woven," he muses, not quite quoting Prospero ("We are such stuff/As dreams are made on"). Clearly, illusion is no longer what he wants. Station to Station - like Plastic Ono Band, like Todd, like On the Beach - is an exorcism: an exorcism of self, of the mind, of the past. By 1976, Bowie had nearly had enough of his "magic" - the theatrical "grand illusion" by which he'd lived since 1972. Thus, he "flashes no colour" - another magical allusion, this time to the so-called Tattva symbols which use "flashing" complimentary colours to after consciousness, ushering the magical aspirant into the Astral Plane of heightened vision. Decoded: Bowie has travelled the Astral (or ascended the tree Of Life); now he wants to come down o earth, to love. (Hence the cover image of the soundproof chamber in The Man Who fell to Earth.) One could easily continue for another thousand words in this vein about "Station To Station". (Let alone the rest of the record. Bowie; "It's the nearest album to a magical treatise that I've written"). Yet none of this symbolism would matter if the artist were not in control of it; and if it didn't crack, via the desperate drunken grandiloquence of the song's bridge ("Once there were mountains on mountains"), into the naked-and-wired stamped of its epic, up-tempo release, driven by that magnificent late Seventies rhythm section of Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis, and George Murray, and lit by the elemental fire-scream of Earl Slick's hysterical guitar. Those who accuse Bowie of lacking feeling should listen closely to this transition: the quavering, hopeless-to-hopeful vulnerability of the couplet, "It's not the side effects of the cocaine/I'm thinking that it must be love." This is a deeply unhappy human being, harried by his own incandescently gifted mind.

In fact, Bowie didn't cast his grimoire into the ocean after station To Station. He hedged his commercial bets by mixing the album "big", and made plans to tour it in Europe. He was still half in his mystic-fascist Thin White Duke persona when he "returned", like some parallel universe Duke of Windsor, to Britain in May, 1976 (and he would certainly have been aware that the Nazi salute is identical to the occult sign of the Zelator grade in the Golden Dawn system). Yet he went on, soon after this, to move to a roughhouse Turkish suburb of Berlin, there to kick the white powder, clean up his mind/body, and start a new career in a new town. The artistic transformation between Station to Station and Low was an inner one, not a career move, it happened to Bowie himself, not to Bowie the Actor. In Berlin, the sons of real SS men sorted his head out. In Berlin, he saw neo-nazis beat up Turkish immigrants. In Berlin, low in the aftermath of heavy drugs and Hollywood glamour, he forced himself to live like an everyday person, buying his own groceries. The nightmare of the Thin White Duke faded, chased away by hours of laughter with his new cohort, Eno, the first person Bowie worked with who could keep up with him. He finished Low (another album one could write thousands of words about) and mixed it, as he claims he intended to mix Station To Station, "dry": close, compressed, and with a gate on the snare so vicious that it became the first drum-sound people outside the studio-world actually noticed. What happened to the private cosmology, to the magical Nietzschean? Bowie has lately conceded "a need to vacillate between atheism or a kind of gnosticism". On his 1997 tour, he played, of all things "Quicksand". Think on, secret thinkers."

[gffa]

(i hope it's okay to send you random ass questions! you always give really intersting and thoughtful answers so it's difficult not to :D) i've always seen anakin's and obi-wan's padawan-master relationship as anakin idolizing the person who's taking him in (somewhat similar to what would happen if someone lived with their childhood celebrity crush) and then growing up to emancipate himself, see obi-wan as a human being, being given space to become more independent, until they grow to see each

other as equals. i'm wondering if it's just my shippy ass speaking though because anakin does say that obi-wan is the closest he has to a father, and obi-wan calls him a brother. i always disregard these instances because anakin sounds like he's trying to deliberately rile up obi in the first one to me (something in his tone, i think?) and my queer ass feels like "you were my brother" was only added to "no homo" the "i loved you". but i'm really curious about how other people read theirrelationship pre-clone wars. do you think anakin as a child viewed obi-wan as a father figure? (or, horrible thought, sheev?) is it, like, canon compliant to just ignore the dialogue i mentioned above? idk i think the tl;dr here is that i don't really think much about their master-padawan relationship because i ship them in tcw era but it's at the back of my mind and i'm interested in how you view it?i think i mentioned my ass at least twice in my ask and i want to apologize

It is always okay to send me random ass questions!  And to mention your ass as many times as you want!  Especially if you’re going to say such kind things, you’re very sweet to do so.  ♥It took me awhile to put into words a lot of what I felt with their dynamic for a long time, why it didn’t ping the father/son parallels to me in ways other ships did, despite that I could see why others felt that way.  If someone feels like that’s their dynamic, I absolutely get it and I will happily talk to them about the characters on that level only, god knows I’ve had pairings that fall strictly into that category myself.Anakin does say, at two different points, that Obi-Wan was like a father to him--in Attack of the Clones and during the unfinished TCW episodes.  And it took me a long while to realize why it just never quite clicked for me, but it’s largely because both times Obi-Wan doesn’t really respond to that and their dynamic never really reflects that in any way we see.  They never act like father and son with each other, even as a Master and Padawan, they’re much more of a team who complement each other, they each learn from each other, they each give and take.  The very first thing we learn about Obi-Wan and Anakin’s dynamic in AOTC is that Obi-Wan is rescued by Anakin just as often as we can imagine a Master would rescue their Padawan.  (”I haven't felt you this tense... since we fell into that nest of gundarks.” "You fell into that nightmare, Master, and I rescued you, remember?”)During Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan says, “You were my brother!” which, lol, that’s never really struck me as being strictly familial, like brothers-in-arms are absolutely a thing and are often very shippy/subtexty.So, you have those three moments of (questionable) framing as a familial thing, which, hey, fair enough!  But it’s also weighed against a mountain of the two of them actually ACTING like an old married couple.  The beginning of Revenge of the Sith is like thirty minutes of pure banter on the way to Grievous’ flagship and once they’re onboard it just keeps going.  (”No loose wire jokes.” “Did I say anything?” “He's trying.” “I didn't say anything!”)(”This time we will do it together.” “I was about to say that.”)  Mixed in with a whole lot of, “Leave him!”  “His fate will be the same as ours!”You also have it weighed against things like Nick Gillard specifically choreographing their fight like a boyfriend/girlfriend fight where Obi-Wan doesn’t want to hurt Anakin, doesn’t want to have this fight.  You have it weighed against that scene were Obi-Wan tells Anakin he’s proud of him and the look on Anakin’s face has no straight explanation that has ever satisfied me.You have it weighed against the ROTS novel--that George line-edited himself!--that says, “Blade-to-blade, they were identical. After thousands of hours in lightsaber sparring, they knew each other better than brothers, more intimately than lovers; they were complementary halves of a single warrior.“And all of that is before we get into some of the supplementary canon stuff because we’ll be here all day if I start quoting Wild Space again.So much of their relationship isn’t textually explicitly about being romantic, but it sure is framed in a way that’s very easy (and sometimes difficult not to!) put in that frame to contrast it at the very least, to still be defined by that framework. “More intimately than lovers” (or the infamous “Obi-Wan woke up staring at what he was pretty sure was Anakin’s butt” scene in the ROTS novel again) may play at contrasting against the idea, but it’s also still framing their relationship in romantic terms, even as it does so.  It’s hard not to think of them as romantic when you’re specifically using the term “lovers” to describe them, no matter what direction you take the metaphor in.Even during the Obi-Wan & Anakin comic, when we see them interacting for more than five seconds at a time while Anakin is young, Obi-Wan is pretty clearly not his father, he rather directly refutes that point when asked.  He is Anakin’s teacher and every line he says or doesn’t respond to reflect that.  Anakin tries to put it into that context sometimes--and my headcanon is basically, “Why does he do that when their relationship doesn’t actually feel at all like a father/son one to me?  OH FUCK YOU FOR PROBABLY PUTTING THE IDEA IN HIS HEAD, PALPATINE.”  Because he would know that Anakin wants that figure--but is obviously not getting it if he’s coming to Palpatine, yet another indication that, no, Obi-Wan/Anakin doesn’t really work like that--and so would drive a wedge between him and Obi-Wan over it.But really what got me into going from “Ehhh, I don’t ship that at all.” when I started out (I know!  I was fairly against the idea of shipping them when I really dove deep into Star Wars about two years ago!) to “Oh, wow, okay, that is super shippy and NOW I JUST WANT THEM TO KISS.” is that we got to see their relationship go from teacher/student to peers while watching The Clone Wars. We see them regularly banter like an old married couple, we see them each depending on the other in a way that’s about two people who are on an even field, we see that their dynamic isn’t left behind as they both move forward, but instead continues to grow.They’re given such narrative importance and emotional weight and, sure, a lot of it comes down to personal interpretation of chemistry--some people are going to see their banter as subtexty, some people are going to see it as familial, both are right for the person doing the interpreting--but a lot of the framing devices and the very consistent lack of actually giving weight to the father/son thing in my eyes means that I can very easily ship them and those lines don’t bother me.  They don’t hold much weight and even the characters themselves barely seem to think in those terms, it doesn’t really bear out for me.Personally, I don’t really ship them much pre-TCW, but I definitely think Anakin had some Certain Feelings as a teenager that Obi-Wan very firmly shut down at the time and so Anakin just kind of sat on them and buried them and it rather explains a lot of why he’s so willing to believe that Obi-Wan and Padme would have an affair behind his back despite that they hardly interact at all--because Anakin wants them both, because Anakin sees them both in a romantic light, OF COURSE they would see each other in a romantic light, too!  This is backed up for me by bb!Anakin in the comic not really looking at him like a father figure, but like you said, a celebrity crush, that sense of OH MY GOD HE’S THE BEST is positively star-struck.I think you can ignore the dialogue about father figures if you want, but that you don’t really need to.  I think it’s Anakin parroting someone else’s words (as he does throughout Revenge of the Sith, there are at least four major points where he’s just literally repeating Palpatine almost word for word) in a way that doesn’t hold water when it comes to how they actually interact.  You can tell me all day long that they’re just father and son figures, but when there’s so little in the actual dynamic between them that speaks to me of that, it’s not going to mean much to me.  But there is a whole lot of them behaving like how my favorite Old Married Couples act and so, yeah, I’m going to head in that direction instead!

[loveanimalstory-blog]

Tigers Don’t Eat Humans, So Why Did This One Kill Over 400 People?

In the first decade of the 20th century, the foremost prolific serial murderer of human life the planet has ever seen stalked the foothills of the Himalayas. A serial murderer that wasn't merely content to kidnap victims in the dark and dismember their bodies, but also insisted on eating their flesh. A serial murderer that, for the higher a part of ten years, eluded police, bounty hunters, assassins, and even a whole regiment of Nepalese Gurkhas. A serial murderer that happened to be a Royal Bengal tiger. Specifically, a tiger referred to as the Man-Eater of Champawat. much more than an apex predator that occasionally included humans in its diet, it had been an animal that—for reasons that wouldn’t become apparent until its killing spree was over—explicitly regarded our species as a primary source of food. And thereto end, this brazen tiger Tigris hunted Homo sapiens on a daily basis across the rugged borderlands of Nepal and India within the early 1900s with shocking impunity and an almost supernatural efficacy. within the end, its reported tally added up to 436 human souls—more, some belief than the other individual killer, man or animal, before or since. Despite its unusual appetites and hunting prowess, however, surprisingly little has been written about the Champawat. And when the odd mention of the tiger does happen, it's more often than not as a curious footnote to a broader article on human-tiger conflict, or as a gory little bit of trivia from The Guinness Book of World Records. the very fact that one tiger was ready to take such an immense human toll over such an extended period of your time is never presented as a topic that deserves historical scrutiny or academic study. It looks like an honest story, and zip more. And admittedly, it's a fine story, and it's tempting to present it simply intrinsically. it's universal in its appeal and almost literary in its Beowulfian dimensions: a man-eating creature that terrorizes the countryside, repeatedly evading capture, until a hero appears who is brave enough to trace it straight to its lair. it's a timeless campfire tale, simple and hair-raising within the way all such yarns must be. Who wouldn’t want to listen to a story like that? One that speaks to the foremost primal and deeply ingrained of all human fears? But there's another story to be told here also, and while certainly hair-raising, it's anything but simple. The events that transpired within the forests and valleys of the Himalayan foothills within the first decade of the 20th century weren't a series of bizarre aberrations. They were actually the inevitable results of the tremendous cultural and ecological conflicts that were shaking the region—indeed, the world—at that point, affecting man and animal alike in unlikely ways, and throwing age-old systems chaotically out of whack. faraway from some pulp fiction tale of man versus nature or good versus evil, the story of the Champawat is richer and far more complex, with protagonists at odds with even themselves. Beginning, of course, with the particular tiger. Bengal tigers don't under normal circumstances kill or eat humans. they're naturally semi-nocturnal, deep-forest predators with a seemingly ingrained fear of all things bipedal; they're animals which will generally change direction at the primary sign of a person's instead of seeking an aggressive confrontation. Yet at the turn of the 20th century, a change so profound and upsetting to the universe was occurring in Nepal and India on cause one such tiger to not only lose its inborn fear of humans altogether but to start hunting them in their homes on an about weekly basis—a tragedy for the quite four hundred individuals who would eventually fall victim to its teeth and claws. This tiger ceased to behave sort of a tiger in the least, in important respects, and transformed into a replacement quite creature about unknown within the hills of northern India’s Kumaon district, prowling around villages and stalking men and ladies in broad daylight. Then there's Corbett, the now-legendary hunter who was finally commissioned by the British government to finish the Champawat Tiger’s reign. To many, even in present-day India, he's nothing in need of a secular saint, a brave and selfless figure who risked life and limb to defend poor villagers when nobody else would. To others, particularly academics engaged with post-colonial ecologies, he's just another perpetrator of the Eurocentric paternalism that defined the colonial experience. Each may be a fair judgment. The whole truth, however, is way more nuanced, together would expect when it involves a deeply conflicted man whose life spanned eras, generations, and eventually even empires. Corbett was a prolific sportsman who, upon achieving fame, hobnobbed with aristocrats and used tiger hunts to curry their favor. But he was also a tireless advocate for wild tigers and devoted the latter a part of his life to their conservation—as evidenced by the sprawling and luxurious park in India that bears his name to the present day. Yes, he did come to enjoy the trimmings and privileges of English sahib, servants and sport shooting and social clubs included. But because of the domiciled son of an Irish postmaster, foreign-born and thought of socially inferior, he was also keenly conscious of what it meant to be colonized—by the very people he enabled and admired. And he did love India, in particular, its people, even while playing an unwitting part within the nation’s subjugation. Which brings us, inevitably, to colonialism itself—a topic far too broad and multifaceted for any single book, including one that’s concerned primarily with man-eating tigers. Yet it's colonialism, undeniably, and therefore the onslaught of environmental destruction that it almost universally heralds, that served because of the primary catalyst within the creation of our man-eater. it's going to are a poacher’s bullet in Nepal that first turned the Champawat Tiger upon our kind, but it had been a full century of disastrous ecological mismanagement within the Indian subcontinent that drove it out of the wild forests and grasslands it should have called home and allowed it to become the prodigious killer that it had been. What becomes clear upon closer historical examination is that the Champawat wasn't an event of nature gone awry—it was actually a man-made disaster. From Valmik Thapar to Corbett himself, any tiger wallah could tell you the varied factors which will turn a traditional tiger into a man-eater: a disabling wound or infirmity, a loss of prey species, or degradation of natural habitat. within the case of the Champawat, however, we discover not only one but all three of those factors to be irrefutably present. Essentially, by the late nineteenth century, British within the United Provinces of northern India and their Rana dynasty counterparts in western Nepal had created, through a mixture of irresponsible forestry tactics, agricultural policies, and hunting practices, the perfect conditions for an ecological catastrophe. And it had been the type of catastrophe we will still find whiffs of today, be it within the recent spate of shark attacks in Réunion Island, the increase of human-wolf conflict on the outskirts of Yellowstone, or maybe the man-eating tigers that still appear in places just like the Sundarbans forest of India or Nepal’s Chitwan park. within the modern-day, we've eventually, thankfully, come to understand the importance of apex predators in maintaining the health of our ecosystems—but we’re still negotiating, somewhat painfully, how best to measure alongside them. And that’s to mention nothing of the much more sweeping problems posed by heating and mass extinction, exigencies that have arisen from considerably an equivalent amalgamation of economic mismanagement and environmental destruction. Apex predators are generally considered bellwethers of the general health of the environment, and at the present, with carbon emissions on the increase and natural habitats diminishing, the outlook for both feels disarmingly uncertain. This is why this particular story of environmental conflict isn't only relevant, but urgent and necessary. At its core, Jim Corbett’s quest to rid the valleys of Kumaon of the Champawat Tiger is dramatic and easy, but the tensions that underscore it contain the resonance of much larger and more grievous issues. Yes, it's a timeless tale of cunning and courage, but also a lesson, still considerably pertinent today, about how deforestation, industrialization, and colonization can upset the delicate balance of cultures and ecosystems alike, creating unseen pressures that, at a particular point, must find their release. Sometimes even within the sort of a man-eating tiger.

[linchan637]

Homo-eroticism in Lost Love

Something that really just bugs me when it comes to dramaland is its use of homoerotic imagery and homosexual themes, but none of the guts to really follow through. There are several dramas that deal with homosexual issues (Personal Taste, Coffee Prince, and Sungkyunkwan Scandal come to mind) but homosexuality itself is always played with, never really dealt with. It’s the same in Lost Love, and I wish it weren’t.

Spoilers ahead, and it’s a rather lengthy post.

Yuan Ling and Yuan Che

There are a lot of princes in this drama, so it’s no surprise that they would form alliances and be joined at the hip. There’s a sense of brotherhood between them, but it also goes into homosexual, incestuous territory at times, and I wish that it really didn’t because it doesn’t do the show any good nor does it do anything for the story. Take Ling and Che, our first brothers-almost-lovers pairing.

There is a key moment when Princess Duo Xia comes to Ling’s manor and sees Che there. When Che mentions that Ling’s not there, Duo Xia says she’ll wait, then looks Che up and down as if assessing a potential rival. She moves closer to him and asks why Ling is single.

DX: Could it be that he has unspeakable reasons or some unmentionable disease? Or is it because of someone else that he has to marry late?

Che: It isn’t because of me that 4th Brother is single!

There’s a lot of homoerotic subtext in Duo Xia’s question, and the fact that Che tries to dissuade her is telling. It’s not hard to understand why Duo Xia would think there’s something else going on between the two brothers given that 1) they’re very close, having been through many battles and often shown together; 2) Che is almost always at Ling’s manor (I don’t know if he has his own place, but surely he has his own family he can be with) and it’s not a coincidence that he’s the one who greets her, much like a stay-at-home wife; and 3) Che shows little interest in much else other than Ling. (We know that he has his own love interest, but Duo Xia does not know that yet.) Duo Xia has always been shown to be observant and perceptive, so it’s not out of character for her to ask what’s really going on and try to get to the bottom of things. She is, after all, trying to marry Ling. That’s not really what’s problematic here.

What is is the humorous music underlying the whole interaction. Accusing someone of being a homosexual isn’t funny, nor should it be treated as such. That’s just exploiting a real issue in the LGBT community faces for some bad humor. Lost Love isn’t the first to do this, but I am disappointed because it could do so much better.

Yuan Ming and Yuan Ji

Where Ling’s and Che’s interactions aren’t explicitly homoerotic, Ming’s and Ji’s are. I think you could make a bigger argument that Ji loves Ming more than you could for Che loving Ling. There are also several factors that make this couple interesting, while still problematic in its execution.

There’s a lot more overtly gendered characteristics between the two. Ji is shown to be quiet and meek, almost like a princess rather than a prince. He is berated by the Emperor for being such, and even calls those traits “shortcomings.” There is a bias going on there that’s not really seen anywhere else in the show (for example, no one criticizes Duo Xia for being strong-willed and powerful even though she’s a princess), which only goes to feminize Ji. In a few flashback scenes, we see Ji caring for Ming as a wife might. He fixes Ming’s clothes before they go to a court session and he uses his sleeve to clean up blood from Ming’s hand. It’s no surprise that when Ji dies, Ming carries him bridal style out before his brothers. But Ji isn’t the only one to play a “female” part in their relationship.

Whereas Ji’s effeminate-ness is implicit, Ming’s is explicit. He’s shown to have cross-dressed and can even puts on a female mask as a disguise. We find out he did this to help Ji several times before. The first being when they were young and Ji had lost his mother, Ming disguises himself to get the Emperor to visit Ji’s mother’s grave. The second being when Ji had to kneel in the rain after displeasing the Emperor, Ming came to him as a maid and put an umbrella over him. Ming is literally turning himself into a woman to help Ji, and Ji in turn dotes on Ming as a female lover might.

It’s an interesting dynamic that I wish the show had more guts to follow through. There could’ve been so many more layers to their relationship, and on the show’s take on gender and sexuality overall. However, by having the two be brothers, the show cops out of having any real discussion on the issue or allowing the characters to have any further development. It seems like the show just put the homoerotic scenes there for the homophiles in the audience. It’s the same as with Ling and Che–the homosexual relationship is implied but only for entertainment value rather than for character depth.

Yuan Li and Ming Yan

Perhaps the worst (and most disappointing) of these homoerotic relationships is that of Yuan Li and Ming Yan. A common trope in dramaland is a man falling love with another “man,” who is really a woman in disguise. Ming Yan is one of the Mages but enters the palace disguised as a man and meets Li, the 12th prince. They don’t get along at first, but slowly Li falls for her, all the while not knowing she’s a woman and becoming conflicted because of his feelings. Li even goes so far as to ask Che for advice, and Che seems to give Li his blessing on the relationship. In the end, Li finds out that Ming Yan is not a man through accidentally walking in on her bathing.

I don’t like that in these situations the only way the man finds out about his lover’s identity is through seeing her naked body. It objectifies the woman, stripping her worth down to her body and gender. It robs her of agency, as her privacy is never treated as a serious issue and is instead allowed to be violated so that the man’s heterosexuality can be confirmed. There are better ways to discover a character’s true identity that can actually affect the character’s relationship and better the story.

What gets me is how, after the man’s heterosexuality is affirmed, character development basically comes to a standstill. The status quo is brought back, and our characters don’t learn or question anything beyond it. Li doesn’t question his sexuality after this, not wondering if he really is attracted to men or what would’ve happened if Ming Yan was actually a man. There are no more layers or conflicts to his relationship to Ming Yan, even though there absolutely should be.

And I think that’s the reason why this relationship was the most disappointing. There was so much more the show could’ve done to make this couple interesting. It could’ve been a more realistic, homosexual relationship rife with internal and external conflict. Instead, it’s a generic mistaken-gender-swap story that’s been done so many times before.

Why am I rambling about this? Why does this matter?

In my previous post, I talked about why I love Lost Love. It’s got an interesting premise, it’s well-paced, and it looks stunning. But I really love it because its core characters are intelligent, proactive, and show an awareness of their situation that makes them more than just pretty faces. I really adore the way women are treated as equal to men in this show, saving their own butts and coming up with their own plans to forward their own agendas. Everyone is given a level of agency over their own development, and that’s honestly so refreshing in a genre that’s teeming with stupid, doormat flat characters.

So, it’s really disappointing when characters are robbed of that chance. Che doesn’t develop beyond being a loyal brother. Ji dies before we can get anything else out of him. Li’s feelings for Ming Yan are not expounded upon any further, as of this posting anyway. For once, I want to see a historical romance drama deal with the real issues of having a man love a man and not shy away from it or use it for just entertainment.

I’m not saying that every drama needs to deal with homosexuality or LGBT issues, but I am saying that I’m sick of dramas that can deal with it in a mature, realistic way not do so. Everything else about Lost Love is so much better than the other shows I’ve seen, so it’s disheartening when it fails to show or comment on homosexuality and even goes so far as to treat it as a joke.

I’m still going to watch the rest of the show (as of this posting, only 38 out of its total 56 episodes have been streamed on DramaFever) and hope that it does have some guts to actually address these issues.

[nursey-nursey-please]

the bestest pal a boy could ever have

Listen my boi christopher franklin chow is one of the most caring and thoughtful individuals to ever grace this earth

nursey Knows, and therefore tries not to take it to heart that chowder remembers his favorite drink and book and his childhood dogs name. he really does.

he also tries to ignore that the full force of chowders attention makes him feel so important and cared for

y'all hes only human tho and like… he cant stop himself from spending like 99% of his time with chowder. (who is so nice, he doesnt care at all!! not one bit… because hes… just so nice)

and in that time, not only does he feel more validated than he has in his entire life, chowder just also happens to be the best person alive and oh shit… Nursey’s Gay (i would like to think his realization is like… grand and overdramatic like chowder is like “hey man i saved u this banana nut muffin because i know its your favorite” and nursey is like “bro ur the best ily” and then he realizes o shit i definitely meant that in an explicitly homo way rip and then he has like an existential crisis over a muffin & his crush)

honestly he feels so bad about it bc.. he can justify lust for chowder obviously bc hes a good looking person and a lot of smh is pr fine lbr but… having a heart hard on for ur best friend is very different

he’s also like… positive theres no way chowder could be into him because hes just… so emotionally distant and fucked up and hes not good enough to be happy, essentially

the first person he asks abt it is holster but it goes SO AWRY bc he goes “hypothetically… if u were to like ur best friend who may or may not be ur teammate and ur pretty sure hes straight but might not be but probably is… and is like way out of ur league but u like him anyway what would u do about that?” and holster says “well….. HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING…. id spend as much time as possible trying to get along with him and taking it slow, get to know him better” and holster walks away thinking nursey has a crush on dex and THat does not go well

basically nursey spends like several months pining over chowder but all along… chowder was doing the same thing!! he even sought essentially the same advice from bitty!!! but bitty ALSO thought chowder liked dex so it was like… all the upperclassmen firmly believed there was a frog love triangle happening… and then when nursey finally said fuck it and kissed chowder it was like a soap opera for them and they were all like :oooo and dex was like “fucking finally”

[weirdbynorthwest]

Notes on Northern Exposure, S01E02: “Brains, Know-How and Native Intelligence”

We begin the episode with Chris Stevens delivering his first ever “Chris in the Morning” address on the show, in Cicely’s local radio station, KBHR, or “K-Bear”. Why “K-Bear”? Well, firstly, it’s customary for radio stations to be given easily pronounceable names inspired by their initials, for the sake of marketing. But there’s an additional fun fact regarding this particular station’s origins: both KBHR and its nick-name belong to a real-life local radio station in Big Bear City, California. Surrounded by the Alaskan wilderness, Cicely undoubtedly has more than its fair share of bears, so the nickname remains appropriate.

The subject of Chris’s speech, and a significant chunk of the episode, is the 19th century poet Walt Whitman, an American literary giant and one of Chris’s leading artistic inspirations. But not everyone approves of Whitman. Chris recalls being “blindsided by the raging fist of [his] incarcerator,” at the juvenile detention home where he spent his juvenile delinquent days. This stern authority figure told Chris, in no uncertain terms, “that Walt Whitman's homoerotic, unnatural, pornographic sentiments were unacceptable and would not be allowed in an institution dedicated to reforming the ill-formed.” Whitman’s sexuality has been the subject of endless debate, but it’s generally accepted that he was either homo- or bisexual. That Whitman, “that great bear of a man, enjoyed the pleasures of other men came as a great surprise” to Chris, leading him to “reconsider the queers [he] had previously kicked around.” Yes, Chris wasn’t always the open-minded liberal we otherwise see him as. He was, in his youth, capable of homophobic violence. This makes me, a confirmed homosexual (or “homo-romantic grey-sexual,” if we’re being particular), rather sad. It also makes me more inclined to be wary and critical of Chris in this episode.

Chris reads Whitman’s “When Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865), a poem written following the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865), during a period of national mourning over the then recent assassination of former president Abraham Lincoln. The poem doesn’t explicitly identify Lincoln, but it’s generally thought that that’s who the poem was about. However, the final line of the first stanza – “And thought of him I love” – may have been presented in this scene in order to underline the topic of Whitman’s sexuality. For Whitman’s clearest expression of homosexual love in verse, one should really examine the “Calamus” sequence of poems written in or before 1859, included in the third edition of Leaves of Grass, originally published in 1855. (I nearly read some to an ex-boyfriend on his birthday once. I regret not doing that. But they were aware of the thought, and I got a lot of love for it, so it balanced out.)

We catch a glimpse of Maurice fishing whilst listening to Chris’s show. He clearly isn’t impressed by all this talk of Whitman enjoying “the pleasures of other men.” Maurice was established as being, at the very least, a sexist and racist bigot in the previous episode, so any homophobia on his part wouldn’t come as a surprise. This still doesn’t prepare the viewer for what Maurice will do next.

Meanwhile, in this week’s instalment of “Will They? Won’t They?’ Joel and Maggie are in the Brick, having a go at each other over plumbing. This argument at least feels as if it springs from a natural cause, compared to last week’s glaringly-contrived-in-order-to-establish-the-formula bickering. Joel is talking to Maggie as his landlord, about a faulty toilet. Maggie teases Joel over his lack of self-reliance: why not try fixing it himself, or go out and fertilise the scenery? She winds up calling him a “helplessness junkie”, an odd turn of phrase he’ll spend half the episode grumbling about and later delight in throwing back at her, when she visits him in his surgery over a self-inflicted knee injury.

Joel’s chauvinism is out in full force again, as he offers to treat any puncture wounds Rick may have received from Maggie walking all over him in her heels. Yecch. And then he comes on to her in a way that fictional characters in a “Will They? Won’t They?” comedy set-up routinely get away with, when he says “you’re clearly attracted to me.” Of course, the show will routinely remind us she is. But in real life, if you said something like that to someone, it would be widely and rightly considered inappropriate. Unlike the utterly irredeemable and thoroughly loathsome Ross Geller in Friends (NBC, 1994-2004), Joel is a genuinely likeable character under all the sexist asshattery the writers insist upon having him say. I hope the situation improves, and soon.

Joel remarks that he’s “not the Grizzly Adams type.” This is a reference to John “Grizzly” Adams, a nineteenth-century mountain man who hunted and trained wild animals (including, you guessed it, “grizzly” bears) for use in zoos, menageries and circuses, from New England to California. An outdoorsman and a showman (he partnered up at one point with another American icon, that jack-of-all-trades P.T. Barnum), “Grizzly” Adams became, in the popular cultural consciousness, an iteration of an American frontiersman archetype, akin to Davy Crockett. Joel does not resemble that archetype at all – but Brick proprietor Holling Vincoeur, according to Joel, does. We’ll see how that comparison bears out in the episodes and seasons to come.

Meanwhile, over at K-Bear, the “raging fist” of Maurice Minnifield comes raining down on Chris Stevens like the fist of that faceless authoritarian in Chris’s juvenile detention home. I find the violence Maurice inflicts on Chris in this episode jarring. We later learn from Joel that Maurice threw Chris through a plate-glass window. We see bruises and band-aids on Chris’s face, and his arm in a plaster cast. We learn, towards the end of the episode, that Chris snuck in a decent left-hook – but that still, to my mind, doesn’t make up for what might be one of the single most unpleasant things Maurice has done on the show.

And while we’re on the subject of violence, what about Ed’s response to Joel describing his current spat with Maggie? He asks “Did you hit her?” Where did that come from? A more uncharacteristic thing for Ed to say – even just two episodes into the show – is hard to imagine. Is it meant to suggest that Ed grew up in an environment where domestic violence was the norm? Or that Cicely’s foremost cinephile learnt everything he knows about human interaction from the movies? I don’t know. I just know that it’s a weird, discomfiting line.

Ed introduces the episode’s secondary plot, which is about Ed’s uncle Anku (Frank Sotonoma “Grey Wolf” Salsedo). Ed tells Joel that his uncle is a “witch doctor,” which briefly leads them into a variation on the famous “Who’s on First?” comedy routine.

Ed’s uncle is seriously unwell – as in, there’s blood in his urine. And blood in your urine is nothing to be sniffed at. 11 years ago I had a urinary tract infection thanks to the onset of type-one diabetes. The pain was unreal. Imagine passing red hot needles instead of water. TMI? Ah, DMY. My point is, it’s not something you can comfortably ignore. And as a doctor, Joel knows it’s not something you can afford to ignore. And so, at Ed’s behest, Joel spends a significant chunk of the episode befriending Anku and trying his best to persuade him to seek medical attention. But, unbeknownst to Anku’s family, Anku has already sought medical attention and learnt that he has prostate cancer. He just needs Joel to pressure him into swallowing his pride as a medicine man before seeking further treatment.

Joel will, in dealing with Anku, realise in an on-screen “eureka!” of an epiphany that pride is the theme binding all the episode’s narrative threads together. Anku’s pride, his own pride, Maggie’s pride, Maurice’s pride, are all wrapped up in a neat little package. Is it too neat, too tidy? Maybe, but I like it. It’s a reassuring sign that Joel’s character won’t remain static, that he’ll gain new insight into the town and its characters, learn new things and continue to develop over the course of the series.

“Keeping it in the family”: Mrs. Anku is played by Armenia Miles, the mother of Elaine Miles, who plays Joel’s secretary, Marilyn Whirlwind. In future episodes, she’ll play Marilyn’s mother.

Anku asks Joel if he’s ever seen the film Little Big Man (dir. Arthur Penn, 1970), in which Dustin Hoffman plays a man who, as a white child, was rescued and raised by a Cheyenne tribe. Is Anku drawing a connection between the Jewish actor and Jewish doctor, to whom he imparts some of his own “native intelligence”?

Joel, after explaining that he can’t keep chasing after Anku, pleads with Ed not to “do this northern brooding thing, I can’t stand Bergman films.” Is Joel intentionally using sophisticated cinema references he knows Ed will get? Because if so, that’s kinda cute. Couple that with Ed watching Joel as he sleeps, and I wonder if anyone, anywhere, at any time, has thought to ship these two characters?

As Maurice takes full control of radio K-Bear we learn he’s a huge fan of musical theatre, something that’s often been depicted as a stereotypical trait of gay men (less so these days, but very much so in the nineties). Is the episode replaying the old, unhelpful cliché that “all homophobes are repressed homosexuals”? I don’t think so. It certainly doesn’t underline or lean into that idea. As much as Maurice’s showtunes are driving the residents of Cicely crazy, he’s never mocked for the fact that he enjoys showtunes.

At a town meeting, angry Cicelians call for the reinstatement of Chris Stevens as radio presenter. Maurice isn’t having it. “One of our own, Chris Stevens, made a mistake,” he “did a bad thing” and “he had to pay for it.” What was that mistake? We get an answer, of sorts, when Maurice returns to the airwaves the next day and attempts to explain his recent behaviour. It’s a speech that causes the entire town to stop in its tracks, suggesting we should stop in our tracks too and take what Maurice is saying seriously.

Maurice recalls his devastation upon discovering, as a child, that his hero John Wayne didn’t do his own stunts. The gist of it is, Maurice doesn’t want his heroes to be humanized, to have their weaknesses exposed. “Sure, we’re all human,” but do we have to be reminded that our heroes are human too? Maurice is an advocate of the “Great Man” theory of history, the idea that the greatest achievements in human history were brought about by great men (and with his ego, he no doubt fancies himself one). Maurice wants his heroes to remain on their marble pedestals as untainted paragons of manly virtue. “We need our heroes. We need men we can look up to. Believe in. Men who walk tall.” Of course it doesn’t occur to Maurice, just as it doesn’t occur to most advocates of the “Great Man” conception of history, that those heroes could include women or minorities.

Maurice considers Walt Whitman a hero. Though “Walt Whitman was a pervert,” in Maurice’s bigoted view, “he was the best poet that America ever produced.” Maurice concedes that Whitman was, most likely, a homosexual. He’d just rather not know or be reminded of that. Because Maurice is a homophobic bigot who believes that homosexuality is a weakness, a character flaw that should be hidden from view, never to be acknowledged. But just because Maurice believes that “there are damn few of us who deserve to be called heroes” and that, despite his own bigotry, Whitman deserves the title of hero, doesn’t make Maurice less wrong or less of a bigot.

And yet, as the speech prompts Chris to go and apologise to Maurice, the episode seems to come down firmly on Maurice’s side of the argument. Not that there’s actually been an argument. No one in town has attempted to argue the opposite of Maurice’s position – that a knowledge of Whitman’s probable homosexuality does nothing to diminish him or his work. The implicit and unfortunate assumption in this episode is that it does diminish Whitman. That’s why we have Chris apologising to Maurice, saying that he also doesn’t want people reading Walt Whitman for “the wrong reasons.” What reasons are those, Chris? The only reason suggested in the episode comes from Ruth-Anne, when she tells Joel that all the Whitman has been taken out of the library as there’s “nothing like an interesting sex-life to get people reading.”

So, is Chris suggesting that he doesn’t want people reading Whitman because of his sexuality? Why not? Whitman’s “Calamus” poems meant a lot to me when I was younger, and I would never have discovered them had I not heard about Whitman’s sexuality and the poems’ reputation. I see in them a beautiful expression of the romantic feelings I then had for my ex-boyfriend, and I can’t read them now without getting misty-eyed. Like a lot of great poetry, the poems powerfully describe feelings of romantic/erotic longing, the distinction being that they clearly describe feelings of romantic/erotic longing between men. It isn’t “subtext.” You don’t have to “read between the lines.” It’s there, in the words on the page. Whitman’s sexuality informs his writing, even if his writing isn’t explicitly sexual.

Unfortunately, in the nineties there persisted this idea that homosexuality was something to be guarded against, lest it corrupt our children or our own imaginations when engaged in the intellectual enjoyment of nineteenth-century verse. Depending on where you are in the world, it’s an attitude that still persists or even prevails. And this episode of Northern Exposure appears to embody it.

For me, Whitman’s “Calamus” poems are a powerful reminder of a time in my life when I was young and happy and in love. But Chris appears to be suggesting that I’m reading Whitman wrong. Well… Fuck you Chris. There’s nothing wrong with highlighting the fact that Walt Whitman was likely gay or bi, or that a significant number of his poems appear to have been informed by his own homoerotic desire. It can do a lot of people – gay or bisexual people, for example – a lot of good to know that people who felt the way they do existed in the 19th century, and that they wrote beautiful verse you could share with a loved one.

It should be clear by now that, unlike Maurice, I don’t believe it’s a mistake to humanize our heroes. Knowing Mark Twain loves cats humanizes him. In no way does it diminish my love of Mark Twain (but then I’m a cat person, so I’m biased). Other than the very worst literary critics, who really wants to see the likes of Twain and Whitman reduced to cold, lifeless marble statues in the Pantheon of the American Literary Canon? It does us no harm, either, to learn the personal and political beliefs of our heroes, especially if we don’t want people thinking we share certain of those beliefs. Hero worship is problematic in general, but it’s impossible for us not to admire people, to have our own personal heroes. But as we grow and change over the course of our lives, we shouldn’t be afraid to update that list.

In the course of its run, Northern Exposure introduced a gay male couple; confirmed that its founders, Cicely and Roslyn, were a lesbian couple; and was the second US TV show to feature a gay wedding (the first being Roc [Fox, 1994-1994]). Northern Exposure was not only on the right side of history, it was consistently ahead of its time. If I’ve been especially hard on this episode, it’s because I know how far it falls short of the show’s future accomplishments.

[bisexual-books]

Prepub Review - Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy

Guess who managed to get their hands on an advance reader copy of the year’s most anticipated bisexual book? 

Before we start, all our book reviews contain MASSIVE SPOILERS and this one will be no different.  Which means if you want to read this book spoiler free when it is released in May, turn back now!   

Also, I have a LOT of thoughts on this book and how it plays into cultural narratives around non-monosexuality, so buckle up cuz this is gonna be a long one.  

Everybody ready?  Got a snack?  Lets do this thing.

The most important thing you need to know about Ramona Blue is that its not a story about a lesbian who is “cured” by straight boy dick.  Not even a little bit. Ramona flat-out says she is not straight and shuts characters down HARD when they make that assumption.  There is no way you can read this book and walk away with the conclusion that it plays into a homophobic trope of men “turning” lesbians unless you are just willfully ignoring both subtext and very explicit text.  

The connection between Ramona and Freddie (the straight guy) centers a lot of the emotional action, but it unfolds slowly and with a lot of deliberate choices.  It’s also an interracial relationship in which he teaches her about blackness as much as she teaches him about queerness.  The whole thing has a super social justice vibe about it.  The characters make mistakes and missteps, but they (and the reader) are allowed to learn from them.   The book is also grounded in the strong relationship between Ramona and her sister Hattie, creating something that is more akin to a classic coming of age story than a romance novel.  

Now let's go deeper.   

Bisexual feminist author Shiri Eisner writes a lot about how bisexuals operate in the gray area, the mushy middle, the space between homo/hetero.  We are inherently boundary busters and shit destabilizers.  I couldn’t help but think of her work while I was reading this book because at its core, Ramona Blue’s overarching theme is about finding oneself when your shit destabilizes and all that is left is the gray area.

That’s it.  That’s the theme.  This entire book is about boundary busting and category destabilizing.  

Ramona starts the book with a strong identity, not just as a lesbian but believing she knows exactly what the rest of her life will be.  By the end, she has moved into questioning not only her orientation but everything she had planned for life after high school.  For example, she starts the book absolutely positive that she is not going to college, not leaving her small town, and not leaving the trailer where she shares a bedroom with her flighty, pregnant, older sister. She believes fanatically that she needs to stay put, and provide for the new baby emotionally and financially.  She ends the book starting a pre-college program in another town after their trailer was destroyed in a tornado.  

The subtext here is about as subtle as a brick to the face.    

As far as her sexual identity, the book ends with her still unsure which label is right.  Her sexuality is woven into that larger theme via character development that is deliberate and thoughtful.  This book takes place over the course of a school year, giving Ramona plenty of time to examine herself and her options. And importantly, she ends the book liking herself despite her uncertain future on several fronts. 

Don’t get me wrong -- I would have loved it if Ramona came out as bi in the end.  Because I see Ramona as clearly bi (or some other flavor of non-monosexual).  I come to this conclusion not just because she dates/has sex with a dude, but because there are a few little moments where she appreciates boys in a way that her lesbian friend clearly does not.  She shares a profound emotional intimacy with Freddie in addition to overtly wanting him sexually.  And her responses to the pressure to ‘pick the gay side’ are familiar to anyone who has come out as bi.  But in the end, she doesn’t choose that word.  

However I want to make clear that Ramona Blue doesn’t fall into the trope of the missing B word.  She doesn’t react poorly to being asked if she is bi, she doesn’t insist that she just looooves people, doesn’t spit biphobia, put up with biphobic jokes, or wax about how she just doesn’t like labels.  Murphy doesn’t treat it as an unspeakable thing.  Ramona is considering if she is bi, but she just doesn’t know.

And that is okay.   It is okay to be questioning.  It’s ok to write books about teens who are questioning where they end the story still questioning. The problem I often have with bi representation is that questioning stories go to ridiculous lengths to avoid the word ‘bisexual’, or handle bisexuality in biphobic ways.  Ramona Blue does none of this.    As much as I want more explicitly bi literature, there is also a lot of value in this kind of questioning story because it is so rarely explored in ways that are this deliberate and well written.   I appreciate Ramona Blue opening up a place in YA lit for a questioning story that is thematically sound and handled with such delicacy.

In queer culture, questioning is often portrayed exclusively as the stop between straightsville and gay town, but the reality is so much more complicated than that.  For so many bisexuals, questioning comes around again after first identifying as gay or lesbian.  For so many bisexuals, we continue questioning even when we pick a bi label.   For so many bisexuals, questioning is always asking if they are ‘bi enough’.  The bi experience of questioning is different than the gay/lesbian experience with questioning.  

This book is touching on some of that difference and that complexity.  It is destabilizing the neat tidy categories of gay and straight.  I can understand that for monosexual people that can be scary and cause them to react in knee-jerk defensive ways to protect their own privilege.  It can be offputting to read a book that centers questioning through a nonmonosexual queer lens instead of a ‘traditional’ gay/lesbian one.  

I believe that is what is behind the rush of lesbians (who haven’t read the book) and would much rather deny the complexities of non-monosexual experience and instead label this book as ‘lesbophobic’.   This book is only lesbophobic if you believe anyone who identifies as a lesbian should be forced to only/always be a lesbian because there is no room for questioning once that label has been applied.  

Reading Ramona Blue made me remember Adam Silvera speaking at the Andersons YA Lit Con in 2016 about how he is so often assumed to be a gay author because he writes so many gay characters, but he too is questioning.  He’s not sure if he is bi, but he’s become less comfortable over time with saying that he’s gay when he himself doesn’t know.  That is exactly the feel Ramona Blue is going for.  

So to sum up, Ramona Blue is not lesbophobic unless you’re a giant biphobe, has great depth and themes, and it fills a much-needed gap in the YA queer lit canon.    The end result is a smart and enjoyable read. 

- Sarah 

PS: Because the last time I talked about this book we got a rash of threatening, cruel, biphobic, and generally fucked up asks, they’re temporarily turned off.  If you have a response to this review, reblog it and own it publically.   Because I’ve removed your option to lowkey tell me I deserve to be coercively raped fuckface