#every time I think of something else that was meant to explore queer narratives I feel more rage

[stagefoureddiediaz]

So we can all agree that Eddie’s s5 breakdown story arc was intended to actually be him repressing his queerness and got swapped out for his ptsd trauma instead right

[emblazons]

you've been writing a lot about parentified Mike lately, and while I appreciate it, from a story perspective I just don't understand why.

Maybe its just because I'm an elmike truther, but it really doesn't make sense to me why they would put such an unpleasant aspect into their friendship or romance when they could have just had her upset at him over Max's death or not sharing interests? With steve and nancy they broke up over barb and nancy wanting something else which made of sense without making steve "parent" her. idk. Maybe you're the wrong person to ask lol I'm just thinking out loud

I mean. Maybe I'm not the best person to give insight into why the duffers do what they do, but I can give why I think they did it?

Forewarning: this got really long, apologies lmao

Honestly (and take this from an out-of-universe perspective): I think they're fully aware of the strangeness of El as a character, and how she has a lot of narrative/personal "growth needs" that other characters don't just by nature of her background. She even from the pitch is referred to as "the outsider," and all of her arc, not just the romantic one, has been centered around finding a 'home' in the world, on top of finding the family she lacked before.

This, I'm almost certain, is why she always ends up on different paths than every other person she interacts with—she started with almost no sense of self as an individual, which means a sense of "self" has to be built and discovered (and remembered) for El in a way it already has been for our other characters. Max, Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas—all of them have interests and desires, a sense of family (good or bad), know what they enjoy, and are evolving as they go along...but El didn't at the start of ST beyond lab trauma, which is why The Duffers have centered almost all of her character growth since then around discovering where she came from & who she wants to be.

With Mike though...there is an entirely different set of relational and character needs that have to be addressed. With Mike, the main struggles he has (from the pitch, again) are with insecurity, his belief that a girl will resolve that insecurity, his feeling valueless unless he can do something for the people he loves (almost like 'earning his place' in their lives) and his (almost certain) queerness...combined with how he is, at the end of the day, just another "everyman" guy.

Unlike El, Mike has some sense of personhood, his own established friends and interests and a home—but he doesn't feel like he has a place he's intrinsically appreciated, because (for whatever reason) he feels who he is inherently inadequate. Its why every season (and every time we hear Finn dig a little into Mike's character) we hear about Mike trying to serve others and "feel needed again," despite being hesitant to let them in—he desires unconditional acceptance, and to be valued for who he is inherently...while also being terrified to let people in enough to see him (lest his core identity be rejected).

When Mike and El were just friends, it was easier to sort them out as some version of "equals;" we all have friends who are in different life phases than us, or who have different needs we're trying to walk alongside as they try to meet them, which is why their friendship is cute in S1. With actual romantic partners though, we introduce an element of "trying to get your needs met" with the person you're most closely involved with...and for Mike and El, that means blending "a nebulous sense of self and desire to find an identity + family" with "a desire to have a girl fill a sense of inherent unworthiness," which, as most of us can see, leads to disaster.

Basically: From the snowball onward, writing romantic mlvn meant exploring what happens when you mix what El is looking for with what Mike tries to do to feel valued...and The Duffers have decided (rightfully, I think) that this means Mike is going to (consciously or not) move towards becoming the things El lacks to "become valuable," aka: protection from the "bad men," someone who is able to keep her safe from them, and...someone who can help her fill her needs for home + family, even though he is dramatically under-equipped at all of 12-15 to meet that task.

Because (especially s4) one of El's core needs has become a healthy father figure and found family, Mike is going to move toward behaving that way to be valuable...which means he's going to inadvertently conflate himself with the men who have also placed themselves in that role: Hopper and Brenner. It also means that Mike is going to feel that same "my child is leaving the nest" energy when El "grows up" and into herself as a wholly independent entity—which is why we see him say as much to Will in the van before the painting—

—and why it sometimes seems like El is almost "rebelling" against Mike as much as she has Hopper and Brenner over the seasons.

To your point though: all of this is inherently different from Steve and Nancy...because both Steve and Nancy had that sense of individual identity that El lacked at the start of the show. There was no space for a "parental" aspect to enter their romance in that sense—it was just two people who were incompatible, which is why they failed. Similarly, if Mike and El would have started the romantic part of their relationship at end of S4 points of the narrative—or even end of S3, after El had a second to come into her own with Max—things would have been a lot different for them, I think.

Only...that's not what happened, and...not how they're resolving Mike's insecurity about being inherently valuable. They broke Mike and El down romantically vis a vis this "she's looking for herself and he's trying to fill his own void with her" track, and then gave Will the entirety of the hand to soothe Mike's deepest fears instead, which is why Mike and El will break up and Mike will end up with and around Will more, because Will knows Mike’s heart and sees Mike as an equal even with his flaws...and loves him for it. 🤷🏽‍♀️

(There are also (in my opinion) fundamental thematic reasons they were working toward as reason why they wrote even the breakdown of mlvn that way (the themes of rejecting forced conformity, found family, and even embracing your love for things other people might think are childish are served by this "version" of the Mlvn to Byler transition) but. I can see why someone wouldn't like it if they were attached to Mike and El being close anyway lmao).

Anyway! I hope...that helps? Honestly that's just how I've come to understand it, and hope that offers some sort of solace or explanation. Its what makes the most sense to me anyway (lol).

Regardless, thanks for the ask! :)

[treesap-blogs]

Review of “Felix Ever After” by Kacen Calendar!

Hello, Tumblrians! This is the third review for my Trans Rights Readathon series! I didn’t really feel compelled to make fanart like my other reads, so there will be none in this review, sorry. The book I read after Pet (and partially as I was reading that one too) was Felix Ever After by Kacen Callendar. I don’t really have much of a backstory on how I discovered this, except for that I found it under other TBR lists made for the Readathon and decided to check it out. 

Felix Ever After follows a trans boy, Felix, on the cusp of adulthood and teenhood. He’s preparing for college with his best friend Ezra, and on top of sometimes living together they’re also attending a (summer/fall?) arts academy in order to build their portfolios. While there though, Felix is horrified to see an exhibition with his deadname and old photos displayed. The suspect’s left themself anonymous, but Felix is determined to find out who it is. His top suspect? Ezra’s ex, and Felix’s one-sided rival, Declan. So, he creates an Instagram account to catfish Declan and expose him, but in the process, discovers not just that he’s innocent…but also that he’s accidentally ended up headfirst in a quasi-love triangle.

Felix Ever After, first and foremost, is a delightfully messy novel. Felix, along with every other character in the book, are prone to making mistakes(I’ve seen another reviewer say there’s at least one time where you’ll dislike a character haha), but this is something the narrative does not excuse nor gloss over. Arguments will happen, along with confrontations and by the end, yes, Felix does grow. I liked reading about that, even if it means there’s a bit too much going on at once in the plot sometimes.

Felix as a character also felt like an incredibly realistic trans teen. His understanding and questioning of his identity coexist, and I found that incredibly relatable, given where I’ve been in my own gender identity journey before. With that, we got to explore the nonbinary and demiboy labels, which was something I had not read before in any kind of book, nonetheless a YA. His personality also features two opposite, coexisting qualities: naiveness, and obsessiveness, both of which fuel the plot and the story. (I think it was BitchMedia that mentioned this before I did?) At times, this meant that I was frustrated with Felix’s actions and hesitant about how they would be resolved or discussed in the end (but I liked the ending so yay!). Without spoiling, even with the drama and the messiness, Felix still has a healthy relationship and eventually recognizes when he needs to stay out of one’s that won’t be. That was pretty epic.

The writing style also felt similar to that of She Gets The Girl or The Lesbiana’s Guide To Catholic School? I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s just the thing about recent queer contemporary novels, that have some serious subject matter in them but are overall written with a kind of lightheartedness, humor/heart and sometimes snarkiness that keeps me reading until I finish it in a day or less. (She Gets the Girl wasn’t really a five star read per say, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. That’s a review for another day!)

Overall, even if this book wasn’t what I’d call perfect I still enjoyed it.  (No fanart for this one! I don’t do stuff for contemporary books most of the time, and I got a lot of my art done a week after the Readathon ended so I didn’t want to rush in one more piece.)

Book rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ¾ /5 stars

(Book content/trigger warnings: Outing, transphobia, homophobia, frequent underage drug and alcohol use.)

Trans Rights Readathon Reviews: 3/5

[sleepingcrisis]

Sk8 The Infinity: Thoughts

I- like many- have finished Sk8 and have a lot of thoughts about the show. I was going to make this three parts but opted for just one. This is split into three sections though: 

Adam’s “Redemption”

Character Relationships

Overall thoughts

Adam’s “Redemption”: 

Okay let’s not get it twisted, Adam wasn’t really redeemed. At least I don’t think he was. When I initially pictured a redemption I pictured an ending where he got along with Cherry and Joe and the three were skating together again or something. That would be super badass for a shot- but it wouldn’t work and would have ruined any tension between the three in my opinion. So in the eyes of our main six Adam isn’t redeemed which is nice. If anyone wants to argue that he is then… sure? You can do that- I don’t really care though because it is quite clear that he isn’t redeemed in their eyes. 

This doesn’t mean I like what they did with Adam’s character though. First of all, he was never going to jail. They set that up to build suspense but it was never really going anywhere which I hated. Despite him not getting redeemed in the eyes of our main six, he still didn’t face any consequences for what he did. I understand that him going to jail would not have been him facing consequences for his actions at S, because they weren’t related, but he got off. In the eyes of the viewer him going to jail would have been consequences for everything he did at S even if that wasn’t why he would have been goin to jail it still was supposed to serve as consequences. Instead he faces no consequences for what he did. He was never going to jail either which is what really pissed me off. The writers of the show made it so that the threat of him going to jail was sorta a red herring. It was something that was under developed and that a lot of viewers really cared about, but if you went to the bathroom during the episode you might not have even known about this subplot at all. The least the show could have done was make this a genuine threat and not something that was just used to build suspense- and it wasn’t even done well. 

I get not wanting to send Adam to jail though, I really do. He is a central character who a lot of people really like (even I really like Adam as a villain- I think he makes a really effective villain and his character is explored decently well). Perhaps sending him to jail would have been an ending to his character that was too clear cut. The ending they did decide felt too good for him though. In my opinion he hadn’t earned it. While I’m not entirely sure if I wanted him to go to jail, I think that he should have faced more consequences for how he behaved. Again I think if anything the end of the show paved the way for him to have a larger character arc.

Character relationships: 

Oh what probably everyone is here for: the topic of queerbaiting. 

If you are reading this in hopes that I support the idea that this show was queerbaiting then you won’t find that here. I don’t think the show was queerbaiting in the slightest. I think that it is incredibly obvious that Cherry, Langa, Adam, and Tadashi are all queercoded as gay characters. Every other character is up for interpretation, yes Reki and Joe are included even if I personally headcanon them both as bi. 

The show presents some beautiful friendships and handles them in a way that I love. Reki’s breakdown and self doubt feels realistic and how he and Langa reconnect was handled well and I think the pacing was good too. Langa and Reki contrast one another really well and obviously the same applies to Joe and Cherry. I have said it before but a spin off show with Joe and Cherry as central characters would be *chef’s kiss*. 

Had these two pairings been explicitly flirting with one another then yeah we would have been queerbaited. Does that mean you can’t interpret romantic undertones from all of this? No it doesn’t mean that at all, I interpret both relationships as romantic- but they also make really well written friendships. 

Where the show falls flat on its face and where I do take issue with the queercoding is the ending. By the end of the show I think it is quite obvious that Tadashi/Adam is canon. Their relationship isn’t normal by any means but they are in a relationship. Do I think it is a healthy relationship? No. Like k*nks aside- Adam treated Tadashi like shit through the bulk of this show. Adam is the most heavily queercoded character in the show so it rubs me the wrong way that this relationship is the one they make the most explicit. It rubs me the wrong way that Cherry and Langa’s sexualities are made more clear after having interactions with Adam. It presents the narrative that gay people turn other people gay and by having Adam be a flamboyant gay character it pairs gay with the idea of being evil and promotes sterotypes. Someone made a really good video covering this and I can’t find it- If I do I will repost this with a link- or if someone else wants to comment it then I’ll repost and add it into post. Flashbacks aside I wish we had gotten some scenes where it was a little more obvious that Adam cared about Tadashi. Don’t get me wrong- I know he does- but Adam acted like an asshole towards tadashi for the majority of the show and then pulled the “all is forgiven” between the two right at the end. Healthy relationships aren’t needed in a show and I don’t think these two need to have one, but having it be the only/most explicit relationship in the show is upsetting. I would have loved to see a healthy queer relationship be made canon. 

Not having these other relationships be made canon is fine. I understand wanting representation, but it is just eh- 

I get both sides of this- the side that desperately want’s queer rep that they are willing to settle and thirst over the crumbs they get and then demand an explicit relationship when we aren’t handed one. I also understand the argument of the cultural differences and how I can only ever look at this through a western lense. Japan has a vastly different culture and their media reflects that even if obviously they do try and appeal to a wider audience. I am very conflicted on this and am totally fine with matchablossom and renga not being made canon even if I do understand the appeal. Again what rubs me the wrong way is the relationship they do decide to make pretty much explicit. Anyone who wants to argue me that Tadashi/Adam is a healthy queer rep can- but from what we have seen… it really isn’t.

Overall Thoughts:

I love sk8 the infinity and I hope they get another season. The difficulty it must be to tell a full story with fleshed out characters in around four hours of run time is something I can’t imagine. Every single character feels fairly well done and they are all loveable in their own way. I understand the appeal people have towards any character. In fact there isn’t a single character that I actively hate. At the end of the day Sk8 The Infinity is meant to be a light hearted anime about having fun skateboarding. The animation is amazing, the music is wonderful- in fact I don’t think it could have been better- the characters that fill this world are all incredibly lovable, the show is so much fun to watch. The creators did that, they gave us a beautiful and fun show. Ending the show with Adam going to jail would have pulled away from what the show was trying to accomplish. The show was trying to have fun and I sincerely hope they get a second season so we can see every single one of these loveable characters again. I hope I got my thoughts across in this show but I am definitely willing to clarify if anything is confusing.

[thechangeling]

I was reading your co-signing the narrative post- great post btw- and your thoughts on Kit Lightwood helped me figure out exactly what bothers me about the way other characters talk about and treat him.

So, there’s this kind of this running “joke” in TLH that Christopher’s interests are boring, that everyone else puts up with it him as though it’s this big nuisance, that everyone zones out hearing him talk… and on and on and on.*** And then there’s this scene where Grace is genuinely interested or at least not bringing him down about his self-expression and the things that bring him joy, and that’s romanticized as special when it’s really kind of the bare fuckin minimum. Like, I’m not saying James/Matthew/Thomas had to immerse themselves completely in every sciency detail but the constant “jokes” implying that Christopher’s work is boring or incomprehensible or not worth their time is just so tiring. There’s always an undercurrent of “Christopher’s just playing around uselessly” (which is not true and even when he’s having fun with his work then it’s still automatically WORTHY and VALUABLE because it makes him happy!) Not to mention this recurring problem directly contradicts the value that Christopher’s work has (beyond its inherent value) when he sends it into the world to literally save lives: the poison antidote, the fire messages that will probably come about in CoT.

And the thing is, the merry thieves’ disinterest is directly meant to foil grace’s interest in order to lend the Grace/Kit relationship a certain significance, as CC assigns to it. I’m not saying shared excitement over an interest/hobby/career/field/etc isn’t sweet platonically or romantically. I just really dislike how the idea CC is using is “no one else can bear to tolerate Kit’s ‘quirks’ but Grace, and that is Endearing, and so they are Soulmates (TM)” rather than the much healthier and positive idea that “Kit does cool sciencey stuff which his family and friends generally don’t share as strong a passion for but still don’t huff about it like it’s somehow a chore or a burden on them, and then Grace comes along and she does happen to share a similar passion and that’s the beginning of their ties to one another.” That second reasoning is what could make their friendship really refreshing; we don’t need ableism poorly twined into romance to enjoy that relationship.

I haven’t read TDA in a while but I’m thinking we could also find touches of this with Ty partly because so much of when we see him is from Kit’s POV? Not that Kit means harm or thinks himself heroic but CC on the other hand is a repeat offender in “abled/white/straight/cis character is ultimately and completely responsible for the salvation of disabled/POC/queer character in this aspect.” And I’m kind of half dreading the wicked powers for that reason among others …

I apologize if all this seems obvious or rambly. I do sometimes have trouble articulating things exactly but when I read your post i had a lightbulb moment and I wanted to note it down.

Have a great day!

***Side Note: this is why I really enjoy fan-created content that explores Christopher’s relationships with people (even people he didn’t interact with on-page in the canon) without that annoying and problematic aspect built into the framework of the relationship.

^^^^^^^^^THIS ALL OF THIS!!!!!!

Full disclosure this is gonna be kind of long sorry. But you have stumbled across my favourite topic to rant about. Allistic saviorism. Basically the name is pretty self explanatory. It's when an allistic person fictional or otherwise has the desire to or actively attempts to essentially "save" the autistic person from the horrors of the world or their life, or even themselves because they think that the autistic person isn't strong or capable enough to fix/handle it on their own. All of this is usually done for very self serving reasons. Part of this is also allistic people being praised as heroes for being nice to autistic people or asking them out, or loving them.

I don't neccesarily think that kitty is an allistic savior ship on it's own. I think that there are definitely peices of those beliefs scattered throughout the books and it might get worse in TWP. That's honestly something that I'm worried about too tbh. But honestly I think that the fandom made it a billion times worse.

This mainly allistic fandom wanted to romanticize the idea of Kit taking care of Ty and shouldering the burden of his "unpredictability." Kit is the only one who can get through to Ty. The only one who understands the mystery that is Ty 🙄. Some of this is canon too. For example, Ty can look Kit in the eye, he lets him touch him. He doesn't wear the headphones when Kit's around right? And Kit was able to calm him down during his meltdown.

And while some of this is really cute from a romantic perspective, it's also kinda problematic because it reeks of allistic saviorism. It promotes the idea that Kit is like Ty's "cure." And that's just impossible.

And honestly I know I've contributed to this in some ways. Because if I'm being perfectly honest with you, there's a part of me that enjoys that. The romantization of autism.

The idea of being taken care of.

The idea that someone could love an autistic person and see them as "beautiful" and "extraordinary" and all the things Kit calls Ty, was incredibly moving and appealing to me as a kid. It still is. Because I grew up on stories of charity cases and allistic saviorism making headlines with prom dates. I was super secretive about it, but I was always a romantic growing up. But I thought that it was impossible for me to have a real love story because people like me don't get that. (Not to get all sob story on you sorry. I overshare. It's an autistic thing.)

And there are some really compelling things about kitty that really do work. And I'm not trying to suggest that Kit learning to help Ty with the ...shall we say more colourful traits of his disability is a bad thing always. It's not. But I think the issue is with Ty's lack of pov and Ty's lack of a narrative in the books. It makes him seem like less of a completely developed character and more like, "Kit's" you know?

And because we don't have Ty's pov we don't really get what makes Kit have this sort of calming effect on him or why it's different. And more importantly we don't get why Ty's letting him in, we only get Kit pushing past his boundries. The entire thing becomes about Kit essentially and that's at the root of all allistic saviorism.

Also like you mentioned before, Kit is seen as special to a certain extent because he can handle Ty. That's not neccesarily something the character believes obviously, but again with CC co-signing the damn narrative with the way she makes the impact Kit has on Ty such a big deal in everyone's eyes and in QOAAD she really emphasizes the drain Ty's necromancy plan is taking on Kit, suddenly Ty's grief becomes all about Kit and with no pov from Ty, it's more allistic savior bs.

Honestly most of this isnt actually THAT bad it's just when you throw it all together and look at the ugly history and let's be honest present, of autistic people being silenced and spoken over by our caregivers and loved ones and we are treated like burdens on them, and how those people are praised for loving us, it kinda looks bad. But the fandom definitely made it worse.

I always get criticized for criticizing kitty by allistic people with, " well if you think they're so toxic then why do you even ship them?" Which is a piss poor take lacking in any nuance. An autistic person has the right to critique a dynamic involving an autistic character. More to the point, you can love something and be critical of it. I swear when this fandom finally figures that one out... we could accomplish so much.

I'm really hoping this is making sense it's like 2 in the morning. As for Grace and Christopher's dynamic I agree with you. I basically have nothing to add. Bare minimum. Should not be idolized. The way the others treat him should not just be brushed off as no big deal. It's ableism.

Basically it's just a bunch of classic mistakes that come from a neurotypical abled writer writing nd characters. Some mistakes are more damning then others. But it does make me scared for TWP.

I can only hope.

[lucidpantone]

I really hate the crew of wtfock for what they did to me. I was such a fan of the show since s1, I found happiness in every clips, every posts on insta, I found amazing people on tumblr, twitter, but everything went downhill in s4, I could not accept Kato as a main, I'm a proud black girl and this season broke my heart to the max. The inexcusable racism, the hidden hate towards POCs on social medias, the silencing voices... I even started to dislike some actors for being friends with Romi when she was the one who accepted to take away the role of a POC, to accept to play a racist girl and have discriminatory behaviour in 2020 of all that, and to even joke on her insta just because her friend said it was ok and she didn't even apologise when we called her out for it. Yeah they ruined my happiness and I can't even be happy when I see a wtfock post now. To even have Nora do a live and defend the season, saying that it's a prejudice based one ? Hurts me so much. And not even one excuses coming from the crew, nothing, it hurts deeply. I can't even enjoy anymore the beautiful fanfics that the fandom write. I read every zoenne and sobbe fics but now I don't even bother checking if there is new fic. I hate them for taking my happiness off me. They're starting to go downhill too with the lack of insta posts from their characters and only die hard fans of sobbe are here now let's be honest. Yasmina's season can't be saved if there is still Kato but a glimpse of sobbe will make the fandom shut up and they know it. It's sad and I'm so upset about it. Sorry for the rant but I so badly wanted to talk.

This is insanely long but these words are for my anon

Oh dear.....well am happy you told me and the looney tunes. I can’t say I blame you because s4 is so toxic and cruel on so many levels. You know some people will say its just a show “let it go” but I think what people don’t realize is what this show that you clearly loved tells you about the world at large. That even shows, brands, movements and celebrities can harbor questionable morality towards issues of race. S4 ended up being an exercise in showing [us/the audience] how morally corrupt the bosses of wtfock truly are and how at end of the day all those black boxes on instagram mean nothing when it comes to money. Because guess what? Platforming racist ideology does have a price and wtfock made it very clear that they got paid. Look am gonna tell you something that my anons have been saying in a coded way but havent said directly but lets just put it all on the table. 

S4 when Romi took the role it was not pitched as a season exploring interracial relationships or white privilege. It was never meant to be that. So Romi had no way in knowing what it would turn into. After the premiere night production panicked because they saw everyones disappointment towards the main(it should have been Moyo & everyone knows it even they do now) and took a hard left. Noa was meant to be Romi’s co-star but it was never meant to have all these racial undertones or not as extreme. The reason the script changed is because wtfock wanted to keep this whole “small engine that could” rapport going that they literally made the last minute call to try to tackle race relations. I mean to you and I we are probably like are these people for real? They are just gonna try to tackle race and white privilege as a story arc without having done the sufficient research and or had the man power in the writing room concerning writers with lived experienced on the topic. Yea, they did that. So anyways they “just decided” on a whim to tackle race *facepalm*. Now that decision in itself is an embodiment of white privilege. A bunch of white dudes wanted woke points and thought “race” yea we can totally do that topic unprepared. Hence why episode 2/3 were so damn repetitive and also literally made no sense. Am sure they pitched this to Romi as some super intellectual and thoughtful narrative that would hold deeper meaning. So I am not defending her instagram actions but I want to give her situation a bit of context. Also am pretty sure she tried to tell us in a round about way. Her insta post was just a display in lacking any awareness towards the importance and pain of BLM because she obviously just lacks race education or common sense but she is a 22 year old brand model so am not really looking for her to set an example. To me wtfock became in some weird way so high on fandom validation that they were egotistical enough to think they could try to tackle this insanely complex topic on a whim and with a 1st time screenwriter at that. S4 was doomed to fail from the start because it was a literal embodiment of unconscious bias that then turned into conscious bias because at one point they knew it was terrible while filming but they were too deep in to pull the plug. You are so in your right to be upset at them because to me the most hurtful thing is that THEY KNOW IT WAS BAD and they won’t address it and now they are going to use their token queer couple to try and fix this. Leave the gays out of it. You can’t fix racism with queerness it doesn’t work that way buddy(am looking at you Rutgers) especially for those who are part of both parties. Do I think a large part of the fan base will “forgive” wtfock for what they did? Probably, but its weird since technically wtfock should be asking their fans who are poc for forgiveness above anyone else. I guess I am not as pissy about the whole situation because am either cynical or emotionally numb to this type of fuckery. I would say concerning the cast and the crew it really isnt their fault. I hear from good sources a lot of them tried to say something and they were shut down. Look if you cant let this go then try to find some semblance of resolve over this. You’re allowed to be mad but at the same time this is the world we live in and this will happen to you again and again (trust me I speak from experience). I do hope you can try to find some comfort in Zoenne and Sobbe and try not to see the cronies of wtfock in their love stories but if you can’t then pack all their shit up and throw it in the attic. Maybe one day you can reopen that box. Last words of advice, happiness is a moving target because in reality it’s a compilation of moments that continuously mutate to accommodate other moments. So don't let s4 taint what moments you had with wtfock and try to remember the things you loved and if you need to walk then walk away. I wish I could give you the biggest hug right now but trust me when I say what you feel is so valid and am so happy you spoke to me about it.

[nancysgillians]

You have me curious about your ranking now so I want the same ships ranked but I want my top two in the list as well, so: Kurtbastian, Klaine, Kelliott, Kadam, Hevans, Kandler, Kalter. :)

Okay love, you asked and here’s the long awaited answer: 

1) Klaine This one is probably obvious from the URL but yes I am Klaine trash. Klaine and Brittana were most of the reason I kept watching this show past season 4. 

It’s “you know my coffee order?” to “you move me” to “we got each other out of all this” to “i’m never saying goodbye to you” to “you take my breath away”  and “right now it’s your time” to “you’re still my best friend” to “we’re always going to be there for each other” to “with you in it, a wonderful life” and ”I think that my soul knew something that my body and my mind didn't know yet. It knew that our hands were meant to hold each other, fearlessly and forever, which is why it's never really felt like I've been getting to know you. It's always felt like I was remembering you from something, as if in every lifetime you and I have ever lived, we've chosen to come back and find each other and fall in love all over again, and over and over for all eternity. And I just feel so lucky that I found you so soon in this lifetime because all I want to do, all I've ever wanted to do, is spend my life loving you” and ”thanks for knowing me” to “ I can't stop you from failing, but I can promise to make it safe if you do” to “by protecting something that is very precious to me” to  “i choose to trust you and love you through everything”  and  “family are the people who embrace you with open arms no matter what” to “they can see the pain in your eyes even when you’re fooling everyone else” to “i am a work in progress”

2) Kelliott This feels like the most realistic ship for so many reasons (people don’t often marry their high school sweetheart and have a fairytale romance) and mainly they had fantastic chemistry. Elliott was a balm to the chaos of Kurt’s life and I regret all the stories we never got to see with Pamela Lansbury/One Three Hill. Though I love them as a friendship (so important to show queer people just being friends as much as depicting love stories) they would also be a wonderful example of post-high school relationships that Glee rarely depicted.  

3) Kurtbastian Babe, you definitely converted me on this one. I will admit that I have read some Kurtbastian before you came into my life but I never ~shipped~ it. Mostly Sebastian feels like a wasted character development opportunity on the show so give me all the fanon Sebastian growing up, learning from his mistakes and maybe wooing Kurt (and Blaine, together?) along the way. They would be die hard protectors and cheerleaders of each other. I think they might struggle to connect sometimes and have fights but what relationship doesn’t have growing pains? That’s certainly never stopped me from shipping Klaine. 

4) Hevans I wanted this to happen for all of 5 episodes and then we met Blaine... but I genuinely loved how Kurt had met this guy who didn’t treat him like he was contagious and afforded him respect throughout the duration of the show. Even when Blaine becomes Sam’s best friend he never treats Kurt poorly during either breakup. I like to think they had a great friendship that grew when Sam lived at the Hudmels and in a world without Blaine or Mercedes I would ship it hard. Sam actually never wanted Kurt to be anything but himself which can’t actually be said for most of these ships (hmmmmmm). 

5) Kadam I don’t dislike Adam, I think he was given a lot of the Blaine introduction without the yearning that we love and got to see in s2. Adam was an opportunity for Kurt to explore his own assertiveness and express his wants in a relationship that he couldn’t explore before. Adam was flirty and fun but nothing that I could see lasting. I agree that Adam probably deserved better than Kurt honestly but he also knew what he was getting into with Kurt, someone who is clearly healing from a past break up.  

6) Kandler We don’t actually know much about Chandler but he seemed sweet and completely willing to shower Kurt with love and attention. They could have been a cute romance but I think their relationship would be pretty surface level and short-lived. 

7) Kalter I do put Walter last on the list, yeah there’s the lying bit but I actually don’t hate on the age gap. I think a lot of straight fans of glee and even young and lucky queers don’t grasp the narrative of the late in life queer. Hot take but people can struggle with their sexualities for most of their life and by the time they come out the dating pool is mostly younger. One of my closest college friends married her wife this past year and they have about a 15 year age gap and are one of the happiest queer couples I know. I think Kurt could have really enjoyed dating an older man. As long as everyone can consent there’s no need to yuck someone’s yum. 

Thanks for sending this ask back, it was fun to answer. I also reserve the right to change my opinions and anytime someone shits on one of these ships I will move them a ranking higher jsyk. Ultimately my fave ship is Kurt/Happiness. Check out @backslashdelta answers if you want.

[dajokahhh]

Alright, time for some pretentious sociological-esque rambling. This is gonna be long as hell (its 1822 words to be specific) and I don’t begrudge anyone for not having the patience to read my over-thought perspectives on a murder clown. CWs for: child abuse, 

I think a lot of things have to go wrong in someone’s life for them to decide to become a clown themed supervillain. A lot of people in Gotham have issues but they don’t become the Joker. I think that as a writer it’s an interesting topic to explore, and this is especially true for roleplaying where a character might be in different scenarios or universes. This isn’t some peer reviewed or researched essay, it’s more my own personal beliefs and perspectives as they affect my writing. I think villains, generally, reflect societal understandings or fears about the world around us. This is obviously going to mean villains shift a lot over time and the perspective of the writer. In my case, I’m a queer, fat, mentally ill (cluster B personality disorder specifically) woman-thing who holds some pretty socialist ideas and political perspectives. My educational background is in history and legal studies. This definitely impacts how I write this character, how I see crime and violence, and how my particular villains reflect my understandings of the society I live in. I want to get this stuff out of the way now so that my particular take on what a potential origin story of a version of the Joker could be makes more sense.

Additionally, these backstory factors I want to discuss aren’t meant to excuse someone’s behaviour, especially not the fucking Joker’s of all people. It’s merely meant to explain how a person (because as far as we know that’s all he is) could get to that point in a way that doesn’t blame only one factor or chalk it up to “this is just an evil person.” I don’t find that particularly compelling as a writer or an audience member, so I write villains differently. I also don’t find it to be particularly true in real life either. If you like that style of writing or see the Joker or other fictional villains in this way, that’s fine. I’m not here to convince anyone they’re wrong, especially not when it comes to people’s perspectives on the nature of evil or anything that lofty. Nobody has to agree with me, or even like my headcanons; they’re just here to express the very specific position I’m writing from. 

The first thing I wanna do is set up some terms. These aren’t academic or anything, but I want to use specific and consistent phrasing for this post. When it comes to the factors that screw up someone’s life significantly (and in some instances push people towards crime), I’ll split them into micro and macro factors. Micro factors are interpersonal and personal issues, so things like personality traits, personal beliefs, mental health, family history, where and how someone is raised, and individual relationships with the people around them. Macro factors are sociological and deal with systems of oppression, cultural or social trends/norms, political and legal restrictions and/or discrimination, etc. These two groups of factors interact, sometimes in a fashion that is causative and sometimes not, but they aren’t entirely separate and the line between what is a micro vs macro issue isn’t always fixed or clear.

We’ll start in and work out. For this character, the micro factors are what determine the specifics of his actions, demeanor, and aesthetic. I think the main reason he’s the Joker and not just some guy with a whole lot of issues is his world view combined with his personality. He has a very pessimistic worldview, one that is steeped in a very toxic form of individualism, cynicism, and misanthropy. His life experience tells him the world is a cold place where everyone is on their own. To him the world is not a moral place. He doesn’t think people in general have much value. He learned at a young age that his life had no value to others, and he has internalized that view and extrapolated it to the world at large; if his life didn’t matter and doesn’t matter, why would anyone else’s? This worldview, in the case of my specific Joker, comes from a childhood rife with abandonment, abuse, and marginalization. While I will say he is definitively queer (in terms fo gender expression and non conformity, and sexuality), I’m not terribly interested in giving specific diagnoses of any mental health issues. Those will be discussed more broadly and in terms of specific symptoms with relation to how they affect the Joker’s internal experience, and externalized behaviours.

His childhood was, to say the least, pretty fucked up. The details I do have for him are that he was surrendered at birth because his parents, for some reason, did not want to care for him or could not care for him; which it was, he isn’t sure. He grew up effectively orphaned, and ended up in the foster care system. He wasn’t very “adoptable”; he had behavioural issues, mostly violent behaviours towards authority figures and other children. He never exactly grew out of these either, and the older he got the harder it was to actually be adopted. His legal name was Baby Boy Doe for a number of years, but the name he would identify the most with is Jack. Eventually he took on the surname of one of his more stable foster families, becoming Jack Napier as far as the government was concerned. By the time he had that stability in his mid to late teens, however, most of the damage had already been done. In his younger years he was passed between foster families and government agencies, always a ward of the government, something that would follow him to his time in Arkham and Gotham’s city jails. Some of his foster families were decent, others were just okay, but some were physically and psychologically abusive. This abuse is part of what defines his worldview and causes him to see the world as inherently hostile and unjust. It also became one of the things that taught him that violence is how you solve problems, particularly when emotions run high. 

This was definitely a problem at school too; moving around a lot meant going to a lot of different schools. Always being the new student made him a target, and being poor, exhibiting increasingly apparent signs of some sort of mental illness or disorder, and being typically suspected as queer (even moreso as he got into high school) typically did more harm than good for him. He never got to stay anywhere long enough to form deep relationships, and even in the places where he did have more time to do that he often ended up isolated from his peers. He was often bullied, sometimes just verbally but often physically which got worse as he got older and was more easily read as queer. This is part of why he’s so good at combat and used to taking hits; he’s been doing it since he was a kid, and got a hell of a lot of practice at school. He would tend to group up with other kids like him, other outcasts or social rejects, which in some ways meant being around some pretty negative influences in terms of peers. A lot of his acquaintances were fine, but some were more... rebellious and ended up introducing Jack to things like drinking, smoking cigarettes, using recreational drugs, and most important to his backstory, to petty crimes like theft and vandalism, sometimes even physical fights. This is another micro factor in that maybe if he had different friends, or a different school experience individually, he might have avoided getting involved in criminal activities annd may have been able to avoid taking up the mantle of The Joker.

Then there’s how his adult life has reinforced these experiences and beliefs. Being institutionalized, dealing with police and jails, and losing what little support he had as a minor and foster child just reinforced his worldview and told him that being The Joker was the right thing to do, that he was correct in his actions and perspectives. Becoming The Joker was his birthday present to himself at age 18, how he ushered himself into adulthood, and I plan to make a post about that on its own. But the fact that he decided to determine this part of his identity so young means that this has defined how he sees himself as an adult. It’s one of the last micro factors (when in life he adopted this identity) that have gotten him so entrenched in his typical behaviours and self image.

As for macro factors, a lot of them have to do specifically with the failing of Gotham’s institutions. Someone like Bruce Wayne, for example, was also orphaned and also deals with trauma; the difference for the Joker is that he had no safety net to catch him when he fell (or rather, was dropped). Someone like Wayne could fall into the cushioning of wealth and the care of someone like Alfred, whereas the Joker (metaphorically) hit the pavement hard and alone. Someone like the Joker should never have become the Joker in the first place because the systems in place in Gotham should have seen every red flag and done something to intervene; this just didn’t happen for him, and not out of coincidence but because Gotham seems like a pretty corrupt place with a lot of systemic issues. Critically underfunded social services (healthcare, welfare, children & family services) that result in a lack of resources for the people who need them and critically underfunded schools that can’t offer extra curricular activities or solid educations that allow kids to stay occupied and develop life skills are probably the most directly influential macro factors that shaped Jack into someone who could resent people and the society around him so much that he’d lose all regard for it to the point of exacting violence against others. There’s also the reality of living in a violent culture, and in violent neighbourhoods exacerbated by poverty, poor policing or overpolicing, and being raised as a boy and then a young man with certain gendered expectations about violence but especially ideas/narratives that minimalize or excuse male violence (especially when it comes to bullying or violent peer-to-peer behaviour under the guise of ‘boys will be boys’). 

Beyond that, there’s the same basic prejudices and societal forces that affect so many people: classism, homphobia/queerphobia, (toxic) masculinity/masculine expectations, and ableism (specifically in regards to people who are mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent) stand out as the primary factors. I’m touching on these broadly because if I were to talk about them all, they would probably need their own posts just to illustrate how they affect this character. But they definitely exist in Gotham if it’s anything like the real world, and I think it’s fair to extrapolate that these kinds of these exist in Gotham and would impact someone like The Joker with the background I’ve given him.

I have no idea how to end this so if you got this far, thank you for reading!

[ratherashleigh]

killing eve, queerbaiting, and why what sandra oh said in that interview is both 100% true and also entirely irrelevant

1. your personal disappointment that a tv show did not do exactly what you want is not queerbaiting just because what you wanted involves queer characters.

1a. yes, i'm going to refer to characters as queer. no, i do not take feedback.

2. actually i don't think 1. is sufficient to cover this topic. so i present:

What Are We Talking About When We Call Something Queerbaiting In 2019?

because this isn't just about language and how words may or may not have evolved to mean different things or include more things or people are just misusing a word because they just don't know. forget about the word. the word is irrelevant. WHAT IS THE ACTUAL COMPLAINT BEING LEVELLED BY FANDOM AT KILLING EVE RIGHT NOW?

pre-that gay times interview: they are never going to get together in a romantic relationship, i feel tricked into watching this on the promise of Queer Content.

post-that gay times interview: the show is denying that it is queer at all. fuck them they're wrong.

3. why the pre-interview complaint is, uh, wrong: queer content is queer content even if it's not the queer content you want.

fandom in general is obsessed with relationships. literally the verb for our single unifying activity is derived from the word relationship. the reason we, fandom, exist as a group at all, by and large, arises out of our collective desire for something that performative media does not do particularly well: relationships, specifically romantic ones, very especially queer romantic ones.

maybe it needs to be pointed out at this point that the relationship between fandom and the source is a bit like a dog chasing its own tail. or a snake eating its own tail, depending on the way the wind is blowing. fandom exists because it's not getting what it wants. and fandom turns on the source when it doesn't get what it wants. the problem: performative media, and especially longform media like television, is pretty much constructed by design in such a way that it will not give fandom what it wants.

(and it's weird that "fandom" is a term reserved pretty exclusively for ship-based fan activity, right? it's weird because fandom seems to imply we are fans, but all of this is about how the thing we are supposedly fans of is in some way not giving us what we want.)

i keep saying "what we want". i'm going to pause for a moment here to say something controversial: the story queer fandom wants has almost never, ever in the entire history of television, been provided to straight ship fans. because it's not a thing television provides, generally, at all. let me spell out what i think fandom wants, a conclusion based on excluding all the things i see being complained about, and attempting to find common elements in what's left over: queer couple in an expressly declared romantic relationship without conflict and with storylines centering around said relationship.

don't get me wrong, sometimes those things magically happen on tv, and overwhelmingly the examples of that will be het couples. H O W E V E R. those het couples are rare as fuck.

it's actually pretty straightforward as to why this is the case, and it is the reason i say performative media, especially television, does not, by design, give us what we want: narrative storytelling revolves around conflict. whether or not this is a good thing or not is irrelevant to the fact that it just is. romantic relationships in film and television tend to have two modes: UST and relationship problems. both of which involve conflict that impedes the relationship itself. the reason UST is generally what gets people shipping things is because the conflict is what's keeping them from being together, the implication being that but for the thing getting in the way the narrative has made some effort to show that these two characters WANT to be together. the reason tv tends to piss people off so much is because the default conflict once there IS a relationship is something that is going to break them apart. maybe they DON'T want to be together. the first inspires that sportsfan-like mentality that if we just try hard enough, we the characters but also we the fans cheering them on, will overcome the obstacle in the way. but overcoming something trying to break a couple apart is one of the singularly most unsatisfying narrative resolutions because the very fact of it required us to believe on some level that they could be broken apart. when your team is on top, it's not triumph you feel when they win but relief that they didn't lose. "they survived" is not the same happy ending as "they're together now," even if functionally it is the same outcome.

the other is more a function of how a tv show (much more than film) is actually constructed: a two lead cast with only minor secondary characters is RARE now. the kinds of shows that have the largest fandoms tend to be long season, large cast ensembles with either a plot of the week that means different characters interacting each episode OR is beholden to a larger narrative arc that needs to work to bring those other characters in over and over again. either way, the focus will never be exclusively and exhaustively on the two main leads interacting with each other.

4. so is killing eve not giving fandom what it wants?

like i said, the way stories are told does not, usually, facilitate this hypothetical dream ship: conflict free and the focus of the story. the thing being asked for barely exists at all. killing eve, magically, manages to tick one of the boxes, because the show does indeed revolve around the relationship between eve and villanelle. but the conflict? OH BOY IS THERE CONFLICT. it's not the relationship that fandom wants. it's not even close.

i'm not even going to pretend to understand how anyone watching this show concluded that the logical or even rational outcome for these two characters was happily ever after. but i'm also not going to straw man that extreme and dismiss the argument entirely. they certainly could have been together, even in an entirely fucked up manner. but what does that look like? sexual intimacy? i would argue we got that. expressions of attraction? we got that too. YALL. THAT'S QUEER AS FUCK.

what else, exactly, is required of this particular relationship to legitimize it in the eyes of fandom that doesn't take these characters entirely out of who they are? this is where i draw the line: WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT, GIVEN WHAT THIS SHOW IS? based on everything i have seen, apparently the answer is a kiss between them. and i think that ties back to this very specific fandom desire for evidence that the relationship isn't JUST queer, but also romantic. that distinction is the one that i'm starting to feel is the true conflict between those who call something like killing eve queerbaiting and those who think calling killing eve queerbaiting is bonkers.

and to be real fucking honest now, i don't just think it's bonkers, i also think it is misleading as fuck. because let's go back to what queerbaiting is, really, when you don't start trying to roll in every damn sin of storytelling about queer characters: queerbaiting is a maliciously intended trap. it's behaviour that is meant to entice people who want queer storylines, only to offer them nothing.

AND NOW TO BE REAL CLEAR: being offered nothing is NOT AND WILL NEVER BE the same thing as being offered something you don't like, or don't want, or don't give a single fuck about. it's not even the same thing as being offered something queer but harmful.

5. LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK: QUEERBAITING IS MALICIOUS WITHHOLDING OF QUEER CONTENT SAID TO BE ON OFFER.

the fact that metro dot co dot uk in 2019 had to define queerbaiting as "marketing an LGBT romance to attract an LGBT audience without exploring it properly on-screen" is honestly offensive in how it completely manages to miss the mark on what exactly is the harm caused by actual queerbaiting, and yet that really is the claim being made, isn't it? it doesn't count unless it's a romantic relationship? so let me say this: if one more person implies i'm not queer because i'm not in a romantic relationship, i'm gonna lose my shit.

(5a. and inb4 BUT THAT UK ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN. if you read that as a promise that the show was going to be ROMANTIC and not VILLANELLE IS A LITERAL PSYCHOPATH, i'm surprised you read this far.)

it's really obvious how this became the catchcry of the campaign for queer representation. it's a moral judgement against creators' manipulation of people's desire for something we are coming to recognise as an important aspect to popular media. representation IS important, and taking advantage of people's need for that is at the bare minimum a shitty thing to do.

it's not shitty to give people that representation. it's not shitty to write complex characters with queer sexualities that are not demonized but are also not in a romantic relationship. this endless cry of being baited with the promise of a romantic relationship only sends a message that we don't want actual representation, we only want one kind of representation. and that's not representation at all.

6. why the post-interview complaint is also totally wrong: literally all sandra oh said is that it wasn't a romantic relationship.

see: literally the last 1500+ words about why not giving fandom queer romance is not the same fucking thing as queerbaiting.

WHAT SANDRA OH SAID IS 100% TRUE: IT IS NOT A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP. IT'S STILL QUEER AS HELL.

the actual literal entire quote from the interview: 'And could that possibly mean a romance together? It's a discussion that the show's star... was quick to dismiss, saying to Gay Times that the idea is sadly not a "focus or a message" for the show.' in case long sentences are a struggle: the idea of a ROMANCE is not the focus or the message of the show.

7. and in case i haven't made this abundantly clear, killing eve isn't a romantic show?: GOOD.

[dumdeeedum]

Some Queliot Queries & Exploration, hah! Shaddap.

So I really want to dive into some shit with this fandom because I really don’t understand, I really and truly don’t. And bear with me because this is going to get long but ideally it would open up a discussion and the dialogue can be a learning opportunity for me if someone comes correct or for others if someone takes something away from all of this: Why shouldn’t the writers have to deal with the fact that season 4′s decision to allude to Eliot and Quentin as a couple is a ret-con? Why shouldn’t they have to deal with the fact that for all intents and purposes Quentin’s bisexuality and Eliot and Quentin’s relationship has never been explicit (there’s allusions to it in season 1- maybe, season 3- barely, and now season 4)? Why shouldn’t they have to deal with the fact that the audience was never told that Eliot and Quentin were explicitly a couple in Fillory until season 4 and even then they can’t erase the fact that Quentin married a woman after having something with Eliot and that they then chose to ignore the entire episode until halfway into season 4? Why shouldn’t the writers have to deal with their poor decisions and poor writing in a meaningful way? Why is fandom trying to erase these things? I’m not being facetious or an asshole here, I’m truly curious. 

And I really want to preface all of this with a critique of something I’ve been seeing a lot on here and that’s that fandom and Eliot are somehow erasing Quenin’s bisexuality. They’re not, the writers are.

The thing is, television is a mostly visual medium, you have freedoms that come with that but also limitations. There’s the freedom to show and not have to tell so as to not have to go into long descriptions and “show don’t tell” has really become a fundamental rule in visual media because it’s really hard to pull off the kind of exposition literary media can get away with in visual media. This has been true since visual media was limited to the stage and has only become more true as technology has caught up with the more fantastical things creators want show now. So it becomes imperative, given this show don’t tell rule, to find another way to express certain things you’d simply be able to cover in a book by describing somebody’s thought process or having a character narrate their story. 

You can have a narrator in visual media but you really have to be careful with how much you use them and for what otherwise you’ve made bad visual media, especially when you’ve already set things up another way. Case in point, the show Veronica Mars started the show with Veronica narrating and normalized it so that it was never grating, never too much, and was generally never used when it was better to show instead of tell.The Magicians, on the other hand, has used narration very sparingly and it’s never become an aspect of the show that gives us those same glimpses into Quentin’s mind, especially since he no longer seems to be the sole focal point of the show. 

So when it comes to representation on visual media it simply isn’t enough to imply or allude and then never bring it up again. Or, in our case, to overtly display certain aspect of someone’s sexuality while explicitly ignoring the other aspects with the expectation that the audience go with it when the creators call the character “bisexual.” This is especially true on a week-to-week television show where not everyone’s been watching from the beginning or has that long a memory that they can remember every aspect of what came before, or hasn’t or can’t rewatch the series several times on Netflix or some other streaming service to refresh. It just doesn’t work that way on television, that’s not how you do visual media representation. 

And when we have so little visibility for certain groups and when part of representation means normalizing those groups in the mainstream so that in the future their presence or their expressions of sexuality aren’t taboo, you have to do that by showing those people and by showing those expressions of their sexuality, and not just the “palatable” ones or in a “palatable” way where you can just say it and not offend anyone by showing it. And usually it’s best to show them in a good light so as to off-set the amount of bad that’s out there that was outside of their control because of systemic oppression. It’s best to have a good balance of good and bad from the very beginning and that’s something that White, het-cis people have been able to enjoy for much of the time visual media has been around. We can argue about representations of women in media, especially White cis-het women, but that’s another topic for another day and they’ve still enjoyed more of a balance than anyone else besides White, cis-het men. It’s the same reason why we can’t simply have “queer-coded” villains or the “kill your gays” tropes be so rampant, it isn’t offsetting the tons of negative that already exists for the lgbtqa community in media.

That being said:

Narratively speaking, when Eliot rejected Quentin I strongly believe that at least in this the writers were doing right by them given the ret-con and I’d like to see it explored more. Season 4 episode 5 was a good start but only a start. Now do I think that Eliot should have implied that he wouldn’t choose Quentin? Fuck no, he absolutely should apologize for that and explain where that came from because it’s clearly the result of a defense mechanism, but that’s really it. I still think the decision for Eliot to reject Quentin was the right one if only to give Quentin the chance to think about what he wants within the confines of this shitshow of a “love” story they tried to ret-con and then staple and glue together as though we’d forget everything that ever happened before season 4 episode 5 and rewrite season 3 episode 5 in our heads. If you’re saying it’s OK to erase all of that for the sake of your ship you’re asking for a bad story, which kind of sucks and I kind of feel you, but it kind of sucks. I mean, their straight relationships haven’t been the most amazingly written either but they actually happened in a meaningfully explicit way. We were given a narrative where even after Quentin kisses Eliot for the first time in Fillory (a year after they got there) and presumably has a relationship with him in Fillory after that, which, really, we didn’t know for sure because they’ve never said it, it could just have been a drunken fuck for them up until that point, Quentin marries and goes on to have a life with a woman until she dies or leaves (I was never clear on which it was). The relationship with Eliot after that is only alluded to in season 4 and still hasn’t been explicitly shown, no kisses, nothing, not outside of Eliot’s mind. And for some people that may be enough to call Quentin canonically bisexual and to call Eliot and Quentin a canonical couple that will be together in the future and while I agree he probably is and that they might, I don’t think it’s a good example of queer representation in visual media, especially when season 3′s episode was never meant to be taken that way.

Now we can always assume that it was a consensually poly-amorous relationship between Eliot and Quentin when Arielle came along but then why was Quentin the only one who had someone? Is the assumption here also that Eliot is OK being a sister wife or some shit? Why didn’t Eliot have another boyfriend to split his time with since Quentin had a wife that needed attention? They’ve established that homosexuality isn’t bad in Fillory so why not give him someone if the poly thing was what was meant to be inferred here? I’m not saying it definitively can’t be the case but I’m working with what we have and raising questions because we’ve been given very little information otherwise and I’m not sure I buy that Eliot would be OK with sharing Quentin because up until now (outside of his marriage with Fen) Eliot has not been shown to be poly-amorous and has even shown that he gets jealous if his significant other looks at someone else. And I know that when it’s discussed in a relationship it’s different and jealousy isn’t an issue but we don’t have any information on the subject as it pertains to them. Earlier in the series Eliot said that being with women is not his preference, so no, Eliot is not bisexual even if he’s had to fuck Fen; he fucked Fen because he had to and it’s a problematic as fuck storyline that effectively worked to pad anything Eliot might have had with a man with a woman. So I’m also not sure it’s too realistic an idea to have him in bed fucking Arielle with Quentin if he’s in a consensually poly-amorous relationship with them. Maybe once in a while like, as he said, one would have Thai food, but if anything we’ll give him a 1 or 2 on the Kinsey scale? (for lack of a better way to put it) So why not given him someone for him while Quentin has someone for Quentin? At the very least we’d get a non-toxic homosexual relationship for Eliot too, right? 

And no, I don’t consider anything to do with the season 1′s threesome to be rooted in anything but what we’ve been told over and over that it was: the result of a lot of alcohol and emotion magic. Otherwise you have something else to deal with and that’s that Quentin is a fucking untrustworthy asshole for cheating on Alice whom he claims to have loved and that Margo and Eliot are shit friends for going with it. It could be the case but they’ve made it a point to tell us it was a result of all 3 of them being compromised and even Margo refuses to allow people to blame her for it because of that compromise.

That being said, I can understand why a gay man like Eliot would be hesitant at the idea of jumping into a monogamous relationship with a man like Quentin without giving Quentin pause to really think about it. Remember, Quentin wanting to be with Eliot happened right after he got his memories of Fillory back so it was a pretty rash, emotionally-charged decision on his part. And we already know Quentin gravitates toward escapism because of his psychological issues. Why would Eliot jump into a relationship with a man whom, from Eliot’s perspective and, more importantly, from the viewer’s perspective, has been chasing a woman since season 1 and even in Fillory decided to marry a woman when Eliot was explicitly shown to be an option? And literally the first woman he met there. Outside of Eliot, Quentin has sought out and has had relationships with exclusively female partners except for season 1 and except for Fillory which was another time and place and which was never explicitly shown to us and is only alluded to in season 4, that’s bad representation and something that requires further examination within the story!

From Eliot’s perspective it absolutely makes sense that he’d wonder if Quentin would truly be happy with him given other options, especially given the enduring presence of a woman Quentin has been chasing since season 1. We don’t know if Alice would be OK with sharing Quentin either, it’s never been explored because most of anything to do with Eliot and Quentin as a romantic couple has simply been ignored! The writers were the ones who shit the bed by giving Quentin exclusively female partners (even in Fillory) that would make Eliot wonder if he and his penis were enough. If we had some more clear and explicit depictions of Quentin’s bisexuality, especially in Fillory, Eliot wouldn’t have to worry about this shit as much. But even in Fillory Quentin chose Arielle until she was no longer an option and the writers chose to do that, the writers decided to show us one kiss between Eliot and Quentin before giving Quentin a rando wife, making her fuck off to who knows where but subsequently never showing Eliot and Quentin in a romantically intimate setting again. Some bisexual representation!

Eliot and Quentin as a pairing only comes back up literally a season later, 13 episodes later! Something has to be done about this ret-con and pretending it wasn’t a ret-con is never good writing, not the way they’re doing it! Because even after Quentin confesses his feelings during season 3x5, which we only actually find out he did in 4x5, it’s never brought up again even by depression Quentin the very episode after 3x5! The whole situation was ret-conned for season 4!

Moving forward either there has to be some mutually agreed upon, explicitly stated, explicitly shown, poly-amorous relationship set-up where they could both be fulfilled by both having someone else if they so choose to or  Eliot has to have Quentin’s assurance that Quentin sees him and that he is now Quentin’s first and only choice. And both of these options have to be a show don’t tell situation! It’s actually what I hope happens in episode 12, especially since they’re once again making Quentin and Alice kiss each other and showing us yet another expression of heterosexual love while stringing us along with the idea of a homosexual one that really hasn’t happened yet.

And perhaps some people might find that to be feeding into stereotypes about bisexual people that leave a bad taste but realistically speaking exclusivity is a conversation every romantic relationship has to have and mistrust will occur if the person you’re with has only had partners of the opposite sex, has only expressed interest in people of the opposite sex, and is still hung up on someone of the opposite sex they used to date and whom is still a romantic possibility for them. That’s just how it is unless you’re one of those miraculous people who don’t experience jealousy or insecurity or have had those conversations with your partner. In this scenario it wouldn’t be that Eliot doesn’t trust bisexual people, it’d be that Eliot doesn’t know who Quentin really wants and he doesn’t think Quentin truly, deep down, would want him if he took the time to think about it. That’s fair given the givens!

And the poly thing is certainly an option but feels like a more radical move, given what we know of these characters, than having Eliot and Quentin in a monogamous relationship and given how little they’ve given us of that prospect I’m not even sure what they’ll decide to do moving forward. Maybe they’ll decide it’s more palatable to include a woman in any capacity seeing as media is still really about padding anything to do with homosexual male love scenes with heterosexual love scenes or naked women, that could also be the case and then we’d have to decide how we feel about that. We know they did that with Fillory because Arielle was pulled out of someone’s ass because it could just have been Eliot with Quentin but it wasn’t. But as of now we don’t even know if the poly thing was ever really a thing with them to begin with, we just don’t, it’s just conjecture and I’m just exploring of the possibility, they could have gotten together after Arielle dipped. I’m not saying any of this to shit on the Eliot and Quentin pairing at all, or to shit on Quentin’s bisexuality, per say, I like the idea of them and I think it should happen and I like the idea of a bisexual Quentin. But I do think these are the consequences of the way the writers have chosen to navigate these things and now they have to deal with those consequences because otherwise this pairing is silly and unrealistic moving forward outside of Fillory, and if they don’t want to pursue it then that could explain why.  So why haven’t they been dealing with this by showing us a more explicitly bisexual Quentin or at the very least a more explicitly interested in Eliot Quentin outside of his confession to Eliot in 4x5? And I’m not saying he has to jump on the first dick he sees but even having a conversation with his best childhood friend about his feelings, regardless of what he thinks Eliot’s are, would be a really great jumping off point to show us that Quentin’s feelings for Eliot are trustworthy and real and not just alluded to or the result of an emotional compromise. At this point people are expecting this confession and really want it to happen for a reason.

I’d just really like to see the writers make a decision about this and stick with it because this specific type of will they, won’t they shit is why they can’t be trusted and why it’s so easy to wonder whether they’re queerbaiting. If they can explore Julia and Penny23, Kady and Penny, Margo and Josh, and even Alice and Quentin’s relationships during this monster arc without it taking away from the life or death severity of the situations they’re in then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be exploring Quentin and Eliot’s even if it’s just Quentin being introspective but showing us that introspection in some way. We’ve gotten Eliot’s but we really haven’t gotten Quentin’s and I think that’s what we’re all waiting for or should be waiting for and it’s imperative that it happens to build the trust in the writers the viewers need to become emotionally attached to the idea that a pairing will actually happen on screen and that the viewers aren’t just being fucked with for views. It isn’t fair to expect the blind faith from viewers towards the writers and show-runners that too many people in this fandom are demanding!

We shouldn’t have to go on a fucking deep-dive, clue-finding mission to break down every single fucking interaction to look for a relationship the writers are supposedly explicitly trying to build because that’s not how they’ve built any other relationship. They’ve jumped right into every straight pairing but somehow this one is the one they have to draw out to an almost unrealistic degree and add 50,000 layers of nuance to? The one with the most history and proof that it worked based on what the writers themselves have told us? Alice and Quentin were fucking within a season, Kady and Penny within a season, Margo and Josh within a season for some godforsaken reason, Julia and Penny23 are macking and seeing each other naked within a season but we can’t even get Quentin to be introspective about being in love with Eliot for one episode? We have to settle for allusions to their pairing and a couple of blink and you miss them kisses, one of which wasn’t even between the two men themselves? I’m not saying that the Eliot and Quentin pairing won’t happen but it absolutely hasn’t yet and I’m not here to pretend it has. Alice and Quentin were “in love” within a season, why can’t we explore Eliot and Quentin’s love in a meaningful way after a canonical 50+ years? Why has it been OK so far that the writers aren’t exploring Quentin’s part of this relationship at all if it’s their intention to pursue it? And why should we trust them and take it as faith that this pairing isn’t something they thought of doing but have long since thrown out?

Is it bad writing? Is it not gonna happen? What is it because I’m confused as fuck and nothing that’s been happening recently has helped because the writers have opted to waste a shitload of time in a 13 episode season rather than explore what they ought to be exploring in that limited amount of time.

I say all that to ask this: Can we just hold the writers and show-runners accountable to their shitty decisions already? That’s really what I want because I don’t think underrepresented communities should have to settle or take the scraps thrown at them in 2019 and that feels like what a lot of people are saying ought to be done. No, they absolutely should not be happy with the bullshit they’ve been given. The community didn’t come together with pitchforks and torches to storm their writer’s room and demand Eliot and Quentin be a couple, the writers and show-runners decided to move in that direction.

If people shipped them then there’s already parts of the fandom for that and people would have made due with fic as they always have done. So why the fuck is jerking the community around like this acceptable? 

I sincerely hope that there are consequences from the community if the writers and show-runners go back on this, I really do, because it was the writers’ and show-runners’ fuckup and they don’t deserve to be rewarded for bad behavior. Make them work for the good graces of the communities they’re courting and stop allowing them to do this to these already marginalized communities!

It’s well past time that they show us Quentin’s bisexuality and feelings for Eliot in a meaningful way or drop it altogether and never pick it up again and accept that they’re pieces of shit for doing this and should be cancelled, although as far as I’m concerned the damage has already done and there’s no going back without them admitting they’re garbage.

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Walking Dead: The Calm Before (9x15)

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Cons:

I'm going to start with some personal context here: when I watched this episode, my DVR recording for some reason cut it off early, at the cliffhanger moment when Alpha sits next to Lydia in the movie theatre. I wasn't paying much attention to how long the episode had been, so I thought that was the final moment of the episode. I was all geared up to write a quite favorable review - lots of tense moments, good character buildup, etc. etc. But then I realized there was still fifteen minutes to go, and now I have to deal with this bullshit.

The problem with The Walking Dead is they have this huge over-bloated cast of people, most of whom we don't really care about, and then periodically in order to make us understand how evil a villain is, some of these characters will get killed off. But there's always some problem with the way they pull off the deaths: either they are way too built up and foreshadowed, and every ounce of drama is wrung out of the moment (Glenn, Carl), or else it's a character we kind of care about, and they're given a bunch of attention and more character development suddenly, and it becomes obvious they're about to die (Jesus), or they're someone I barely know at all and I'm not sure why I'm supposed to be so devastated about it (several of the deaths in this episode).

Really, we should talk about the Big Three Deaths.

Enid. She falls into the "Jesus" category for me, in that we suddenly get all these moments with her being all cute with her boyfriend, and I instantly thought she was going to get killed off. Or he was. One of them, anyway. It's hard to care about this, because I don't really feel like I know Enid at all, especially post time-jump. She's just another random Hilltop community member at this point.

Tara. I'm too exhausted to repeat my tirade about this show killing off all its queer characters. At least there are still those two girls whose names I don't know yet. Or whatever. And at least there's still Aaron. The thing with a big ensemble cast like this is that it's not necessarily the end of the world if some queer characters die, as long as there are plenty of other ones on the show, and that kind-of-sort-of is what's going on here, so I won't repeat myself on explaining why it sucks to kill off queer characters. Instead, let's just talk about how stupid it is to kill off Tara specifically. Hilltop just lost Jesus, and now it's lost Tara, and it all feels so pointless. And I don't mean pointless in the way it's supposed to feel pointless. It feels narratively pointless. Tara has been around for a really long time, and she never really came into her own as a character. I've never disliked her, but I've never felt all that invested in her either. Maybe she was somewhat superfluous to the story that this show wants to be telling. But instead of constantly bringing in new characters and over-extending the cast, and then killing off people who have been around for years to make room for newbies, why not take the time to actually develop these characters? Why not make us care about Tara the way we care about Daryl or Carol or Michonne, so that if she dies, it means something?

Finally, Henry. I will admit, there are some aspects to Henry dying here that I'm going to put in the "pros" section too, because I genuinely did not see it coming, and there are some interesting possibilities coming off of this. But on the other hand... why now? Henry was an annoying brat when this season started, and I had just started to get a bit invested in him... and then he's dead. It would have meant a hell of a lot more if we'd had a whole additional season with him, if we'd seen him grow, if I came to care about him the way I once cared about Carl. This show has this problem of dragging some things out waaaayyyy too far, and then cutting other things off before they've had a chance to develop and mature. It's annoying. I'm always feeling robbed of the better show that we could have had if certain plot threads could be disposed of, and different characters could be given the limelight.

The frustrating thing about this dramatic mass-killing is that so many people had to make mistakes in order for it to happen. It was just so contrived that when various groups started splitting up, Carol, Michonne, and Daryl would be the three together, along with one of the new-ish characters whose name I still don't know. They're idiots to let themselves get surrounded by the Whisperers. After all these years, do they not have any tactical common sense? And also, not to put too fine a point on it, Alpha is an idiot for not killing Daryl, Michonne, and Carol when she had the chance. If she really wanted to punish the various communities for their defiance, that would have been the way to do it. These three characters are protected because they're the most popular characters on the show (they're certainly the only three that I personally care about at this point), not because it makes sense in-universe for them to be the ones to always survive.

Pros:

One of the reasons that I found the deaths to be so unsatisfying is that the rest of this episode was doing some really good work. I was completely drawn in, loving the suspense, enjoying the happiness of the Fair, dreading Alpha's retaliation... it was all great stuff, and even the setup for the deaths, seeing the heads on spikes, would have worked really well for me if it weren't for the buildup resulting in those specific characters' deaths.

The first thing that was awesome about this episode? The Fair. I resisted Carol being a part of the Kingdom for a long time because I didn't like how it separated her from the rest of the group, and I was skeptical of Ezekiel. He just seemed too goofy to me, even though I know that's sort of the whole point. But now? I understand their relationship, I understand the Kingdom, and I believe in it. That scene where the leaders of the various communities signed the Constitution was incredibly moving. I think it's important in a show like this for the characters to have something they're fighting for. Despite all of the loss and pain, they have to remain strong for something bigger than any one person. The Fair was a great symbol of that, and I like the fact that we lingered on it long enough to understand what's really at stake here.

This episode did a great job being genuinely scary, too. As predictable as some of the deaths were, in terms of the character set-up as I've described above, I'll admit I wasn't expecting the slaughter in this episode. I thought maybe it would wait until next week. Everyone thought that Hilltop would be the target of the Whisperer's wrath, and I'll admit that I got caught up in that assumption as well, even though the Kingdom made more sense in terms of the narrative. And when the groups went out to go defend Hilltop, I was scanning their numbers, wondering which among them were going to die, so it was a doubly effective twist that the victims were people supposedly safe at the Fair. When we first see Alpha in that dress, with the wig, just wandering among the people, it genuinely startled me and made me very nervous. That tension kept escalating throughout the whole rest of the episode. The whole scene in the movie theatre freaked me out. I kept waiting for a mass attack to happen, and when it didn't, the tension stayed with me as we saw Lydia and Alpha talking. Great pacing, great acting, great score, all in service of a very frightening atmosphere.

Lydia has really grown on me. Obviously there will be some people who are livid that so much was lost because of her, but I think we're seeing that these communities don't want to give up their values, no matter the cost. They've offered Lydia asylum, and even though the consequences of that decision were devastating, it was still the right thing to do, and I believe that Daryl, Michonne, and the others will continue to protect her, in honor of the people who lost their lives, especially Henry. Lydia has a great moment where she stands up to Alpha. It's important to remember the degree to which this poor girl has been brainwashed throughout her entire life. Escaping an abusive parent is no easy task, and I think we're going to see the trauma play out in interesting ways. Or at least I hope that's where this is going. Lydia could be a really cool and interesting character to explore more deeply.

Oh, Daryl. He was killing it in this episode. I loved the little nod he gave to Carol when Alpha led him away at gunpoint. It was him saying "it's okay" and "goodbye" and everything else all at once. We get two Carol and Daryl hugs, once when Daryl, Lydia, Henry, and Connie show up at the Kingdom, and once again when Daryl returns after his one-on-one with Alpha. He just loves Carol and Michonne both so much. When we see the heads on spikes moment, Daryl notices Henry first and runs to Carol, desperate to save her this pain. He holds her and tells her to just look at him. My heart broke for the both of them. I also liked the little detail of Daryl taking Lydia to the spikes (heads removed, of course), so that Lydia can say goodbye to Henry. Daryl has been isolating himself since losing Rick, but we can see how community-oriented he really is, how much he cares about the people around him and how much he wants to nurture them.

A few other little details that I enjoyed: I surprisingly didn't mind Rosita and Eugene's little moment, even if the whole plot scenario is still a little eye-roll worthy. I liked seeing Judith playing with other kids, enjoying the freedom and fun of the Fair, and I loved when she and Carol had their little moment. It's so sad to think of Carol not being a big part of Rick's daughter's life, but we see that Judith still remembers her, and I'm sure they'll be together again now. Ezekiel's opening speech at the Fair about Rick and Carl was really great, and helped to tie together the themes of this season. Connie and Daryl's goodbye, with Daryl asking Connie to watch the dog... I could see a real friendship developing between those two. Connie and her sister's conversation, hinting at some backstory stuff that I'd be interested to get back to. Luke being buddies with Enid's boyfriend, excited to play music at the Fair. I actually really like Luke and I hope we get to spend more time with him.

Finally, Siddiq's speech at the end. It's taken a whole season to unpack the reasons for Michonne's fear and isolation. It's taken all season to start getting some answers about the communities being estranged from each other, and we still don't have all the pieces of the puzzle. When I saw those heads on those spikes, one of my first reactions was to be worried that we'd backslide on all that character development. Michonne and Aaron would pull back and stay in Alexandria, Ezekiel's dreams of union and trade would collapse, and we'd be back to square one. It's possible that that's where we're going with all of this, but I actually doubt it. We can see how devastated everyone is, obviously, but hopefully this latest challenge will bring them even closer together, and when the Whisperers are gone, harmony can continue to grow.

So yeah. I liked so much of this episode. I liked the build-up and the atmosphere and several of the character beats. And yet here we are with another slaughter, a bunch of characters that were only just getting interesting, suddenly killed off so that we're clear on the fact that the Whisperers are bad guys. Yeesh. Annoying.

7.5/10

[awed-frog]

tl;dr: nope

I got a couple of anon asks about this, and I’m also tagging @twist-shout-and-shells because they asked me to, but I have to say - I don’t know anything about comics, I don’t know Marvel at all, so this review is just a meaningless rant. Like, I know so little about this universe that the first superhero movie I ever saw in my life was Thor, and the only reason they got me was because my mythology-loving ass assumed this would be about the actual god, you know?, so that was a very confusing two hours. Anyway - after this, I’m done with them. The ridiculous hype campaign they created around Infinity War actually activated my crow brain, which means I rushed to the theater because I was sort of expecting this would be a shocking masterpiece and any spoiler would ruin it for me, and - yeah. Never doing that again. Because, whatever - they do manage to come up with some good writing from time to time, and Black Panther’s success had made me hope they’d finally recognize that a solid, coherent and meaningful story is really the first thing you need, but apparently not? 

Ugh.

Anyway, here are main reasons why I didn’t like Infinity War.

1) No, we don’t need a new plague

Problem number one with this movie is that it fails to take into account that our IQ as a people has dropped about twenty points over the last thirty years (and I’m not even joking) and that means even a guy nicknamed ‘Mad Titan’ is actually given the benefit of the doubt (I don’t remember anyone thinking Hela might have had a point, but then again, women are known to be emotionally compromised at all times, right, so all that rage was probably PMS and crazy bitches, amirite?, can’t live with them, can’t live without them). And here, predictably, is the result:

I even checked Breitbart so you wouldn’t have to and while they seem confused as to whether they should support this movie or not (don’t watch because Captain America is played by ‘Comrade Communism’, do watch because Chris Pratt is a Good Christian Man), it’s still clear to everybody over there that Thanos, “an environmentalist wacko obsessed with salvaging the natural resources of the universe” is “espousing liberal jibberish”.

So, I’m going to keep it short and mostly sourceless because I saw a lot of people discussing this, but just to be clear: yeah, it is worrying that human population has basically tripled in thirty years, but the correlation ‘more people = more damage & fewer resources’ isn’t as clear-cut as some like to think. Also, research shows that women being recognized as human beings - that’s the actual way to solve this problem (see also x, x), which means that if Thanos had meant business, he could have used those frwaking stones to build schools and family planning centres. 

2) Your plan against evil can’t be just saying no

This is probably what bugs me the most both in fiction and IRL: saying ‘Trump is a moron’, ‘capitalism is bad’ or ‘genocide is wrong’ is not a political program. It’s a moral stance, and kudos to you, but if you want to make the world a better place, you need a lot more than that. But, nope - IW fell into this trap with such relish I can actually believe no one saw this as a problem - at all. When Thanos pointed out, rather smugly, that decimating Gamora’s planet had led to a new era of happiness and prosperity, she didn’t react in any way. We never saw Tony or Shuri mentioning the outlandish, extravagant idea that better and greener technology could actually save us all. We never saw anyone point out that when the richest 1% own half the world’s wealth, wiping out half of a Nairobi slum isn’t likely to do much for the environment. I guess it wasn’t relevant to the plot?

3) Turning your audience against the good guys = dick move

That said, our planet is objectively in bad shape, and writers and artists who are (or like to think of themselves as) engagés are more than welcome to discuss this - for all her faults, JK Rowling did that to perfection in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, focusing on the importance of conservation and taking a clear stance against animal trafficking. Other movies, of course, went a lot farther than that: my movie rec of the day is Okja, a masterful and soulwrenching look at how capitalism manages food production. But IW, on top of everything else, manages to be an anti-green movement movie? As if that was needed in any way? Apparently comic!Thanos’ goal was to impress Lady Death or something, and maybe they should have gone with that, because to me, movie!Thanos’ plan sounds like an ill-conceived and unfortunate parody of the green movement. In fact, eminent biologist E. O. Wilson’s Half-Earth explores this exact possibility - which is not about killing off 50% of the population, thank you very much, but about improving agriculture and urban structures so we can leave 50% of the world to the rest of the ecosystem. And maybe it’s just me, but isn’t it a bit weird the book came out at about the same time when IW’s script was being written? I try not to be a paranoid nutcase, but come on. Because what the movie does is that it turns Thanos into a sort of green Hitler whose only focus is the environment (“But he was a vegetarian!”), cue the creepy final shot of him going all ‘Schwarzy in the forest’ surrounded by clean-water creeks and happy animals while we are left counting our dead. The metaphor couldn’t be more obvious, and to be honest it is most unwelcome. Time and place, guys? I really haven’t seen something so revolting since I got to the end of the Da Vinci Code and realized atheists were the true monsters all along.

4) Being a hero doesn’t mean saving your friends

So this is starting to become a trend, and seriously, enough. If you’re a hero, then you need to think of something greater than yourself, and this is why your life will suck and suck and suck until your untimely death. Deal with it? And I can understand Loki giving up the Tesseract for his brother, because he’s always been more of an anti-hero than a hero, and his morals are shot to hell in any case, and I’ll forgive Dr Strange because he clearly saw something we didn’t, but what the hell was Steve thinking? Seriously, I keep seeing posts about how Pure and Noble Steve is, and guys, did we even see the same movie? Bringing Vision to Wakanda meant endangering an entire nation, and thousands of people there paid for that choice with their lives. It’s because Steve insisted in not seeing the big picture - or accepting Vision’s own wishes - that Thanos even succeeded in the first place. If they’d destroyed the stone, Thanos would never have gotten his hands on it, and Wakanda would not have been attacked by a horde of alien demons. Sacrificing hundreds or thousands of nameless (black, African) warriors to keep one (white) man safe is not heroism - it’s cowardice. It’s assuming your own feelings and your friends’ lives count more than the lives of strangers, and this is the exact opposite of how a hero should think. Not that I’m surprised, since Steve already condoned the destruction of half of Bucharest to save Bucky, but whatever. Compare and contrast with Tony, by the way, who first tried to destroy the Time stone, then chose to sacrifice himself to save someone he didn’t even like? Yeah, that’s more like it. #TeamStark

5) Every single woman is defined by her relationship to a man

With the caveat that no emotion, connection or motivation is throroughly explored in IW because it’s an action-packed movie during which people never speak an honest word to each other (relying instead on posturing, movie quotes and sarcastic remarks), here is basically what happens: men have things, and women have men. Tony’s journey is mostly about saving Peter and also sacrificing himself for the world. Steve is all about his friends and various heroics. Dr Strange is a sort of ascetic monk playing the long game. Thanos wants to save the universe or something. And Vision is on a quest towards humanity? Maybe? But the women - Gamora is important because she’s Thanos’ daughter. Scarlet Witch is important because she loves Vision. Natasha (I think she’s in the movie? I don’t actually remember if we hear her speak) is on Cap’s side because Cap. Pepper only appears to remind us of what Tony has to lose. Exceptions to this rule include Shuri, whom IW didn’t quite manage to destroy; Loki, who was always female- and queer-coded, so I’m not surprised he ends up dying for the handsome and suitably Aryan hero; and arguably Starlord, who mostly fights for Gamora (what is a virtue in a woman, however, is a weakness in a man, because Starlord ends up fucking up the plan because of his love for her). And I know they probably tried to compensate for the complete lack of women in the movie by highlighting how powerful Scarlet Witch is and focusing so much on Gamora, but I’m an annoying person, so that didn’t work for me. Because, again, Scarlet Witch is a 2D character plucked directly from a Victorian dictionary’s definition of ‘woman’ (while the menfolk around her worry about the possible demise of the Entire Earth, there she is, channelling all her energy in being a good and loyal companion to her robot husband) and Gamora has no more control over her life in this movie than she had as a child? Her main narrative purpose in IW is to make us feel bad for her boyfriend and father, who’re both driven to kill her (for very different reasons) and suffer for her death (and don’t get me started on Thanos suddenly loving someone and what a stroke of luck, the one person in the universe he gives a damn about just happens to be standing next to him on top of a cliff when he needs to kill her). Seriously, why is it that female characters’ concerns still begin and end with romantic love? This trope that romance is the most important thing for every single woman needed to die, like, yesterday.

6) None of that actually means anything

Look, I’m a sucker of time-travel of any description, but I also think time-travel must be done honestly or not at all. Movies like Back to the Future or Arrival both use time bending to great effect, because the stakes are real and painful and there are all sort of complex decisions facing our heroes. But IW doesn’t care about any of that. The existence of the Time stone is not about ethical dilemmas or even turning up the drama to eleven - the one purpose of that thing is to make us hope that our personal fave is not dead after all, so we’ll keep watching this stupid franchise until the end of times. That finale could have been innovative and heartwrenching, and instead we already know it wasn’t. Samuel L. Jackson is apparently confirmed in Captain Marvel, which will be released next year, and we also know they’re working on Spider-Man 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Black Panther 2 and Doctor Strange 2. Capitalism has very nearly killed the possibility of creating a well-written and gutting story, because the rule is, If it makes money, it goes the fuck on. Hence TV shows which no longer make any kind of sense but we all keep watching out of nostalgia, affection for the characters or dissatisfaction with our own lives, and also franchises which stretch the plot to new and boring limits (for instance, it beggars belief that Tony and Steve didn’t even meet in IW, and their fight never came up at all: I guess we’ll have to wait for IW 2, or Avengers 37: The One with The Talk). And here, again, studios are so greedy that they willingly disregard the fact audiences will reward ‘complete’ stories: for instance, Logan was critically acclaimed and made tons of money, but the risk of ‘permanently’ killing off a beloved character is still considered too high. And playing it safe actually works: IW costed $320 million, which is about 5% of the studio’s budget, and that investment has already been repaid in full (the movie made double that in the first two weeks).  

(Meanwhile, 21st Century Fox gained more than one billion dollars from Trump’s TAX REFORM THAT WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN - probably a disappointing amount of money for owner Richard Murdoch, who has a net worth of 15 billion and is known to use some of that hard-earned cash to support laudable & important causes such as the privatization of public education, but hey, we all need to make do and move on, right? Right.)

So this is mostly it. To be fair, IW was mildly entertaining, and I thought they sort of did a good job in juggling twenty leads - we got no character development at all and no meaningful dialogue, but we saw everybody at least once and their lines were funny? Some moments were genuinely good despite a couple of bizarre plot points (I’m still unclear on why Strange didn’t create a circle of fire around Thanos’ arm, and very tired of the overused ‘Yeah, let’s save the most powerful weapons for last’ trope), so I wouldn’t say this was the worst movie ever made, but as I said, I’m done. I’ve given more than enough money to this franchise, so when IW 2 comes out, I think I’ll be a boring adult and watch it on TV as I’m doing my ironing or something. Good times.

[dgcatanisiri]

Gil’s Story Is My Nightmare

You know, it normally takes weeks if not months for my feelings to settle on a subject relating to fiction. Like, my first time through, it’ll wash over me, I’ll consider it a while, and then, eventually, I’ll come to a conclusion.

But Gil’s story rubbed me wrong on first run, and I easily figured out why.

Gil’s story is my nightmare as a gay man.

I know I’m not the first to sum it up, but I am SO frustrated and pissed off by this (and Mass Effect Andromeda’s handling of M/M relationships in general), I need to work it out of my system.

So let’s start with the beginning: Jill. AKA “Fuck This Bitch.”

That’s a pretty extreme reaction coming from me, but… No, you do not get to call yourself a friend to a gay person if you’re going to “tease” them about how they’re ‘making [your] job harder.’ Like… No. This is where real life in 2017 intrudes upon fictional life in 2819. Here and now, gay people face discrimination for this very fact. Our relationships are considered somehow less legitimate because children will never be a biological possibility between the couple. Outside help would always be necessary for that to happen. There’s no room in our world right now for a fictional character to “tease” what real life people suffer.

Which, by the way, as a procreation tech, that would actually mean he makes her job EASIER, because if Gil ever wanted a child, he’d have to go through her. Just because he’s not doing it now doesn’t mean it would never happen. He’s a guaranteed customer at a time when no one is actually really ready to have children the natural way anyway.

And that’s YET. ANOTHER. THING. about this. Jill is talking procreation, talking about her job as a procreation tech, at a time when the Andromeda Initiative has no established colonies and is living almost entirely off of the Nexus. Hell, why is she even out of cryo? This seems like something that should be reserved for second wave, once a foothold has been established, not when the colonies are still in the drawing board phase and resources are questionable at best.

Anyway, far too many real gay people have this as a form of questioning, devaluing, delegitimizing our relationships for this to be something that should ever be teased about. From the Watsonian perspective, maybe (hopefully) that’s less of an issue in the future than it is now, but the Doylist perspective is the one that we have to work with, because this is a real thing that impacts real people.

Indeed, there were homophobic remarks after the title was released that amounted to ‘why would a colonization effort include gay people when they won’t reproduce?’ Now, I don’t know if this had any influence on the story, hopefully meant in a ‘let’s prove them wrong’ kind of way, but… This really just validated them.

Because it’s only the gay guy being questioned here. He is the only one facing the question of reproduction. Not the straight characters. Not the straight relationships. Not the inter-species relationships. The gay guy is being pressured to have a kid RIGHT THIS SECOND.

There is no reason for this to be a subject in the here and now. Literally, this is a decision that so easily can and probably should wait. Again, the Initiative colonies are literally only established in the course of the game proper. Hell, the “suggestion” that Gil have a kid that he actually considers comes at probably one of the worst times – Gil’s maybe in a relationship that’s, generously, a month or two old, and he’s the chief engineer on a ship that’s at the forefront of Andromeda exploration. He’s in a bad place to become a father here and now. He’s on a life-threatening mission that could easily end with his death. This isn’t when you say ‘hey, how about a sperm sample, old buddy, just in case?’

Hell, what about a relationship that only gets confirmed AS a relationship in that scene where we meet her even says that it’s ready for a child? Like, yeah, sure, they’ll drop the love-bomb in the romance scene but being ready to love someone and being ready to raise a child are two very separate things. Why would you even suggest that into a relationship this young and in a situation this dangerous? The Pathfinder and his chief engineer are not in a position to even have a stable environment to raise a child. It's one thing to ask the question as a hypothetical, but this is going straight to the practical before anything has been floated between them.

And the fact that he’ll end up in a family unit with her if not romanced is… very unpleasant in consideration. A gay man is settling down to raise a child with a woman. Please, read that sentence and tell me that you understand why I find that so troubling. This is no unconventional family thumbing its nose at heteronormativity. This is a gay person settling down with someone of the opposite sex in the name of starting a family. And this is considered a happy ending.

Sure, no one mentions that he’s going to suppress his homosexuality or something in the name of making the family unit ‘proper,’ but that’s not the point. The point is that this is a gay person entering a parental relationship with someone of the opposite sex, with her as mother and him as father. That’s pretty damn heteronormative. Him settling down with a woman is in effect devaluing his identity as a gay man in the name of letting him be a father.

I repeat, this is my nightmare as a gay man.

Jill gets so much prominence in Gil’s character arc, I’ve devoted more than a page to just her alone. And without her? There’s really not much to his arc at all. Seemingly every conversation with him ties back to her in some way. SHE’S the one going through a character development and evolution, going from procreation tech to expectant mother.

If you want to write Jill so much, go write her and let someone else write this character. Because he has no independent arc. He’s a supporting character in her narrative instead of the lead in his own.

There’s a telling and not showing element here. There are indications that we’re supposed to see Gil as maturing – he’ll say ‘you’re making me a better man’ in the romance scene, and (much as I’m loathe to acknowledge her) Jill says that something’s changed about Gil when we meet her. But we see nothing of the sort in game. Gil’s character isn’t shown to change over the course of the game. We just get told this, that hey, your very influence and existence in Gil’s life has somehow matured him, without any evidence of how he’s changed ever being produced.

The worst part about this, though, is that we’re likely going to be stuck with this in the final analysis. That as much as we want an improvement in the form of Gil’s story actually focused on him, that would involve writing whole new scenes, bringing at least three actors back into the studio (if not more to offer him better integration into the main cast of characters), and programing that in. That’s a costly thing, and while I honestly think that BioWare should eat the cost, considering how offensive this whole mess has been to an extremely loyal audience… I’m realistic enough to recognize that it’s not likely to happen. The best we can expect is probably some duct taping patchwork in whatever finale DLC they put out, Andromeda’s answer to Citadel or Trespasser.

This story needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. And it sucks because once I divorce all references to Jill from his story, I find a character who I’d like to know more about, that some part of me does find appealing and interesting and relatable. I find something in him I can identify with. But everything else about his story so completely overwhelms that, because so much of it ignores him in favor of a side character who appears in one scene and has like two lines. If Gil were cut, Jill could still function as an autonomous character. HIS characterization depends on HER.

Seriously, this is a case where it really would be best for BioWare to eat the cost needed to fix this because this is homophobic. I’ll be nice and say it’s not intended that way, that this was a misguided effort at queering a straight story for a gay character, but something doesn’t have to be intended to be homophobic to BE homophobic. And given the rest of BioWare’s missteps with handling M/M relationships in this game, it’d be a really solid show of contriteness on their part, of understanding how they messed up, to go back in and fix this whole mess, drop Jill and focus just on Gil’s development.

But I know that they won’t. And it pisses me off.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Something that always interests me in LoT S1 is how Mick pretty much instantly blames Rip for Len's shifting priorities. Not Sara, who Len clearly is trying to earn the respect of; Mick basically says outright that he thinks Rip brainwashed Len. Why do you think he does that? Just because Rip is demonstrably an asshole? Or do you think he's seen Len fall into the trap of obeying selfish, angry men too often before because it's a pattern he's used to?

ETA: So this got longer than expected. And more meta, too. 

TL;DR: I don’t think Len is trying to impress Sara, I think Mick is correct in blaming Rip; and the rest of this is an explanation of how I personally explain Len’s characterization in season 1 (what his motivation is in participating, why he talks to Sara the way he does in the gulag rescue sequence, what he meant by the “you and me” line in Destiny) and how I would write Captain Canary if I ever did.

—

So, at least for me, I think I disagree with your premise that Len was clearly trying to earn Sara’s respect. The impression I got from season 1 - especially the first few episodes - is that Len found himself stuck on a ship with Mick and a bunch of heroes and he was, well, not necessarily uncomfortable with that, but he didn’t understand them, either. Except for Mick, who was already his best friend, Sara was the closest he had to what he knew - someone in the grey areas, who knows about morality issues ,etc. - and he was willing to hang out with her as a result. Mick didn’t have any objection to Len occasionally playing cards with someone else because it wasn’t a motivation for him, it was downtime. All of the actual behavioral changes are Rip’s fault: Rip, who brought them on the trip; Rip, who told everyone they were heroes; Rip, who was so incompetent Len got overly invested in trying to make the job go right; Rip, who was so obviously using them like chess pieces without the slightest care for their well-being.

Rip, who through staggering incompetence and ruthlessness unaccompanied by cunning, constantly interferes in Len and Mick’s relationship by deliberately separating them and trying to place himself in the middle (he treats Len as a mastermind and Mick as a thug, and he honestly seems to think they would be more effective tools for his plan if they are kept apart - look at how he assigns jobs! It’s only when they volunteer for something that they get a chance to do it together).  

Basically, I devoutly subscribe to the fact that the only way to explain the inconsistency in Len’s priorities (other than bad writing) is that Len is the sort of guy who joins a group project only to get so upset that other people are fucking it up that he jumps in headfirst to try to fix it regardless of how much he cares about said group project in advance. (I am this type of person. It is not fun, because you can’t explain why you’re spending hours and hours on a stupid project that no one else cares about, you know the other students are lazily coasting on your hard work, the teacher’s not going to give you any special benefit for having hand-held everyone else through their sections, but you can’t seem to stop doing it because if you’re going to do something it ought to be done right.) Len defers to Rip because he believes Rip has expertise in the relevant field (time travel), but beyond that he's accidentally falling into the role of the second-in-command that runs everything else.

So Mick correctly identifies it as being all about Rip, not about Sara at all.

This isn’t even from a shipping perspective, tbh. I tend not to ship Captain Canary in my fics because I tend to see them as having clicked as best bros (literally, my reaction after the pilot of LOT was “I think I want them to discover that they’re the only people on board with gaydar, find a queer person in every era to flirt with, and fist-bump afterwards while smirking like morons because they would”) or as a part of Rogue Canary (and I usually headcanon Mick and Sara getting together first because Len is a spikey ice hedgehog who doesn’t trust easy even if he’s attracted to someone, but trusts Mick enough to trust Mick’s judgment that this person is okay to let in), but it’s not like I couldn’t write them - but if I did, it wouldn’t be that Len in season 1 is desperately seeking Sara’s attention and approval. Len’s just not that kind of guy!

Len’s, well, Len’s kind of an asshole. He’s fonder of Sara than he is of anyone else on the ship (excluding Mick, of course), and forced close proximity gets them a lot closer in a lot shorter of a time than he might have expected, but by the end of season 1, I still view them as having gotten not-all-the-way-there, you know? Not even to friendship. From his POV, she’s crew - she gives him loyalty, he returns it, he tries to have her back and support her goals, but if she fucks up, he’s still going to shoot her in the head. When he tries (in Destiny), he stops because he knows she’s right, and because he figures out that he might actually like her in the sense that he likes another human being as a human being and he’s surprised by that. He thought she was just another crew member, albeit a more pleasant one, and it turns out he might even have made a friend. And then of course he dies which BOO, and let’s just not talk about how upset Len would be at Sara’s behavior towards Mick in season 2 okay? There’s a reason I’ve written less and less Rogue Canary stuff despite liking it :(

For example, my reading of the sequence in the gulag where Len encourages Sara not to shoot Stein? Len has accepted his place on this team, on this crew, and for him, being on a crew is bound up in a type of loyalty-among-thieves that he very strongly adheres to. The only way to demand loyalty is to give it - Rip forces him to abandon his partner for the mission, which he hates, but Sara leads the charge to get them back, and Sara gets kudos for that. So when Sara starts being led (by Rip) to abandon her own personal set of ethics and, for that matter, her overarching goal (fixing her bloodlust and accepting herself as a person again), Len does his best to help her using language she understands, i.e. the language of heroism, despite not necessarily subscribing to those ideas about murder himself. He’s got her back, even against her own instincts - just the way he helps Mick against the fire, acting in the way Mick needs him to despite not necessarily understanding what it is that’s driving Mick. Len is, above all else, a very good team player. Thus the impulse to create the Rogues, even if the show never explored it.

If I were to write something of a Captain Canary bent (who knows, might happen one day, though it’s never going to be my OTP like Coldwave is), it would be a continuation of that - Len realizing, very slowly, that Sara is more than crew, that maybe she’s an actual friend, and by friend he means someone he trusts to actually have his own best interests at heart even when she disagrees with him, the way he trusts Mick to throw himself into the line of fire for Len and tell Len to save himself even when Len wants desperately to stay beside him. Once that realization hits him upside the head (which I think it does to a certain degree in Destiny), he would promptly try to fit it into his own narrative - and Len is not a domestic sort of person. I always read the “thinking for the future - for me, for you, for you and me” to be less of an explicitly romantic proposal (which would be creepily early in the relationship, and as someone who got proposed to on the fourth date by my first boyfriend, that is NOT OKAY) but as a classically Len-trying-to-be-smooth-and-somewhat-failing attempt to say, “Uh, you know, you’re pretty cool, would you like to rob banks together with me sometime? I think we’d be pretty cool, doing that, together. Would be fun.”

Because - and I cannot emphasize this enough - my headcanon of Len is as a dumb dork when it comes to actual emotions outside of conning people. See: all of my fics.

The #1 thing that always bothers me about Captain Canary fics is how many of them tend to ditch Mick, which is why I often write Rogue Canary instead - at least if they’re sleeping together, people will understand that you don’t just ditch a friend of 30+ years running for a romantic interest you’ve known less than six months. But I often regularly headcanon Mick and Len as purely platonic because what’s important is their friendship, not whether or not they’re also making out, so it’s possible to have a good Captain Canary ship - just as long as it’s acknowledged that Mick, and Len’s friendship with Mick, continues to have emotional priority for a good bit of time, and the friendship will continue to have at least parity with the romantic relationship indefinitely. And if the romantic relationship is good, and I think that season 1 versions of Len and Sara could have been good again let’s not talk about the butchery season 2 has made of Sara’s character, Sara would acknowledge it and support it, have their backs the way that they have each others, and it’s that impulse that would make her part of their team and capable of a successful relationship with Len.  (The thing that is the worst: she’d have made such a good Rogue!)

Oh, season 1. You had such potential.

[insearchofthemarshhare-blog]

Transcription of the interview with Sister Smeg of the Mythical Penis and Fortune Telling Balls on 19/12/17

TDL: I'm here this afternoon with Sister Smeg of the Mythical Penis and The Fortune Telling Balls, from Canterbury Convent in Dungeness. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy, busy schedule to allow me to interview you. Right sister, do you beleive that art should have the status as other subjects within the convent?

SS: I think art has a primary status within the convent and I think it also depends how you see and how you see it functioning, I kind of think maybe what other things you are looking at and what skills you are building or what subjects you're kind of considering, so where does art stop and where does it begin and what activities are we limiting it to. So, I think in a way like anything that's useful then status is fundamental and it should absolutely be centralised. So personally I find it very difficult not to kind of see it as such.

TDL: Definitely, I mean I think we will, hopefully, delve more into that later but certainly, do you believe that art is more holistic? In that its a tool that is not contained within one remit, that it can be sort of science-based, that it can be language-based, there are quite a few different avenues, I mean every avenue could use art as a means of expression and exploration. 

SS: So almost that sense of what does it not connect with, you know, that kind of sense that art doesn't touch on or look at, then I think if we're thinking that art connects with life which it does, and as a life force, which it is, then in many ways the argument surely is what is do we dislocate it from, deny it from. So, I ask you at any points in the cirroculum that you can identify that art couldn't come into

TDL: that's fantastic, I mean speaking of cirriculums do you find that any government legislations have affected your methods of teaching?

SS: I would promise you that my job is just to ignore and just to continue the fundamental of what happens at the convent is important and should be recognised and should be absolutely central. You know that kind of sense that can be all sorts of policies but we kind of know that not all policies are useful, so I give for example Clause 28, wanted about sexuality in schools, its the kind of sense of how useful this is and I think again that kind of sense of what it did, how it belonged, how it functioned how many people had to not to discuss something. We know that this isn't right

TDL: Certainly, I mean obviously as a self-governing religious body which has traditionally employed very archaic tradtional, wholesome family values, I mean how have you found approaching conversations with sexual narrativies and gender identity, how difficult have you found introducing these conversations within the convent?

SS: A part of life for all of us, one of the ones I draw your attention to is that quite often in comprehensive education these subjects are taught as biology and blogy only so the emotional is stripped away and taken out and the unsual or the odd or the oddity isnt discussed and theres a kind of sense, theres a lack of queer or theres a lack of the other or theres a lack of any experiences that don't fit outside of the impregnation of a woman and the creation of the child. Almost as though that this is the only avenue and then when this is looked at it doesn't have any sense of anything else that happens around that so for instance, I think one the things that i think is central to the convent is the creation of other families or other peer groups, or other recognition of families that aren't necessarily blood relations just in the same way again for all kinds of behaviour I think that there should be that sensibility of life more than biology.

TDL: I mean that's incredibly exciting, it runs at discourse with traditional Catholic, certainly christian educational legislation. I mean, obviously this method of identity through encouragement of normalising traditionalised minorities, do you find that art is a tool which sort of helps children both express and understand traditional normative behaviours, reinterpreting them for contemporary social interaction. Do you believe that art could help these students become a lot more knowldegeable and obviously, do you think that could permeate through society outside of the convent?

SS: Of course, because art tells stories of the body, of bodily experience, of desire and you know, the kind of desires that happen with Apollo and Daphne when Apollos pusuing Daphne and she pauses and she realises whats going to happen and has that moment of realisation that she doesn't desire him, praise the gods, and then is turned into a tree. Those transformations are important and then his desire becomes about almost taking one of the branches and fashioning a flute, so you kind of think desire can be a ridiculous thing but at the same time you kind of think that at the same time this sense of who we are only becomes complicated when we're not allowed to know ourselves or understand ourselves or understand that in many ways that this narrative that we're given of our lives and of what love would be and what companionship or friendship would be, they are taught in ways that are very very reductive and you think that surely that this is what art does, art opens things up, art isnt a straight line that just talks about marriage and babies as the only expression.

TDL: Tradtionally, I know a lot of educational bodies found it very difficult to accept children - young student's as sexual beings and this behaviour if not potentially repressive, there was a lack of emotional support of gender and sexual identity, a lot of focus was based mainly - as you say - on biology. What means or techniques do you employ if your teaching to allow students to explore their own identity and sexuality through potentially art? Is there a method that you employ? 

SS: That method is to get to the core of that person and to get to the core of who they are and what they do and what they are about and that is as unusual to one person as it is to another it doesn't get duplicated, it doesn't duplicate itself. I think again that kind of sense of what it is that somebody wants or what somebody expresses, people can express things that can be (inaudible) but at the same time problematic and terrifying, can be the things that liberate them. So there's things that they then kind of create, that are impossible or seem to be the absolute antithesis, are quite often the things that rescue them. So this kind of sense of what, where the positives and negatives lie, I think that art brings in a level of complexity can deal with this, that kind of goes beyond merely of what your body does as to what a body feels and what a body experiences or how a body lives. These things are informative.

TDL: Certainly, now what a body wants, definitely. I mean, up until very recently the covent had taught only female students, with the introduction of males students in 2010, has that changed their educational enviromnent at all, has that meant that certain teaching techniques were changed?

SS: I suppose what happened with the introduction of male students into the convent are the conversatsions that would've been abstract had suddenly become grounded and thats a really interesting thing that we're not purely talking about ideas we're talking about phsyicality and different physicalities. and I think that has bought in a really new dynamic to the convent which is exciting and which surely should be looked at further.

TDL: That's fantatistic, as an educator and practioner what do you believe your role is, especially in regards to teaching the students?

SS: My role is in many ways to be invisible, is in many ways to be a gravitational field, its to start to pull things together, to kind of enable people to look at things trhough a different lens to kind of consider to where they place themselves, how they experience things so in many ways you become a mirror, you become a sounding board, you become a hammer, you become a tool, you become all kinds of things, quite often you become not quite human, you can become the most terrifying thing in the world to somebody. You can become that point of absolute and utter authority and then at the same time you can totally refute that within every element of your being which is a really important structure, so I'd argue that point of teaching is to create a situation in which something magic can happen without the really base notion of what that is, the literal, but to actually look at the point where the impossible starts to shift into focus, so something that can't take place can take place, or something that hasn't been thought of actually starts forming itself. And I think that this is the thing that I raise quite often with teaching espeically teaching in relation to the body is quite often, you can see something very clearly but the objectivity that somebody else cant see themselves and I often think that that is an aspect of teaching that is really fascinating to us.

TDL: So when you say that you hold up a mirror do you mean that these sessions of learning are primarily student-led? So it's discovery, it's self-discovery for the students by using you as tools to aid that journey?

SS: Totally, I'm not different from rulers, pencils or anything else that happens, I think that this is the thing that education - I think for want of a better term - some kind of wonderful vanity project for the people who educate, actually about being useful for the people that are being educated, quite often that strips away this notion that it's about yourself and it starts to posit it as what's the potential for the person thats studying where are they going to go? That's more exciting as and educator you already know where you're going or you hope you know where you're going, totally.

TDL: I agree with you, I was lucky enough to interview a couple of the other sisters and they certainly were egocentric and it was certainly a very very different methodology of teaching. One of the sisters employed the "slippery" method where she was quite keen to slide out of sticky situations and the other sister employed the "silent" method which she beleived in abstinence and the absence of talking, is there a word or a term or perhaps even an influence that could succintly summon your methods of teaching?

SS: I infer the methods of teaching that I've got, very stupid term, but almost infered to cosmos in that you start to think of galactic connections between loads of possibilities, things, areas of connection, ways of for instance, whats the relationship between some planet that we haven't even thought of Jupiter and how do these things even pull together? That notion of what knowledge is and how knowldege constitutes itself, it's about bringing things, mapping things, looking at things. So for me, that becomes a really intriguing thing.

TDL: So sister, would you be happy for us to call it in the Cosmos pedagogy, methodology?

SS: Yes do, please do, this is perfect.

TDL: Thank you so much, I suppose I have one more question really and that would be do you think that the exploration of sexuality through art can support the deconstruction of traditional knowledge bases of gender roles and sexual indentity?

SS: Of course, and I think if it doesn't it weakens us all and that I think that we don't allow that space that's about imagination to be about imagination than we're failing our subject. I think we do something apalling if we can't enable people to look at every aspect of their life, every aspect of their experience and really take that on as an adult and thoroughly look at it and engage it with the world, and I think that there is so much pertaining to the body that we are ashamed of, we're embarassed or we can't imagine it or we can't imagine ourselves, that kind of sense, you know, we're reduced to bodies that seemingly just are made to connect with other bodies and their far bigger stories. The stories that are far more unexpected and I think this is the thing that our job is to encourage this and ecourage more thought, more expereince, so literally people should, they need to embark on their own journey, we need to be waving them off at the station as they depart.

TDL: Well sister Smeg that's fantastic, thank you so so much, so paving the way for future generations and you're doing correctly and hopefully we'll be waving them off at Dungeness platform and sending them off to the future to change the world.

SS: Braver, and bolder and more capable and less afriad and that's what we need to teach.

TDL: Something we could all ruminate on I think, definitely, sister smeg thank you so much for your time, it's been an absolute pleasure

SS: Thank you.

[lessthanhappyy]

I want to be critical.

Of myself and of others. When something is easy for me, I want to question why. I want to know if it’s because I’m in a safe and inclusive space or if it’s because of privilege. I want to know if it’s a mixture of both. When something is hard for me, or goes wrong at literally every single point possible – and the points I didn’t even know it was possible for it to go wrong at – I want to question why. I want to know if it’s because I am a marginalized and oppressed person, or if genuine mistakes were made. I want to know if it’s because of both of those reasons. I want to question the rules and regulations set up for that place and system. Who made them, why did they make them; who are we keeping out with those rules and regulations, who are we making it easier to take up space with those rules and regulations. Being critical is not a bad thing. Being critical of a movement, of a people, of a moment, of a restriction, or of a suggestion, is not a bad thing. Pointing out where movements have failed is not a bad thing. It’s important. It’s revolutionary. It’s making the points that have been pushed aside and fallen through the cracks – through lack of privilege, through oppression, through disbelief that that person or persons could have an important point – be noticed again. Without being critical we don’t notice those voices. Without being critical, people are made to believe that their narrative is the narrative. I want to be critical of that belief. If you ever feel like you have the narrative of a movement, a people, a moment, a restriction, or a suggestion, I would like to suggest, that you are probably wrong. Have somebody else define it for you.

When I am exploring community, I want to be able to say, this space, this thing, this rule, has done something against me and my people, and I want that to be met on its own merits. I want people to see that and ask, then how do we move forward. And if the answer is, I don’t know, then let’s ask somebody else. In response, I aim to respond to critiques of myself and my people with the same behavior. How do I fix this? How do we move forward? Who else can I ask? Where can I educate myself about this? Believe me, I have had problematic beliefs through the years, and I definitely still have some. You don’t get to grow up white without having privilege that will last you forever. You don’t get to grow up in a heteronormative, cisnormative, sex obsessed, purity obsessed, racist, xenophobic society without having lasting beliefs that stretch on for significantly longer than you’d think, unnoticed by yourself. I know gay people that call out their own homophobia, trans people that call out their own transphobia, and people of colour that call out their own racism. If you are cis, straight, and/or white (especially if you are then also Christian, stereotypically attractive, able, not fat, and others I can’t think of to list right now) you need to call out your shit too. You are not exempt from that. I am not exempt from that.

Being critical of a community is being able to say that feminists question my gender and my sex and my sexuality, and saying that’s not okay, how do we move forward from there, but also recognizing that I read an article by a black women who was explaining why she’s a womanist and not a feminist, and the entirety of the comments are feminists attacking her, because how dare she experience discomfort in a space that has historically been designed by and for white women. How do we move forward from that as feminists. The answer, by the way, is not to disown the feminists in those comments. Ignoring a problem is not solving a problem.

Being critical of a community is being able to say that trans spaces often don’t uplift a spectrum of trans voices, and that this can make trans folk feel not trans enough, that this can make cis folk question the voices of trans folk who aren’t the uplifted voices, and that’s not okay, how do we move forward from there, but also recognizing that every trans group or space I’ve been a part of in person or on the internet is uncomfortably white. How do we move forward from here? How do we solve these problems?

I want us to be critical.

It’s not a bad thing. It’s important. It helps us move forward. We need to move forward, and that happens with open critique. That happens through spaces cultivated for discussion and conversation, where people have the time and space to be called out, step back, and question, what am I doing? How can I make it better? More inclusive? And then turn back to the people who said, hey, this is problematic, and say, can you help me make it less problematic? Or at the least, can you point me to somewhere where I can find others to make it less problematic?

Listen to the voices of those who have critiques. They coincide with marginalized and oppressed voices all of the time. Listen to these people. Listen.

Be critical, and take it in if somebody is critiquing you or something that you think is good. Privilege blinds us all of the time, and chances are, if somebody is saying check your privilege, and you don’t understand, that’s why. Cis people aren’t bad – but they have systematically been taught that their gender and bodies are correct. Straight people aren’t bad – but they have systematically been taught that their love and sex and relationships are better and cleaner and less dangerous. White people aren’t bad – but we have been systematically taught we are better, deserve more, and are more logical because of the colour our skin. You don’t unlearn these beliefs by deciding they’re untrue: you unlearn them by deciding they’re untrue, learning how these beliefs influence behavior and opportunities, recognize you will never fully unlearn them, and then you question everything. If something is easy for you, ask why. Look at statistics. Look at personal testimonies. Look at your friends who aren’t cis and/or straight and/or white. Is it easy for them too? If something is hard for you ask why. Is it because this space was designed for trans people? Is it because black people have their own language (AAVE) and you’re falling through the meaning of their words that are meant for them and not you? Maybe it’s because you’re mentally ill, and the space is designed for neurotypical folk. Question everything. Be critical.

I need us to be critical. So that people can learn how to respond gracefully and respectfully and with an acknowledgment of their privilege when called out. I need us to be critical so that we can make inclusive movements and spaces and protests. I need us to be critical so that critique becomes a part of our experience and isn’t thought of as a bad thing. I need us to be critical, because I need spaces to support my people, and my friends people, and my partners people, and we cannot get there without being critical. We cannot get there without recognizing that we got from point A to point E on the backs of black folk, people of colour, trans folk, queer folk, and other marginalized voices and have then systematically ignored and not taught about those pieces of our history.

So go be critical of yourself; and if a marginalized person calls you out, listen, because there’s a reason that they’re raising their voice louder than a whisper, and there’s a reason why you’ve still interpreted it as a shouting match.

     - Arctic