#good for them both a little homoeroticism never hurt anyone

[ickypuppi3]

say what you want but billy and steve have canonically seen each other’s dicks so who’s really winning at the end of the day

[variousqueerthings]

Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part Three of Three

(another massive, massive thank you to @mimsyaf​ )

part 1

part 2

8. Queerness and femininity and masculinity and the colour red and *record breaks*

If we spin the record aaalll the way back to this paragraph: “…looking at what it is girls and women in fairytales have/don’t have, what they want, and how they’re going to get it. It’s about power (lack of), sexuality (repressed, then liberated), and men.” Reading Daniel as a repressed, bisexual boy in a society that doesn’t accept his desires it’s interesting looking at how he moves through the world of the Miyagi-verse, at how threatened other men are by him, at how obsessed they are with him.

He’s out in the symbolic woods and these large boys and men see him and decide for whatever plot reasons to come for him. And they are large and violent and attractive and apart from Johnny again, they don’t have the nebulous excuse of fighting over a girl and even that excuse dies by around the midpoint when Johnny kisses Ali just to get a rise out of Daniel. He’s not trying to “win her back,” he’s not even really looking at her. He’s just trying to get a reaction. They don’t have any of the fighters in Rocky’s excuse either of Daniel being a macho opponent. 

You can read whatever subtext into TKK1 and TKK2 (which becomes especially tempting once CK confirmed that the guys he fought at seventeen have been thinking about him ever since – for thirty-five years), but TKK3 is where it’s really At in terms of obsession and lust and forbidden desires.

Silver is presented as both a handsome prince who saves Daniel and mentors him (where Miyagi is undoubtedly cast in a fatherhood role) and later on becomes twisted into a dark secret that Daniel has to keep, while he turns that thing that Daniel loves (karate, it’s… it’s karate… it’s also men, but it’s definitely karate, because karate makes him feel… things...) into an abusive, violent version of itself.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

But he’s also offering him something liberating. Whatever is going on in that nightclub scene is about something other than breaking Daniel down. Even the bloodied knuckles aren’t just about revenge. It’s about giving him something that he isn’t, in the end, willing to receive, at least not from Silver. In that roundabout, strange way of these feminine fairytales, it’s exploring hidden desires through the metaphor of karate.

Daniel wears red because it’s his colour. In the movies he wears red a lot. Often in scenes with violence in them (the beach/the hilltop in TKK1 and the date/the destruction of the dojo/the final fight in TKK2), but he also has a variety of shirts (and in TKK3 pants) that pop up all the way through the narrative. He wears a red jacket when he accepts Terry’s training, when he punches a guy in the face, and when he tries to get out of the training again (as badly as that goes).

Did anyone consciously think about red’s link to desire, obsession, and violence when they made these? Eh. But is it there symbolically? When he meets Johnny, when he fights Chozen, when he’s in emotionally fraught situations with Terry? Hell yeah.

Probably the most lust-and-violence infused red is that aforementioned punching-board-until-knuckles-bleed bit – not that I thought Terry was going to pull him in for a kiss, because I knew, logically, of course he wouldn’t right? There’s no way… is there? Or later on when Daniel punches that guy and ends up with blood all over his shirt and Terry once more grasps him, euphorically. Blood is violence. Blood is also desire. Red is Daniel’s colour, even though he doesn’t acknowledge it come Cobra Kai. (Maybe he just needs someone else - cough Johnny Lawrence cough - to inspire it in him again).

Daniel LaRusso’s narrative is exploring that most feminine of fairytale tropes: To want and be wanted by monsters and having to hide those desires.

“Maybe this time that strange churning in my stomach that feels like a mix of anticipation and fear will turn out good for me.” - Daniel’s mind.

At the end of the story, Daniel saves himself, with all of the strange mixed narratives around it, and the acknowledgement that the end of The Karate Kid Part Three isn’t satisfying and its aftermath will likely be delved into in the next season of Cobra Kai.

Nevertheless, he saves himself. Not from Silver or Kreese or Barnes, and not entirely, but he makes a decision not to give in to fear (and he continues to try and live by that decision, making it over and over again for the next thirty-five years, even when the return of Cobra Kai makes that difficult for him). 

He doesn’t do it by being the strongest in the land or even through a lucky shot (although that too). He does it by refusing to be like the male antagonists that surround him, by telling them they have no power over him. The narrative isn’t just his getting lost in the forest and all the monsters he finds there, it’s about how he redefines power for himself within that forest. 

He’s a man who isn’t violent, whose victories include helping out a girl whose ex-boyfriend just broke her radio, successfully doing the moves to a cultural dance he’s trying to learn, sitting with his father figure while he cries over the death of his own father, telling a girl that she’s just made her first friend, and breathing a sigh of relief that a tree that got broken has healed. 

Daniel LaRusso is a good boy is the point!

Karate is a metaphor. It can turn into many things: A series of lessons learned about how to be his own man and take care of his own house, a respect for the history of the father teaching him and sharing his home and story with him, fear, desire, masculinity (and the different forms that can take). 

When a tall, handsome stranger offers to teach him karate in the dark, without Daniel’s caretaker knowing how to help him, and twists that karate into something that hurts him - when he reclaims that, over and over, that means something too. 

This man is fine and definitely isn’t carrying the weight of buried karate-based queer trauma - could a traumatised man do this? *stares blankly at a former tormentor as blood runs down his forehead*

9. In Conclusion Daniel Has Kissed Dudes… Symbolically… But We Can HC Literally:

So there’s Daniel and his coded feminine fairytale narrative. It’s all a series of fun coincidences.

1. Ralph Macchio is just Like That

2. Red. All the red. 

3. large portion of his storyline is about lack of power. Yes, he regains that power by the end of the first and second movie through A Fight, but generally he is framed as powerless opposite these almost monstrously physically powerful boys/men. And in the third one it’s barely even about physical prowess (he’d still lose a real fight against Barnes or Silver) and more about regaining lost autonomy off the back of a manipulative, abusive relationship with an older guy.

4. The third movie in particular is narratively a mess, but if reimagined as a fairytale makes a lot of sense (because it’s secretly all about how karate is bisexuality and Daniel gets manipulated through that desire to be better at karate).

5. Queerness and femininity and themes about hidden desires that can only be approached sideways through couching those desires in symbolism: Handshake meme.

6. The fact that the more I think about it, the more feral I am for a Labyrinth AU.

7. To sum up over 5000 words of text: The inherent homoeroticism of wanting to be slammed against a locker by a bully, but extended over three movies and ever-more inventive ways of hurting pretty-boy-Daniel-LaRusso.

Johnny’s not going to be happy when he realises Daniel’s got other ex-rivals buried in his closet...

10. Some Other Stuff Aka The Laziest Referencing I’ll Ever Do

Further reading on trans Matrix

Further reading on masculinity and rape narrative in The Rape Of James Bond

Youtube Video from Pop Culture Detective (Sexual Assault Of Men Played For Laughs)

Some film/TV references in this: Dracula (Coppola), Princess Bride, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Labyrinth, The Matrix, Rocky, Princess And The Frog, Cinderella, Enchanted, Shape Of Water, Swamp Thing, Phantom of the Opera 

Some fairytale references: Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Wolf And The Seven Little Kids, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Company of Wolves (Angela Carter), Through the Looking Glass, Princess Bride

Also referenced is Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel and the subsequent musical Funhome. Further thoughts on this by @thehours2002​ and @jenpsaki​:

https://thehours2002.tumblr.com/post/650033577171533824/daniel-larusso-and-fun-home-click-to-enlarge

https://jenpsaki.tumblr.com/post/650530225997971456/cobra-kai-fun-home-inspired-by-goldstargirls

My list of Cobra Kai meta posts

I wanted to delve into fairytale movies more, but then I was like “fuck, I have actual work to do,” but I was interested in the ways male and female characters are written in these stories:

The Last Unicorn, The Never-Ending Story, The Dark Crystal, Legend, and Stardust.

The Last Unicorn is an interesting one because she’s not really human, until she is. It’s more like The Little Mermaid (the fairytale, not the Disney film) in tone, and of course there’s a pretty substantiated rumour that Andersen wrote that one as a metaphor for falling in love with another man (who eventually got married). 

Andersen in general is just fun to analyse as someone who popularized so many fairytales and exists as an ambiguously queer historical figure – might’ve been modern-day gay, bi, ace, but we’re just not sure. All your favourite fairytales can be read through the lens of queer loneliness and ostracization. Just like horror.

Anyway I didn’t go into the whole Little-Mermaid-Last-Unicorn transformation bit so much as the Monstrous-Desires bit, but I think there could be something to that too, with monsters representing otherhood and all. Stardust is a kinda-almost-this, except she sticks to her human form and all is okey-dokey by the end, she’s allowed to marry the handsome man and be a star.

The Never-Ending Story has Atreyu and Bastian and because of a lack of female characters, an interesting bond between the two of them, but mainly Atreyu is absolutely a go-gettem Hero Type and it’s just interesting to see how Bastian relates to him as both an audience insert, but also eventually as his own character in that world.

The Dark Crystal contains certain… androgynous elements of feminine and masculine coded characteristics in the main character because of how he’s not human, but also they do have a “female” version of his species that he needs to go save (and bring back to life) by the end, so in a way it’s both more and less heteronormative in its characters.

Legend sees another example of a monster (literally called Darkness and looking like a traditional devil) trying to seduce a princess through promises of power, and she “goes along with it” in order to trick him and succeeds in that trick, but is ultimately saved by the male lead. 

In conclusion: I don’t even have Shrek in this.

[scintillating-galaxias]

the inherent homoeroticism of the training room floor

some driftrod kissing in the middle of sword fighting practice, just ‘cause

(read it here on ao3!)

-

Today, they’re practicing sword versus no-sword combat. Rodimus feels it’s obsolete because sword should win every time. He tells Drift as much; Drift just smirks at him, and proceeds to hand him his aft in three seconds flat.

Now they circle each other, Rodimus with a casualty Ultra Magnus would deem sloppy, but he called disarming, and Drift with well-practiced poise. Optics alert, legs perfectly spaced, servos curled, ready to catch anything Rodimus may throw at him.

Catch… Hm. Now that was an idea.

Rodimus grins and throws the sword to the side, leaving Drift with just barely a second to look confused before Rodimus is launching himself at him. Drift shouts and tries to sidestep out of the way, but Rodimus snags him by the arm at the last second, and they both go tumbling across the floor in a complete mess of limbs and curses. When Rodimus feels them losing momentum, he waits until the last second to heave his whole mass one last time. When they finally come to a stop, Rodimus is atop Drift with one servo splayed on the ground just next to his head, and his forearm pressed down against the softer cables of his throat.

He’s missed this so much.

“I dunno about you,” Rodimus says with a smug cocking of his helm, “but this feels like winning to me.”

Drift rolls his optics. “If you can win a sword fight without using a sword… Sure. But you really shouldn’t do that again. I’m serious, Rodimus,” he said firmly when Rodimus cocked a smug smile at him. “You’re lucky I didn’t have any weapon to try to block you with. I could have really hurt you if I did. If I had a sword, you would able to stop yourself from flying into it. If I had a gun, I could have shot you. Your future opponents won’t be so kind.”

“Worked on you, didn’t it?” Rodimus grinned. “That means it’s guaranteed to work on anyone else.”

“I feel like that may be an abuse of logic.”

“How about this then? I think it means I’m just that good.”

“How would you know?”

“Ouch. Lose a life.”

“You’ve used that line before.”

“Originality is a sham, Drift.”

That gets a quiet chuckle out of Drift, which makes Rodimus huff a laugh that gets a little caught somewhere in his intake and comes out as a bizarre snrk sound.

Drift sputters. “What was that?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t even know I could make that noise!” Rodimus exclaims.

“Can you do it again?”

“I dunno, wait, wait, hold on—Primus it was like, I think… Nope, that’s not it. I got my intake to close up a bit near the back of my glossa? I can’t do it now—”

“Like this—?”

Drift replicates the noise perfectly, but he seems to realize partway through it how absolutely ridiculous it is to be pinned on the ground by his best friend while making stupid noises at him because he bursts out into laughter. That sets them both off, and then they can’t quite seem to stop. It’s like the fact that they can still giggle themselves strutless despite everything this universe has each done to them is in and of itself hilarious.

“This is dumb,” Rodimus wheezes.

“I know, I know,” Drift gasps out, glowing drops of fluid glimmering in the corners of his optics. Rodimus really likes Drift’s laugh. He really likes Drift’s laugh. It’s a rarity, and so soft most of the time, like he isn’t quite sure he’s doing it right, and it brings a probably weird amount of joy to Rodimus to be graced with hearing it.

Their helms are just inches apart when they finally collect themselves, their attempt at calming down broken up by bouts of snickering. A sweet, light joy bubbles through Rodimus that has him grinning uncertainly at Drift as their optics meet. They’ve been close before, but never like this. Never where Rodimus’ exhaust pipes bracket Drift’s helm. Never where Drift’s servo hovers hesitantly over Rodimus’ abdominal plating. Never where they can each feel the press of a question with every unsteady in-and-exvent.

I could kiss him. He could. And it should alarm Rodimus how much he suddenly wants to kiss Drift just a touch more. But what actually alarms him is how little alarm he feels. And then he realizes that he absolutely shouldn’t be considering this at all. He thinks, I should move, and he does not. I need to move, he tries again, and still, he does not. Neither does Drift. The moment to brush aside the awkwardness comes and goes once, and then twice. It shifts into something else entirely when Drift’s optics flash as Rodimus’ gaze slips downward.

“I wan—”

“Can you—”

They stop at the same time, then try speaking at the same time. And they laugh again, more a rush of warm air through their vents that mingles and disperses as a single breath across their faceplates than an actual laugh.

“You first,” Drift says quickly.

Rodimus swipes his glossa along his bottom lip. He’s almost painfully aware of the soft, slight trembling of Drift’s chassis beneath his servos, every slight shift in his frame when he tilts his helm at Rodimus.

“I was gonna say.” He stops. He couldn’t really be thinking of actually saying it, was he? Should he? Every ounce of logic in him says no, absolutely not, what the Pit are you thinking, do you want to ruin everything again? but a keen spark behind Drift’s optics says yes. “I was gonna say,” he tries again with too much honesty rasping his voice, “I think I wanna kiss you.”

Drift’s lips part further, probably definitely to ask just what kind of rust had spread to Rodimus’ processor, or to demand him to get the hell off of him. Either way, it really shouldn’t make Rodimus want to kiss him more.

But then nothing comes out. Drift just stares at Rodimus with this—this completely dumbfounded look, like he needs to replay his audio feeds to confirm, and then re-confirm the nonsense Rodimus had just spewed at him. Why isn’t he saying anything? Drift always knew what to say. Primus, Rodimus must have royally fragged it if he’s struck Drift speechless. He should apologize. Or laugh and go, Kidding! Unless Drift actually said yes, in which case, he totally wasn’t, and scrap, he actually really, really wants to kiss Drift right now.

“What about you?” he blurts, because he is an idiot who just told his best friend he wants to kiss him. With a sharp intake, Rodimus moves to scramble off of Drift, but a strong servo shoots out and holds him firm. Rodimus stares at Drift, spoilers twitching, in-vents coming pressed and quick, optics roving wildly for any sign to tell him that this is another irreparable mistake. A tension in Drift’s neck struts, an uncomfortable flick of his audial fins, a stiffness to his jaw. But there’s nothing, nothing but fondness and reassurance and a smile warm with understanding.

Drift tightens his grip.

“Actually,” he says softly, “I was going to ask if you would kiss me.”

Oh.

“Oh,” Rodimus says dumbly. “I—Hahhh, no! I mean—” he backtracks clumsily when Drift’s eager face falls, and that spark in his optics had been hope, Rodimus simply hadn’t realized it for what it was until it was gone. God, shit, was this actually happening? “I mean, yes! Yes, I—Scrap, I wanna, and I was gonna, kiss you, but uh, I didn’t wanna do it if you didn’t want me to, ’cause that’s a scrap thing to do, but I still kinda really want to? No, slaggit, I do, I do want to—”

Drift’s smile, which had steadily returned and grew as Rodimus rambled, quirks in a fondly annoyed way. Rodimus stammers to a stop when Drift suddenly hauls him in until their faces, their lips, are just a breath apart.

“I want you to, too,” he says simply.

“Frag,” Rodimus whispers. “Seriously?”

“Have you ever known me to joke?”

“Okay, that is the biggest load of scrap I’ve ever heard. Remind me again who it was that—”

“Rodimus,” Drift says, and oh, didn’t that teasing lilt to Rodimus’ name sound like a, please?

“Frag,” Rodimus says again, and they finally crash together. Right away, Drift sighs, his mouth opening just the slightest, but Rodimus doesn’t try to push it. He’s too enthralled by how Drift’s lips are so smooth and cool beneath his. They’re addictively soft, and he can’t help tilting his helm a little bit to sink closer into that comfort. That small action sends a flare of hot yes-good-this-is-right through his whole frame, and he groans as it rushes over him. Drift hums in return and finally cups his servos to Rodimus’ sides, and it feels… The right word can’t quite make it through the giddy buzz scrambling his thoughts. All Rodimus knows is that if the frighteningly powerful bolt of more that shoots through him is when Drift presses closer actually means anything, it must be something synonymous with pretty damn amazing.

They eventually somehow manage to sit up without breaking the kiss. Rodimus is hyper-aware of every instance of where they touch, the scrape of their armor, the heat it brings, the prickle it leaves. Drift does something with this mouth that Rodimus can’t pinpoint, but it fires off a thrill that goes straight to his spark and leaves him hastily shooing away the warnings for his cooling fans to flick on. It’s a kiss he berates himself—admittedly a damn good one, but nothing should be getting him this excited. Maybe it’s just a symptom of kissing Drift specifically.

Rodimus shifts his legs to instead be on either side of Drift’s hips, effectively straddling him. He can arrange their chest plates better this way so he can make their kiss deeper. Really, it’s innocent! Mostly! But the second the thought occurs of what were to happen if he were to move down a few inches, if he were to slide their closed arrays over each other, he realizes how easy it is to turn this into something he’d never forgive himself for if he ruined it.

Reluctantly, Rodimus moves away with a faintly wet noise. He doesn’t go far; his lips still graze Drift’s with every quiet in and exvent. He isn’t sure how to proceed from this sparking stillness that’s settled between them. Given how Drift tilts his forehead forward to lean on Rodimus’ cheek and simply sighs, he doesn’t know, either. Part of Rodimus wants to back away and ask what in the Pit they’re doing. The other half is dangerously attracted to the faint sheen on Drift’s lip and wants to tackle him into the floor again.

He does neither because Drift ends up beating him to the punch anyway.

“Alright?” he murmurs, his optics a hooded, glimmering blue.

Rodimus can’t help it: he laughs again. “Alright?” he rasps incredulously. “I am—so-hoh alright right now. I’ve literally never been more alright in my whole functioning. Uh.” A blush decides right now is the appropriate time to show up. “A-and what about you? You alright?”

Drift grins. He’s got a beautiful smile. It’s so big and bright, and he somehow does it with his whole frame like it can’t be contained just within his face. His audial fins flick up and twitch a little bit, his optics shine, his chest piece swells a little bit. It’s incredible, and Rodimus is a little stunned at how late he is to realize how much he loves it, how much he loves—

“I’ve never been better.”

Rodimus sighs and ducks his head into the junction between Drift’s neck and shoulder. “What about us?” he murmurs. “Are we alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

“...I can’t believe we did that on the training room floor.”

“I know.”

“Wanna do it again?”

“God, yes.”

[platoapproved]

okay you know what, you know what, the day has come, i woke up about 10 seconds ago and i guess i dreamt about a past life where i worked in a sodium factory because i am feeling salty and it’s time for me to talk about all the stuff i hated about wonder woman. if you’re not feeling that, please don’t click below

i get how badly people want canon bi representation but this movie was so not it. this movie wasn’t CLOSE to it.  diana was not shown having any sort of relationship with any kind of emotional depth much less equality with any other woman on themyscira. they all saw her as like, a beloved little niece, basically.  she barely interacted with anyone apart from her mother and aunt, for more than a line or two.

diana had no woman friends the whole movie

i’ve definitely seen (and not read, you better believe i scrolled on by with a scoff) people talking about the diversity of amazons on themyscira but like. giving diana a black nanny who goes running after her to show us what a mischievous scamp she is as a kid? that’s not progressive. having one of the only other black women be an unnamed warrior she fights against, whose only traits are that she’s the Silent Strong Unfeminine Bruiser Tank Lady? and we know that diana has become a true warrior when she can best The Butch One? super... just super DUPER not progressive.

having etta candy be this frumpy, fussy, ineffective suffragette whose only real function is to be exasperated by steve but also love him as a boss? and by extension make non-themysciran women look like silly side characters in the history of the world? ugh.

i saw a different post talking about how badass it was that etta noticed the spies first or something blah blah like. honestly. stop trying so hard. please stop trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse y’all. she was supposed to be the Funny Loyal Fat Side Character who gets a few chuckles out of the audience but has no depth whatsoever.

the entire film erases the efforts of women before and after wwi, both around combat, in government, socially, everything. like every time i think about the fact that diana doesn’t speak to another woman for 95% of the last half of the movie, and these board room dudes act like they’ve never heard of a woman ever DOING anything in their lives, i get hives and want to reread the section of the well of loneliness about women ambulance drivers in wwi. and also to have a shower.

women have ALWAYS been instrumental in their own liberation.

stop making jokes about victorian/edwardian dress being restrictive as if it’s the height of feminism. the history of women and their clothing and how it was liberating and repressive is so much more complex than a stupid joke about her tearing a dress.

like, as if there weren’t plenty of women by wwi who were dressing in “men’s” clothing, and changing the fashions as they saw fit

literally everything about dr. poison like, it’s such an UGLY portrait of so many things

making a women scientist seem Evil and unnatural

associating her disability with her desire to hurt people

making it seem like disabled women hate non-disabled women for being Pretty and Desirable, don’t act like that scene with Steve was meant to be anything other than “see, she’s really just pathetic and jealous because no man has ever wanted to kiss her, look at her”

she was nothing more than a pawn in the end. someone who was easy to manipulate because she was An Ugly Woman

stop saying the movie subverted the born sexy yesterday trope. stop it. every single one of you knows it was 100% that, and nothing but that.  diana talking with naive confidence about how she has read ye olde themysciran porn doesn’t undo that. in fact it only contributes to it because it’s setting her up as someone who knows about sex in ~theory but not ~practice

them giving the Racist Stereotype Side Characters one token line each that humanizes them does not make them fully fleshed out characters. stop talking about Drunk Loud Scottish dude as great representation of PTSD. stop applauding the line about wanting to be an actor but being the wrong color in a movie that is so. so. so white.

one line vaguely referencing white people’s horrific genocide against native americans, one that never comes back and has no repercussions on the story, is just not good enough. also, not gonna mention slavery or anything? not even a bit? ok.

also stop saying the movie subverted the male gaze, you guys saw diana’s outfit. i saw so much of gal gadot’s thighs. and i’m gay, my dudes, i was into it. i loved it. but it’s not like this movie didn’t objectify women. you know that it did. stop trying to make it not what it is.

also, stop saying the scene with steve was only ~the female gaze. i have less ground to stand on for this one because not an atom of my body has ever or will ever find anything about chris pine desirable but that scene was played in a way that would be appealing to certain men

ohhhh it’s a naive beautiful woman gazing at his penis and she’s ~never seen one before, and he just lets her look, like you know there are creep-ass dudes who were into that, and it was ultimately just one scene and he was fully modestly clothed the whole rest of the movie.

looovvveee is the only remedy against waaaaaarrrrrr someone fucking kill me.

i mean i’m a sap but “the answer was love all along” isn’t really a conclusion that flies for me in a movie dealing with a nonfictional war that happened for complicated economic political and social reasons involving nationalism and capitalist greed and all kind of shit, lots of actual people actually died, its’ not like OH NO WHY DIDN’T ONE OF THEM REMEMBER TO LOVE????

david thewlisface ares? stupid.  like using him in that flashback? not a good call.

those glasses steve got diana were so fucking LAUGHABLY not time period accurate like he just got those from warby parker a week ago it’s supposed to be 1918 or whenever the fuck at least try a goddamn little bit

diana’s costume should have been more colorful and the texture of her armor was weird and looked bad

i don’t know a whole lot about wonder woman but it’s 10000% rather go back and rewatch that two-parter from justice league where diana becomes Gal Pals with that princess who is about to marry vandal savage and has to rescue her, that was better in almost every conceivable way than this film

“maid of honor” season 2 look it up just sayin it’s on netflix

i’m really glad a lot of you found a lot of things to love and be happy about in this movie but honestly it’s exhausting seeing people on tumblr contorting themselves to talk about how it’s A Revolution, Never has there been Anything Like This About a Woman when yes, there has, and done better

love the movie if you want! i enjoyed it a lot! i saw it twice

but stop acting like part of the process of loving it is to say that it is diverse, or progressive, or any of this shit that it’s so. not. 

this article is great go read it. i don’t agree with ALL the points necessarily but damn. good and brutal.

please, like i’m begging you please. just go watch xena. shhhh. shhhh i know. the foley is cheesy the production values are really low on the first few seasons and yes it’s not like xena never fucks up on race stuff because hoooo boy. but like. xena is 7 seasons of a woman warrior kicking ass in a vaguely ancient greco-roman world, and it has 10000% more interaction BETWEEN women, and women who are campy villains not just because of disabilities, and there’s so much homoeroticism and heart and badass flipping and it’s just. it’s so good.

it will heal your heart. it will make you realize you deserve much much much much more than the crumbs that wonder woman gave you. go watch xena instead.