#i also have this problem with the term gaslight so basically: i hate discourses made by people who don't know what they're talking about

[icharchivist]

Your reblog reminded me of the time years ago (2018? 2019?) when I saw someone on twitter say that lancelot/vane was queerbait and I just stared at my screen like that tails meme because I couldn't believe what I was reading

Oh my goddddd

i'm so tired i swear i'm so tired of those things oh my god. oh my gooooood.

I've seen legit Queerbaitings, like, the ones that are from Markettings to the audience fooling us into watching straight shit. It's its own very nasty thing that is different from ship tease and i wish people would understand that.

I especially hate when this framing is attributed to mobage of the type of granblue because it's usually down to the DNA of the game that they're doing that. They usually can't exactly confirm stuff (unless they have to make a big story around it) because they use it also to "tease" self insert shipping with those characters.

They're trying to appeal to demographic that cares about shipping other characters together AND those who ship themselves with the characters in question.

As such i find it especially to be a bad faith critic to call it queerbaiting. Whenever you find this approach tasteful or not, it's mostly a brand of fanservice, but you're expected to know it when you interreact with it.

Queerbaiting is the cast and crew and marketting looking at you directly telling you "don't worry we'll totally give you rep those two chara especially are totally going to be rep for you" and then it never happens. like i'm thinking about the trailer for Riverdale that showed a lesbian kiss without context, so you would be intrigued, and then you watch the episode and you learn they only kissed to try to shock the audience in a staged show, and the person they did it in front of literally calls them out about how "girls kissing isn't as shocking anymore you know". and then the two girls involved in the kiss move on to flirt with guys they end up dating the rest of the show instead. Like. That's textbook Queerbaiting. It doesn't matter that this show has rep, it doesn't matter if ship are teased left and right, it doesn't even matter that they kissed for shock in the episode itself, what matters is that the promo was saying "hey, there's rep for you <3" and then you watch and you realize it's a lie.

There's a subtle line sometimes with just, implied romantic connection toward the show that is then never resolved, which imo, can count or can not count, depends really on context, but even there it gets more blurry (and it also is good to take into account that queerbaiting =/= queercoding from a place where they're not allowed by the studios to go this direction).

but for Mobage i'm really uninterested with any discussion of queerbaiting since imo it feels like people are genuinely refusing to engage with the fact the game is requesting you to interreact differently with its characters than you would watching a TV show. Not all media consumtions come to the same effort.

But also i should mention that the context of the post i reblogged is that people are now using "queerbaiting" to refer to real life people and that's genuinely horrifying, above any fandom petty discussion on it.

This post refers to the fact that the lead actor of Heartstopper, a TV show focusing a gay couple between two teens, was forcefully outed on twitter after people harrassed him for "queerbaiting" everyone by "pretending to be gay on TV while he's likely straight irl" and therefore he's.... baiting people by acting??? somehow???

Even if he was straight this attitude would be unacceptable, but what resulted was that this 19yo was so exhausted by the harassments and bullying he had to come out on twitter.

No real people owe you a coming out. No real people are queerbaiting you. Queerbaiting is a specific media framework you cannot use on people. Real life people don't gain anything by pretending to be queer. People involved in this harassments campaign better be ashamed of their behavior because this is vile.

And in general i'm really annoyed with how specific media analysis/critic framework are being used as means to specifically interreact with real life people while removed from the media analysis context. People are doing the same with Death of the Author which is annoying me to no end but that's another can of worm.

But the Queerbaiting thing is genuinely hurting people and i'm genuinely so angry at those people.

so, yeah, i say it again: i am begging people to learn what words mean. You're just diluting what useful expression mean and make them lose their impact and it is becoming exhausting.

[howlsmovinglibrary]

So i noticed you reblogged a lot of got. I followed you bc of your book reviews. I wonder if you read ASOIAF? It'd be cool for you to review it. And also it'd provide me see your stand towards the writing of the last season, & your perspective towards Arya as retconned Night King slayer, the dull (and abusive) romance bw jnerys, jon's character assassination and the lack of his POV, and the show being Dany's show (at the expense of other chars).

Oh wow anon, it’s very rare that I get asked to go off, but I’m more than happy to take you up on the invitation to rant!

In answer to your first question, I have read the first book of ASOIAF, but unfortunately I personally feel George R.R. Martin’s strength is his plotting, and now that the show has kind of unmasked the plot of those first books I find it difficult to slog through his writing style, just because it’s not suited to me. I got to 100 pages from the end where Ned Stark is wondering whether or not he’s gonna die and was like…I kind of know how this ends.

As for my manifold problems with the writing of this last season, I have them, although they don’t seem to be lined up with yours exactly. I have placed this under the keep reading tag, because Long Post. And Spoilers.

Arya

Ok, so as for the Arya plotline, I actually didn’t mind this. I realise it goes against a lot of the material of the books (which I haven’t read), but I think that however much of a retcon it is it makes a lot of logical consistency within Arya’s storyline itself. I was personally getting to the point, with Arya going around Winterfell and not really doing much, of wondering “why did she go to assassin school again?” I think that her getting to kill the Night King validates a lot of her plot arc, whereas before her training was slowly becoming useless and irrelevant to the current situation the writers had put her in - of course this goes out of the window come the last war.

I would actually argue that this decision, bar its illogical and rushed execution, had elements of why I loved GoT’s more established plot twists. You had a strong fantasy genre trope, the Chosen One, in Jon, and then reality intervenes and breaks it. Jon is trying to fight a fucking huge dragon, and is therefore, logically, preoccupied. So someone else gets the kill. I liked that. I mean, it seems like prophecy has just been UTTERLY DISREGARDED in this entire season rather than twisted or subverted, so I guess if we’re feeling particularly generous (which no one is) it might even be “making a point”.

 And yes, we haven’t seen any of her assassin powers over the course of this season (because the writers are retconning her into a nicer ‘antihero’ and not outright eviscerating psychopath), which makes me wonder why she even has them. But I’m actually ok with her getting the Night King kill.

And I’ll dream of the alternate universe where Arya kills Cersei wearing Jaime’s face, actually utilising her skills, getting her ‘green eyed’ kill, and fulfilling Cersei’s prophecy.

Danaerys

So, I hate Danaerys, but I don’t really agree with your viewpoint of her. I don’t really feel like this became ‘her’ season at all. In fact, I feel like this season was just a lesson in how to gaslight a woman into madness and relegate her entirely from her own fucking story.

I will outright state that, I wanted Danaerys to go Mad Queen. I think her character has had problematic elements from very close to the beginning: regarding her sense of entitlement which is not underpinned by an actual competency in regards to ruling, her idealism, and her tendency as a white character to weaponise the brown people she essentially colonises for her own goals. These are not the reasons D&D give to justify her ‘madness’. In fact, they say she’s always been mad for punishing abusers. It just shows now…because of a bad break up.

Danaerys’ “descent into madness” was so badly written that I get mad just thinking about it. It essentially comprises all the men around her having conversations with each other saying “I think she might go mad”, and then her doing a Bad Thing for no discernable reason. This is 1. BAD WRITING, because SHOW NOT TELL. Also, NARRATIVE CONSISTENCY. If you have to have Tyrion outright narrate what you are retconning as her evil past, which is what he did in the final episode, you have not written a consistent plot. Viewers are not stupid. And 2. It’s just awful in terms of gender. Literally, Dany is a woman who becomes isolated and the men around her pathologise her as mad rather than communicating with her and allowing her the agency to authorise her own existence. It’s like The Yellow Wallpaper. There’s so much gaslighting! Everyone says she’s mad for thinking people will betray her as they betray her in the same breath! Jon says he loves her and then punishes her for desiring him! It’s just absurd. I wanted this to happen and they still fucked it up.

Once her sexual desire is just for her and no longer consumable by the male viewer, because its incestuous, and her ambitions outstrip the men around her, suddenly she’s evil. 

And do not get me started on all the awful racial connotations of her story a) being fuelled by the pointless fridging of the only named black woman and b) being utterly endorsed by all the people of colour within the show unquestioningly while all the ‘good’ white men suddenly have their doubts. The way Dothraki war cries were basically used as background music to signify evil savagery made me sick. They literally weaponised race as a way of connoting fear and evil. The fact that her “evil speech” was basically a straw feminist recycling of her liberation rhetoric in a way to condemn all her thoroughly understandable and initially intentions from the very beginning was just a way to validate every Incel’s fear about SJW discourse. Instead of, I don’t know, CRITICISING HER AS A COLONISER. Maybe unveiling her hypocrisy? Nope! All black people are evil and will never question orders because they have been consistently stripped of their humanity! They are a faceless army of non-whites! And oh yes, all women are evil for wanting to enact violence on those who want to abuse them!

Honestly, I think this season of the show has been as much at the expense of her character as anyone else’s. Because it’s not been written well, or believably, and it feels like a complete reduction of the very real potential she had as a critique of imperialism. She’s just a mad woman. 

Jon

I can’t really talk that much about Jon. I kind of cover it above. I’m not sure if you think Jonaerys is abusive to Dany or to him, I would argue the former because of the gaslighting. 

But I will say, he must’ve taken his refresher course in Stark Honourable Stupidity after actually being competent in Season 7. According to D&D’s logic, if he had simply slept with Dany, a woman he loves, she wouldn’t have gone mad. It’s only in GoT that I can justify incest, but he should’ve taken one for the team. 

And maybe kept secrets better.

Just…the show in general

Really, I’m just so disappointed with the show in general. The plot, like Jaime’s characterisation, is so profoundly circular.

We still have an iron throne. We still have an utterly corrupt council elected through nepotism (although I guess we’re supposed to like them now?) Fuck, we still even have a wall even though ALL THE WHITEWALKERS ARE GONE.

Everything was so rushed and irreverent to the point of incompetency - I mean, everyone has seen the coffee cup. Prophecy and foreshadowing was utterly disregarded (I’ve spared you my Jaime Lannister rant because you didn’t ask), nuance was completely lost. I cannot believe that Cersei’s death was an anticlimax, that she didn’t do anything in that final battle but shed a manly tear, had barely any lines of dialogue despite the fact that she is one of the strongest characters of the entire series. And yet EURON GREYJOY got a triumphant death. It is so disingenuous. I really don’t think the fanbase would’ve been that hard to please but it seems like everything was denied us in the name of ‘subverting expectations’.

And however well shot the battle scenes were, I found it profoundly boring because there was no real motivation to drive the action. It was just screaming, and death, and oh yes some gratuitous rape because that’s what every viewer is here for, right?! I watch Game of Thrones for the character intrigue, not the violence or the blatant misunderstanding of what “authentic medievalism” entails. The fact that I watched the finale of my favourite show and did not cry once - me, who cried four times in a single Critical Role episode - is just a testament to how hollow and heartless the writing became.

[icyxmischief]

What movie do you like/dislike more: Thor Ragnarok or Avengers Infinity War?

//My short answer is I hate them BOTH, lol, but for different reasons.

My long answer: 

Agh so.  This is difficult to answer because the problems inherent to the two movies are very different, making it hard to compare and contrast them objectively; and because the entire Thor franchise is probably the weakest of the MCU, so basically all the Thor movies are Not Super Great (though I was actually quite fond of Thor 1 and Thor: The Dark World, because they kept Loki’s characterization intact, and that is how I measure/rate these movies for my own personal gratification). 

I think, despite all of Ragnarok’s critical acclaim, and all of Infinity War’s panning, I still was upset more by Ragnarok.  This is because, while as an academician and leftist I believe that satire and farce are powerful tools of social discourse, and Ragnarok was very much a critical self-farce, I think Taika Waititi  overdosed the audience on it.  It wasn’t WHAT he did so much as HOW MUCH he did it.  He did something that–even though they killed him off with an inexplicably weak plan of attack in the first ten minutes of the movie–the Russos did NOT do.  And that was to make Loki a weaker character in order to exalt Thor.  

Nothing. NOTHING. Makes me angrier as a writer than that cheap tactic. If a protagonist is already strong and well-rounded, then there is no need to diminish another character beside him.     

Moreover, I felt as if Waititi was making fun of the audience for Loki’s popularity as a character, beginning with the play he put on and how it, and other scenes, reduced the subject of –a nervous breakdown –a suicide attempt –internalized racism and Otherness ( “my blue baby,” that was…gross)–legitimate PTSD from being in the custody of Thanos (I have PTSD so this really felt shitty to me on a personal level) –and legitimate incidents of parental gaslighting and emotional abuseto a JOKE.  

“We really shouldn’t be concerned about Thor and Loki’s problems,” Waititi himself said in an interview.  Really.  REALLY? You REALLY just see them as entitled rich white boys who are being whiny?  When Loki in particular is queer and racially Other. REALLY.   I walked out of the movie theater feeling ASHAMED of my love for Loki, of this blog, of all my meta deconstructing him as a symbol of real socio-ethnic and cultural oppression.  And I don’t think that’s cool.  Media makers in a given fandom should inspire the audience to engage with the content MORE, not LESS. 

The Russos gave Loki his moment of choice, his moral threshold, his ultimate test, and while it was brief, nothing has defined Loki more than what sort of person he chooses to be vis-a-vis Thor. So somehow, that read to me as more respectful of Loki as a character. In other words, even though they broke my heart, and even though the rest of Infinity War is a convoluted, boring dumpster fire, Loki was allowed TO BE LOKI AT LOKI’S BEST.  Loki thrown away in a hasty death for the sake of Thor’s manpain, which I ALSO HATE, particularly given it’s also done to manipulate the audience’s emotions……but it still afforded the Odinson brothers what Ragnarok did not:

Dignity. 

So basically in short, Ragnarok was a better OVERALL movie, but Loki’s screentime in Infinity War was truer to the character, as well as to Thor’s (even though his death seemed beneath his own powers and capacity for cunning).  

As bizarre as it sounds, since he DIED in Infinity War, I feel like the Russos showed Loki more respect than Waititi did. And it’s all because Waititi (and Chris Hemsworth too) was myopic about making Thor and only Thor look valorous (making Thor, btw, ironically, just as ooc as Loki).  Even though Thor granted Loki the chance to trigger Surtur, in a display of “trust,” it was after Thor framed anything Loki did, like a narcissist and a bully would, on his own terms and conditions, and boy did that sour my stomach (you know something is wrong with the structure of the narrative when Thor tells Loki “I thought the world of you” and you’re as surprised as Loki is). 

In fact, that’s another reason why I prefer Infinity War to Ragnarok: how THOR is written. 

Ragnarok regressed Thor to the entitled bully he had been before his exile to earth, and it diminished Loki to the state of Thor’s submissive sidekick, or comic relief, in the process.  Infinity War, despite going far too grimdark, and being dreadfully poorly executed, and trying to make us feel sorry for Thanos, who is the least sympathetic abusive asshole to ever exist, at least gave Thor and Loki their dignity.   There was a smidgeon of an acknowledgment that certain things are beyond being made into jokes.  

Because honestly? Jokes are powerful. Humor is powerful. It’s a weapon.  It should be wielded wisely. Just because something is “funny” doesn’t reduce its capacity to do real damage. Taika Waititi is a great filmmaker and I believe he’s a good person too. But he hasn’t learned this lesson, and he shows no interest in doing so.