#i dont wanna be disingenuous about any of my opinions

[angelthingy]

hiii so queer discourse post ahead!! im sorry if i say anything wrong please correct me if i do!! also pls read to the end if you would like to comment because its very much a "stream of thought" kinda post so i go through a few opinions before settling on anything-

saw an argument under a poll recently about how detransitioners who hadnt gone through any sort of medical transition shouldnt be allowed to call themselves trans if they had reverted to a gender that matches with their assigned sex and. honestly i feel like this is one of those admittedly rare moments where i dont really know what opinion to take? i mean i do believe that a detransitioners experience is unique so its entirely reasonable for them to identity more with a trans experience but- relating to what the argument was about- should someone born a woman be able to call themselves a trans woman if they had briefly thought they were trans then. changed their mind before having taken any steps to transition? i really really really!!! dont want to gatekeep identities, its just as people pointed out, being TOO accepting can just open up a loophope for ppl with umm. other intentions, such as chasers - which is, not that great? im just bringing this up because admittedly part of me is worried about both of these positions- one seems really gatekeepy but could also be helpful in allowing trans ppl to have a term to describe specifically themselves; while the other kind of means that the uniqueness of a trans experience is taken away if ppl can say they're trans without having ever transitioned or facing any of the experiences of trans people (dont wanna say issues because defining trans ppl by the issues they face isnt that helpful, though yes obviously those as well)

after having written this out i partially think i may have been influenced by conformity tbh (whoaa psychology reference) because like. the VAST!!! majority of the notes in that poll was that they shouldnt call themselves trans but while im here typing this out im finding myself disagreeing with that position more than not- like ultimately i feel like people should be able to use whatever labels they think fits for them as long as its genuine to their feelings at that moment, and in the cases where they're using them harmfully/disingenuously then thats like. the exception and not the rule- right?

anyway i just wanted to talk about this because talking about things helps me articulate my thoughts!! i guess i did actually end up coming to a conclusion with what i believe in the end so it worked, yippee! but if anyone wants to discuss this please feel free because i am interested in other opinions, especially those which come from experience :D

[moonrevolutions]

🔥

°✩₊˚.⋆ @escapedartgeek. meme. still accepting!

this is less of an unpopular opinion and more like a general pondering and thought bouncing, but its VERY disingenuous when you see someone reblogging the ' my inbox and ims are always open im down to clown whenever and i rp with everyone :3 ' posts knowing damn well they cant hop off their cliques dick 2 seconds to actually form connections.

and im not saying that its bad to have favorites......... im not. i have favorites. but i also exchange the general energy that im given. if u wanna rp w. ur set and only ur set, that's cool. but dont reblog psas about being the world's most accepting rper and then not make any moves on that, that shit is sooooo fake like why u wanna be a fakey???

im sure we've all met someone like this.

someone who always reblogs those pre-est relationship symbol memes, plotting calls, discord drops etc etc only for them and their posse to sit there and act like no one else in the community exists; canon rpers are worse at this, i feel.

dont say one thing and then do another.

idc if someone have a clique, more power 2 u even tho yalls friendship wont last more than 2 years and only hinge on slap-dashed plots. but im not thrilled about mixed messaging that comes w. trying to deny having one lol.

[phoneybeatlemania-bit-the-dust]

@todayesterday so ive loved the beatles my whole life (like when i was 5 yellow submarine was watched eveyday istg) but it was only in January of this year (2021 for future reference) that i became actively interested in the history of the band and their relationships etc. And sometimes i just feel like people forget/dont realise that. Like im not saying i shouldnt be held accountable for the things i say or opinions i express or whatever, but id just like to take a second to remind people that like, i am fairly new to all this, and im not right (or confident) in everything i say - but y’know, i give it a go in answering things, and i like participating in discussions and all that. But still, i havent made my mind up on Every Single Thing; sometimes my feelings and opinions change; i havent read every book or interview; and i know a lot about the band, but i don’t know everything, and im still always learning.

[sothischickshe]

did i ever send you asks? did i???? anyway i have faith in you and believe that you can answer #3 four times ❤️❤️❤️❤️ (but also i really want you to answer 4, 20, 6, and 9 heh heh)

i dont fucking KNOW, am i to remember things???? although i presumably would have felt a jolt of disgust at seeing your username so maybe i’d recall if you had???

re 3 x 4, im a total hypocrite cos i did basically this to someone else but ugh, topics make it easier!!!! but ok

3. rant. just do it

i. serenity isn’t that good of a film. look, i like firefly, i like it a lot! and obvi i can appreciate why ppl feel fondly about the revival-ness of the film, and it was trying to tie a lot together. but i hate how the thread of moral greyness of the show was kind of lost and suddenly they (and especially mal) are like there is RIGHT and WRONG blah blah blah. (also, i kinda hate how in the board game characters get neatly denoted as im/moral... feel like whoever made it was watching a different show to me tbh)

ii. the make your own post button is free!!!!!!!!! sure there are times when additions are totes reasonable and fun, but if you wanna make a different point... just make your own post.

iii. i mean i’m not a lesbian so maybe this isn’t my rant to have but i had an anon gold star lesbian ask in my inbox which i deleted... like fuck off with that gross judgemental shit?

iv. nore’s whole waffle abt how they’ve had so few lady guests on drink champs bc the only women whose phone numbers he has are his wife and foxy brown is LUDICROUS. first of all... dream fucking guests???????????????? so!!!!???????????!!!! second of all, hire a booker???????? third of all MARY EP WHEN. i feellllll like dave east was sorting that out for real yea??????????

all right, good number choices. i’ll give you that.

4. do you think it’s ok to separate the artist from the art?

i think it’s ok to enjoy things made by terrible people. you can’t change what you like, and i think it’s disingenuous to pretend that you can. like, i hate r kelly, but that doesn’t make ‘vibe’ a bad song, nor can it. however, you can choose whether or not you (still) want to engage with that person’s creations, and i think you do have to make a decision as to whether you want to (financially) support that creator. (i do not!)

ultimately, i think you can rarely successfully separate creator from creation, their perspective leaks in. and understanding that can make your appreciation of their creations much better! or it can help you critique it, especially if you find something about it unsettling but are finding it hard to identify/name.

i do think it’s ok to enjoy ‘problematic’ things made by ‘problematic’ ppl bc everyone and everything is problematic somehow, especially if you’re going back into time. everyone’s lines in the sand are gonna be differently placed and i think that’s ok. there are some creators works i have no interest in engaging with. there are some i have already engaged with before learning more about them, and i cannot turn off the existing opinions i have of those works, though they do become shaded by the things ive learnt so im unlikely to want to engage with them. there are many that i disagree with on many things but whose creations im still interested in engaging with bc i like experiencing a range of perspectives. i DO curate my experience with media pretty heavily - i don’t own a tv or subscribe to any streaming services or listen to the radio. if i feel like im engaging with a lot of men-led media i tone it down, lol.

but i do think this is probably the wrong question. the question is more CAN you separate the artist from the art? and i think the answer is no, or at least i don’t see how you can do it well, without losing its context. and artists who encourage you to.... i think are hiding something tbh. (like!!! did anyone listen to that seinfeld ep of wtf???!? WTF indeed)

20. describe your blog in 3-5 words

profoundly and rage-inducingly unsearchable

6. how many pairs of shoes do you have?

answered

9. favourite brand of clothing?

eh, i’m not really big into brands. whoever makes these oversized men’s tshirts i keep (kept) swiping from conferences? they’re very good quality.

for shoes it always WAS adidas anyway, lol

ask meme which again i’ll point out has a wide range of numbers on it which are not the number 3

[chongoblog]

Hey I know that you all see me as the Grand Authority on Movie Opinions in that I am correct and can never be wrong and also my opinion on things is NEVER unsolicited because I’m literally the most important person on the internet and you CRAVE my opinions.

So I saw Shazam last night and I’m gonna talk about it under this readmore because I dunno how long it’s gonna be and I respect y’all’s dashes like that (plus if y’all don’t care abt what I thought then you can keep scrolling). There will be spoilers but I will clearly mark them.

So I’ve been thinking to myself on whether or not Shazam was the best DCEU movie. All things considered, it didn’t have too high of a bar to leap over, seeing how Wonder Woman, which was originally my favorite, had a lot of incredible moments, but was bogged down by a few of the scenes around those moments and a frankly terrible final act. And if I were to put it into numbers, (which people seem to love) I’d put Wonder Woman at about 50% INCREDIBLE 20% ehhhh and 30% GOD WHY, plus add a few bonus points for being so inspiring within its social context as a female-led superhero movie that isn’t terrible, sexualized or both. Shazam, on the other hand, doesn’t get those bonus points of social context, but has about a 60% Pretty Good and 40% ehhhh with one small bonus point for having one scene that personally hit me pretty hard that I’ll talk about later. It doesn’t reach any of the LOWS that any other film in the DCEU had, but at the same time, it didn’t really hit any of the highs either.

Something that’s worth addressing is that as someone who likes to partake in any and all drama because I’m a gremlin who loves seeing complaining, I saw plenty of DC fans complain that this movie was falling into a sort of trap set up saying “ITS ONLY BEING LIGHTHEARTED BECAUSE IT THINKS THAT IT HAS TO BE MORE LIKE MARVEL AND THATS WHY MORE PEOPLE LIKE IT” and I do want to address that because it’s a stupid argument. While Shazam is a departure from the DCEU’s more serious tone thus far, it’s not a black and white deal. DC isn’t strictly defined by being “the more serious Marvel” or vice versa. Being lighthearted did help Shazam out, not BECAUSE it was more like a Marvel movie, but because unlike movies like Batman v Superman, it didn’t try (and fail) to tackle more complex themes and down to earth schemes that made it lose focus and become an enormous mess. That being said, Shazam’s schemes and themes were much simpler, and it made for a much SMALLER mess if/when it did lose focus.

Before I dive into the spoilers, I’ll give my two cents on the film as a whole. Like I mentioned, the light-hearted tone did help out the movie, and it took itself a little less seriously with things while still balancing out some emotion in the story, and the whole theme behind it, while not PERFECTLY drawn out, still had a coherent message behind it. Visually, the movie was definitely trying to break out of the Zack Snyder mold that had been set up back with Man Of Steel, and while it still chills out in Low Saturation City a lot of the time, it IS doing a better job. Zachary Levi definitely deserves a shoutout in this movie for probably being the second best actor in the DCEU closely behind Gal Gadot in terms of casting choices, perfectly encapsulating the idea of Shazam, and pulling off the role of a Big Billy Batson, however he seems to have taken away the acting talent from half of the rest of the cast, because some of the acting in this movie is.....not great. And that’s not counting the child actors who did alright considering they’re child actors (Freddy in particular was fantastic).

The dialogue in this is pretty solid and indicative of the situation, and they really tried to lean into the idea that it’s some middle school (or early high I cant really remember) kid who just got these powers, and they do a pretty good job of that in both the dialogue and in the first half of the movie. And like I mentioned, there is a bit of Emotion in this movie that they really tried to deliver and they did a pretty good job delivering it. That being said, it’s very clear that they’re going for a kinda cheesy sort of vibe. Which makes sense, since the concept is Kid Becomes Superhero, which is ripe for picking like some kind of Cheese Tree....orchard.....thing.....and it leads to just a fun experience. It’s something that knows it shouldn’t be taken too seriously, which is why I’m writing an incredibly long analytical review of it, because I’m a curmudgeon like that.

ALRIGHT SPOILER TIME SCROLL DOWN TO THE VERY BOTTOM IF YOU DONT WANNA GET SPOILED

Lol alright so this spoiler section is gonna have a lot of negative points, so let me start with some positives.

The overall theme of this movie is sort of an idea of Found Family (which I’m an absolute sucker for), and there’s a subplot that follows this idea where Billy is looking for his mom. The movie starts showing a flashback where Billy’s mom gives him a compass saying “it’ll always help you find your way home” and then very shortly afterward, Billy gets himself seperated from his mother and had to be put into foster care and is now searching for his mother by looking everywhere he can to the point it causes him to run away multiple times. It’s not too surprising how this ends, with him finding his mother, only to find out that she just didn’t pick him up because she was 17 at the time and felt she COULDN’T take care of him. And that’s the point when he realizes “maybe my REAL family were the kids in the foster home all along”. Billy Batson sees that his birth mother’s life is tumultuous, taking on new lovers, working part time jobs, and not having time to even consider caring for Billy, moreso just hoping he turned out alright. Billy, as a sort of symbolic gesture, hands his mother the compass saying “you’ll need this more than me”. And then she replies with two words that just killed me for some reason.

“What’s this?”

I don’t know. It was a line that hit me. Kinda reflecting that sort of disconnect. Alright enough being nice, let’s talk things that are Alright but could be better.

The villain was alright. His character was pretty fun at the beginning, but after he got revenge on his father for Toxic Masculinity™ he became pretty boring, acting more like a CGI Monster Vending Machine. Of course it kinda leads into the whole Cheesy vibe they were going for, but it’s hard to make your movie seem like it’s gonna be campy and cheesy when your villain doesn’t really fall into the role once he actually fights the hero (also with the color palette). Just wish they would’ve sorta gone full Sam Raimi and just leaned into the campiness, with this movie kinda afraid to jump into the pool past its bathing suit.

And then there was the climax of the movie in the carnival, where I felt like it went a little bit downhill, not really being the best that it could be, but still pretty serviceable. The director seemed to be REALLY into using slo-mo, using it a little more than necessary to the point of being distracting, and while the Shazam concept was used in a few fun creative ways, there were some moments where it could have had more utility, or one moment in particular when he absolutely needed to change back and probably had time to say “Shazam” like twenty times over, but he didn’t, which was a LITTLE frustrating, but that’s way more nitpicky. Speaking of nitpicks, there were a few shots that were.....questionable (most notably the Santa.....moment? It seemed to be a clear funny moment, but it didn’t really land and didn’t flow either)

And also the climax has a bit of a fun twist moment that helps round out the Found Family moment where all of Billy’s adopted family also become superheroes, which is pretty sweet, but there was one SMALL nitpick that doesn’t overwhelmingly detract from anything but I found strange. Every character had a power, with one person showing the super strength, another showing super speed, another with lightning, another with flying, which were Shazam’s powers. And then Mary was there....and we don’t really get to see her powers? I did research and apparently she’s a character in the comics with all the powers of Shazam, but Mary was one of the only other characters with an arc and we don’t get to see her with any powers, which is a bit weird (we also don’t get to see her arc formally conclude. We can draw conclusions but still). So in the end it looks like Mary essentially kinda got Kairi’d. Oof.

But that’s really it for spoilers, in terms of the “bad” it’s really just that it didn’t really give it enough of an impact and while it knew what it wanted to be and isn’t disingenuous about it, it also doesn’t really commit to BEING what it wants to be.

ALRIGHT SPOILERS ARE ALL DONE YOU CAN LOOK NOW HERES MY BOTTOM LINE

Bottom line is that this movie is definitely flawed, and after consideration I don’t think I’d put it at the top of the DCEU, if only because Wonder Woman reached higher points than this one did, but that shouldn’t be a slight against Shazam at all. Heck, I would consider putting it a little bit above Captain Marvel if we’re inevitably comparing rivals.

So all in all I give it a Shazam/10. A good fun time. Not the BEST movie you’ll see this year, but you’re there to have a good time and you’ll have it.

[crucifythenburn]

bi erasure is a problem in fandom yes but so is people ignoring/invalidating lesbian voices in the name of fighting for bisexual equality. u having a problem with people believing a character who's shown no interest in men and is the counterpart of a gay character is a lesbian feels really uncomfortable. yes she could end up being bi but people are allowed to hc her as lesbian until proved otherwise, its not hurting anybody, so why does it bother u so much?

Well, dear anon, because it IS actually hurting me. And other bisexuals. Because some of us, who are female exclusive, exist. Some of us, who have had to hide our bisexuality because of biphobic actions from our own community, exist. Some of us, who have to come out over and over and over because there is no safe space for us to be considered, exist! Let’s not act like there aren’t many women out there who’ve hoarded themselves into the lesbian category solely for safety, only to jump back out once they find the courage to finally live in their actual truths. Let’s not act like bisexuals aren’t out here being invalidated altogether once they dare not date their same sex. To acknowledge bi-erasure is an actual thing but then ask me why it bothers me so much that lesbian is the default setting feels pretty disingenuous, so if you’re looking to argue about why it does or does not hurt the bi community to have zero consideration of Shay’s sexuality outside of being a lesbian, I think I’ve explained it pretty well and don’t really care to partake. Being wilfully ignorant is a choice I won’t be a party to.

At no point am I ever trying to silence lesbian voices, dude. I honestly don’t even understand how I could silence lesbian voices by speaking up about something that no one else in the fandom seems to be talking about??? Every single post I’ve seen is defaulting to ‘Shay is gay’. So the real question is, why does my one little opinion bother YALL so much? Cuz lesbihonest. L is the first letter of the entire community. There is no movement to ‘Drop the L’ like there is to ‘Drop the B’, and tbh, when lesbians do this whole ‘you’re trying to silence us’ bit, it looks a whole hell of a lot like when cis-women cry foul over trans activism, (a privilege that I, as a cis-woman, have had to unpack and acknowledge, regardless of how uncomfortable it felt) the correlation being that Trans women are women too; Bisexual women are wlw TOO. We’re not trying to silence y'all, we’d just like to be considered and maybe even INCLUDED once in a while. But somehow that translates to yall thinking we wanna be catered to and centered, and honestly, I don’t have the energy to unpack that nonsense, nor do I wish to participate in any form of Oppression Olympics.

And for the record, my primary fandom discusses these things all the time and has different reads for all the wlw on our show. I’m actually on a podcast whose main focus is discussing the different sexualities of the characters, and we do not always agree. The point is that we discuss it, and that all interpretations are valid. And to keep it a hunnit, yes, I probably could have been less antagonistic with my initial critique of skam fandom in regards to Shay, I’ll admit that, but sorry not sorry, because I’m a tired bi, and I’ve earned every right to be tired.

(Also, please please please, skam fandom, for the love of all things queer and good, stop coming in my inbox talmbout ‘oh, Jo is bi. Oh, Even is pan’. Good. Great. Excellent. I don’t care. This is about Shay. I dont need bi consolation prizes. That’s not the point here. The point is that Shay is a wlwoc, and it’s important for me, as a wlwoc, to read her in a way that does not limit her until the day that she places limits upon her damn self. Thank you. And Happy Pride Month.)