#i hope that this pushes him to at least look into the queer christian experience

[chloeseyeliner]

it's my birthday in two weeks.

not a very me way to start a post, i swear i am not doing it for wishes or anything like that, if anyone ever sees this in the first place; i was just writing some very personal things down in my journal (if i can call it such, it's a mess of thoughts and random rants in there really, no structure whatsoever) tonight, and as i was reminiscing my teenage years, seeing that they are conventionally and socially coming to an end soon, i wanted to do something kind of meaningful, instead of just hating my birthday and the weeks before it and being sad all the time like i have done since like. ever. i think?? i remember almost nothing i did or felt before i was eleven. which happens. so. i know my blog is tiny, but for me, it's kind of a great importance to do this right now.

disclaimer: i am not here to give advice to anyone who ever comes across this post. this is not what my role is. that would be sort of unfair, dare i say, since all people experience life differently, even when facing the same situations. <3

so, without further ado, here's ten things i "learnt"/want to tell myself (and maybe another person who might need to hear some of it) before i turn twenty:

(cw: kind of vague and not so vague mentions to mental health in general + some religion things)

1. you don't have to wear this paricular t-shirt in this particular size if it doesn't fit you- there are many different colours and various sizes out there for you to try on, and if you feel uncomfortable sometimes, here, take this jacket. the t-shirt is not going anywhere. it's just being protected, guarded from the outside world, but not your heart. never from your heart.

a. this was both metaphorical and literal.

2. you are not a freak for secretly wishing everything will eventually magically work out like they do in the books you love to be consumed of, kid. you were just a kid with many hopes and dreams. it was fine. it is fine.

3. you didn't have to pretend to like this guy and actually confess your "feelings" to him in middle school just because everyone else was entering relationships that lasted a week and kissed in the school bathroom. but you did. and it's fine. because it was an experience worth having. you needed to dive into the freezing water to actually wake up and start your journey with much, much more than you had in your suitcase even ten seconds ago.

4. on that note, yes, most of the times, when you are queer in a small, rural, christian, balkan town, you don't get many chances of living your truth loudly. but you grew up with all these realisations, which may have seemed terrifying at first, but you did have them, you did question, you did fell in love with someone you weren't supposed to, even from afar, being on your own. i am proud of you, kid.

5. you are not "crazy" for "being too political". you are not a coward for being quiet because you were scared of all this glaring and all these daggers sometimes either. you were younger. now you know a little better.

6. it's okay if you don't look up at the person (or, in your case, god) who used to consume your every thought of awe and admiration anymore, the person (or god) who was the picture next to the definition of "perfection" in your dictionary. people and times change. not everything has to be black and white. swim a little in the gray. do a freestyle once in a while- the butterfly is impressive, but nothing feels like floating around and testing the waters. nothing can compare to the freedom of all this simplicity.

7. your life isn't lost yet just because your mind was either too fast or too slow to keep up with the present. yes, the present shall be cherished- it's a natural gift, it's in the word itself after all. but it's not all over just due to the fact you move across the brain town every other day. you need to push and pull doors. open and close windows. find hands that offer themselves to you- there is at least one person out there who won't take them away when you try to reach them. but you'll find your way. i promise you.

8. you didn't have to raise yourself at some point- or many points, it doesn't matter, though. you didn't have to raise others either. always the listener, never the heard. always the talker, still never the heard. but, for whatever reason (or various reasons), it happened. give yourself a chance. a pat on the back. start taking this weight off your shoulders piece by piece. does it feel any better when you do so? yeah?

9. you don't have to be embarrassed of your interests. of singing an interesting variety of genres every sunday afternoon, during the designated listening to music time. of being excited over your favourite show. of gasping in shock when something unexpected happens in the pages of your current read. of being overwhelmed in the best way possible when entering the cinema or a theatre or a library or a museum, or when walking down the park. of wanting to learn more about this particular historical figure because you couldn't at school, being the perfectionist you are. of trying to write and almost always failing. of tearing up upon seeing a beautiful art piece. of tearing up or crying in general. no one is judging you. and if they are, that's their own issue to address. breathe in. breathe out. you are more than your bad thoughts.

10. slow down, you crazy child/ you're so ambitious for a juvenile/ but then, if you're so smart, tell me/ why are you still so afraid?/ where's the fire, what's the hurry about?/ you better cool it off before you burn it out/ you got so much to do and only/ so many hours in a day...

<3

sorry.

i might delete it later. i might not. i hate being so open, especially on the internet, but all this anonymity gave me an opportunity. and i seized it. plus, i spared all the details. so.

**sigh**

[my-castles-crumbling]

Hi!! I heard you let people tell you abt things they can’t tell anyone else so I thought I might give it a go? I hope it doesn’t annoy you(!!).

However uhhh how do I start we’ll I’m a lesbian and pretty proud in my identity. I know it’s normal by now (after a long time of denial) and now I’m a queer activist, go to demonstrations etc.

However I have been raised with Christianity, not the awful kind but rather the „god loves everyone no matter who you are and what you believe“ kind. Basically my family is very open abt anything queer and support my identity wholeheartedly. Nowadays I don’t think I believe in God anymore, at least not the one from the Bible. The beliefs are very deep in my core though and recently I’ve been helping my mom a bit at church ( she didn’t ask me I offered, because I didn’t have school that day ).

Anyways I was sorting food from donations that go to homeless people and I was doing that quietly while listening to music. Suddenly a guy came up to me and looked at me like I was sick or something. I take out my headphones to see what he wants and he puts his hand on my shoulder and says: „May the horrible and disgusting demon leave your body in the name of Jesus Christ“

Which - weird but maybe he meant well. Still I asked him why he did it and he pointed to my pride bracelet and said that he pushed away the demon of homosexuality and that god doesn’t have to give me to Satan anymore. I told him that being queer is completely normal and he looked at me with pity and said: „The demon takes time to disappear, but do not worry god will take it away“ and it’s just really hurtful because the God I was raised with (if he is real) wouldn’t ever do that and I feel like his words just hurt something at my core? So much that I cried. My mother found me and comforted me but I haven’t told her what happened.

Just is that Catholic Guilt? Because I have never experienced anything negative with the religion (just personal experiences not what the Catholic Church is up to in general cause many many things it does are just fucking awful).

Dunno just needed to tell someone otherwise it might have eaten me up from the inside. Sorry for the dump you probably have your own issues and don’t need to hear my whining haha.

Okay bye!!

Hi!! <3

Don't feel bad about messaging at all!

Unfortunately, there are a lot of religious people who feel the way that man does. I would guess that maybe you were upset BECAUSE this is the first time you've experienced such negativity. And ESPECIALLY because you are religious, yourself. It's saddening and scary to see someone who claims to believe the same things as you do to act so full of hatred.

However, I would encourage you to not allow one man's opinions to affect your experience with religion. (I say this as someone who isn't religious at ALL). It's YOUR job to decide how you feel about religion. Unfortunately, there are horrible, hurtful, cruel people everywhere. If you have found safety and comfort with your religion, don't let him make you feel differently.

I will, though, warn you that this man's opinion is relatively common, especially amongst different subsets of Christianity. Trust me, I've seen it myself, way too many times. It's jarring and upsetting, and sometimes downright scary to come across, especially when you aren't ready for it, so be aware. Stay safe. There are people who feel like this. But not everyone does. And you have safety and comfort with people who don't.

Hope this helps!

<3 <3

[tonyglowheart]

This entire thing is a rant, feel free to ignore it, but I saw your post about how destiel fans can’t win in this context, and yeah. So have some rambles.

I’ve been thinking about the fact we (current spn/destiel fans) can’t win all night... I’ve seen so many people talking about how homophobic it is - and while I would very much like to argue, as every point I’ve seen made by a non-spn fan has been wrong so far, if I did everyone inside the fandom would agree and everyone outside would either call me straight or pity me for believing it’s okay.

(Cas wasn’t even sent to hell lmao. He was sent to angel death (the empty), a place he has escaped in the past. Other points, like that meta about spn has been predicting exactly this for months, that Dean ended up sobbing on the floor because he was so upset, like that death means next to nothing on spn, like that there is two episodes left, etc etc. you feel me right? I just don’t want to post wank to other spn blogs atm, we’re getting enough frustration as it is, no need to add to it.

It’s also worth pointing out that the bar is very, very low. Spn is a prominent TV show - not a Netflix show, or indie, or whatever - and it just said “main character in gay love saved the world”. [insert gif of ghostfacers dude saying that gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day here]

I just saw someone saying that spn having Naomi try to brainwash Cas out of loving dean makes spn homophobic (it is a conversion therapy parallel). My first response to that is that Naomi was the villain lmao? I guess we can’t write villains doing anything homophobic because having villains do homophobic things makes, uh - checks notes - villains look homophobic, and clearly we can’t have that.

There certainly are legitimate things to criticise spn about, but this isn’t it lol.

Also now some people are unironically trying to cancel Jensen because “his acting was homophobic, and so he’s clearly homophobic”, nevermind that he’s an actor and his character struggles with understanding his emotions (which I think he played excellently, myself. That scene had a very Dean delayed emotional response), nevermind the support he’s given to us queers in the past. Like. Idek man.

We would have been laughed at if we got no destiel, too.

It would have been worse, had the writers pulled a dumbledore. At this point I also trust the writers not to pull a GoT - they have explicitly criticised that ending in spn’s canon.

Spn’s writers did that by making the main villain of this season, Chuck / God, say GoT had a good ending. To reiterate a previous point I had: villains do bad things because they’re bad. And the bad things they do make them bad. For the people out there not still following, if someone does something in a story and it makes them a villain, that is explicitly telling you the story (and probably the writers) thinks that thing is bad. In this case, Chuck likes to write things for him, and we the audience have been shown and told that is bad.

Apparently thinking a gay confession is good in 2020 makes me straight. Seems unlikely, but whatever. Sorry for the length, I guess I went overboard, I’ve been holding it in lol. Anyway, DESTIEL IS CANON 💚💙 hope you have a good night

Helloo supernatural anon I hope you are living your best life right now. Yeah I’m like..... skeptical and leery myself but having lived through some absolute garbage discourse that is general purity wank, as well as the C/QL greater fandom here and on Twitter I find myself... much more wanting to question the “general wisdom” of things esp in terms of negativity, bc a lot of the time I find.... it’s wrong? Like so wrong. Or at least presents such an incomplete picture of the whole situation and also presents it in such a removed context that words that have meaning and are operationalized in a certain way for a reason, no longer have meaningful usage.

Anyway I don’t... know too much about the specifics of Spn but someone I follow is into it and talks a lot about the Gnostic stuff and that all was very fascinating to me, and I also have been grappling a lot with cultural Christianity bc of cmedia and the way ppl just *clenches fist* unthinkingly or uncritically slap some Christian norms on it and call it a day 😩 help I’m Tired. My thing here being... I actually got tired of the uncritical “superhell”s at some pt bc I am, in fact, incredibly exhausted with cultural Christianity, and because it does seem like, even possibly(?) without the Gnostic stuff it’s different from a “hell” or other Protestant-derived afterlife concept, and also yeah that it wasn’t seeded out of nowhere, it was set up to happen, which then... lends credence to the idea that whatever the current era of Spn is doing, the current showrunners are doing it with purpose.

And idk I just... refuse to believe the concept that ALL of the fans of Spn - esp the ones who have been following it still, or got back into it and are following it currently, are acting under delusion or are fooling themselves into liking it or thinking it’s good or whatever. I personally find that kinda infantilizing and patronizing and playing into issues of dismissing things women and/or other marginalized identities like.

Plus I find the concept that (from what I think I’ve been seeing Spn fans say) that the current era of the show is quite actively grappling with itself, its past, its legacy. to be very interesting and compelling; it hearkens back to like an old lore kind of feeling, of a thing that has grown into a nigh undefeatable monster and realizing that, also realizing that the only way to defeat itself is through grappling with its own nature and transforming and transmuting itself into something else. I personally find that more plausible and compelling than “Supernatural has been actively and continuously queerbaiting for 15 homophobic homophobic years., so right now we’re all very sorry for you because this maybe is no longer queerbaiting but it’s still homophobic and it can never be anything different ever.” I’ve been sort of tangentially aware of Spn thru the years and didn’t we agree, around the time of that in-universe play about Spn and with the lil Destiel shoutout, that Spn has come a ways as far as coming to terms with its fandom and working to treat its fans better? Why the sudden regression into “oh no, Supernatural is and forever will be homophobic and a hate crime”? 🤔 

The rest under a cut bc the ask is already long and then my rambling will get longer-

But yeah I mean..... I get that the legacy of Supernatural has been certifiably Rough, but I think people also forget how different of a time 2005 was? Hell, how different of a time 2015 was, even, prior to, say, Obergefell v. Hodges. Now I’m not saying that to blanket-excuse Supernatural, but like, you look at mainstream shows from the era and... there’s a lot of shit lmao. The fact that Supernatural has existed this long seems to me like.... maybe we CAN look at how it’s developed through the years vs just insisting it is what it was 15, 10, hell, 5 years ago. Especially since, to my knowledge, there’s been showrunner changes? Which seems to me like it would... affect things? I mean honestly, I remember back when I got into Spn for a hot second because of Castiel, I remember watching panel, Q&A, etc vids thru the years, and like... I thought we agreed that... it was the fans who were going a bit far pushing the shipping question like literally ALL the time to the actors, who are not in control of the show and.... like at the time.... that could have had personal implications for them? And yes homophobia bad, and people can still be allies despite that, but again like.... I do feel like - from what I’ve seen - that these guys were NOT ready to deal with a lot of that but they’ve (okay Jensen I’m talking about Jensen here) genuinely grown and learned? Also how many years ago was the essay autograph thing that people keep trotting out, like what year was it in and what year of spn was it, and what were the prevailing opinions on LGBT issues and bisexuality then.

I’ve been seeing some murmurings of identity politicsing surrounding ppl who enjoy Supernatural, and I’m sorry that that’s happening to you, it really fucking sucks and it’s also the dumbest way to “make” or “win” an argument because it shouldn’t ever be a final determiner, just factors to consider when considering what life experiences might have informed someone else’s PoV and views as well as maybe how you can better communicate with them. Instead of it being a “weapon” or “tool” to either dismiss someone or de facto validate an argument.

Also yeah I get it that you don’t want to send discourse to spn blogs bc I imagine you guys ARE actively grappling with all the bs rn and it’s a lot. Even just from like, the stuff I see around, I’m like tired of it. I’m genuinely having more fun with ppl who are having a good time with Supernatural than the ppl who are hating on it, even in this sort of backhanded “oh we’re not clowning YOU we’re clowning the writers and showrunners who think you should be satisfied with this,” when... yeah? the people who HAVE been watching the show and therefore... know what’s up.. DO seem to be? And all this based on *fake gasp* context. And that’s where the backhandedness becomes kind of poisonous to me, because it implies that it IS bad, and that you SHOULDN’T be satisfied, but poor little you are but don’t worry, we’re not making fun of YOU for liking garbage, you’re just the hapless victim who is consuming the garbage bc... idk, whatever reasons ppl are coming up with ig.

idk man it’s 2020. Fandom isn’t activism, performative or otherwise, it’s okay to let people enjoy things even if you think they’re “objectively” bad, and like... I don’t know if people can call something bad when they’re not even working with the whole context and instead are dealing with rumor and reputation. 

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Paul maddens me.

because as infuriating as his letters can be.....i cannot help but love him, sometimes. not always, but often enough that i cannot throw him away. and that? that drives me up a wall.  

when i am doing queer theology, reading Paul’s letters through a queer lens, and thinking of the devastating aftermath of some of the verses he thoughtlessly scribbled out that burn red and poisonous in my heart -- he wounds me, deeply. he has wounded and continues to wound my people, deeply. 

when he says things about the Torah that have been used to perpetuate anti-Semitism, i clench my fists. when it comes to some of his comments about women, about slaves, about all sorts of things, i grind my teeth and choke back a scream. i read Howard Thurman’s account of his grandmother, a once-enslaved woman who loved having scripture read to her -- but never the letters of Paul. Never ever the letters of Paul, because those had been used against her and her people: “Always the white minister used as his text something from Paul. At least three or four times a year he used as a text: ‘Slaves, be obedient to them that are your masters..., as unto Christ.’ ...I promised my Maker that if I ever learned to read and if freedom ever came, I would not read that part of the Bible.”

when i hear that, i want to yell and shout at Paul, to tell him that his privilege as a Roman citizen made him ignorant and thoughtless and cruel about some things! -- that despite his recognition (Galatians 3:28, Romans 12:2) that Jesus Christ came to upturn the status quo, Paul himself let too many social norms go unquestioned. and the Church weaponizes his words because of that. 

Paul, you say that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male and female” -- no longer these hierarchies that pit one group over another. except there are still such binaries in our world, in our churches, Paul -- and your instructions to keep women from speaking in church, your comments about the law that go against Jewish people’s understandings of the law, your horrible instructions to slaves to obey their masters....have been used to uphold and justify those hierarchies that you yourself acknowledge have no place in the Body of Christ. look what you have done, Paul, and grieve.

i am so hurt and angry, i want to be able to throw Paul’s letters away, to pretend i never heard of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, that i didn’t receive monthly anonymous asks that say nothing but “Romans 1:26-27″, that i didn’t have to spend so much of my time and energy studying and explaining and defending my people against all these verses. 

...but, when i’m doing disability theology, i cannot help but love Paul. and that’s what annoys me so damn much.

i cannot throw Paul away, because apart from Jesus himself -- Jesus who is Divinity self-limited, Jesus who told a story of the Kin(g)dom of God’s banquet being attended by disabled persons who do not need their disabilities to be removed in order to have a seat, Jesus who was impaired by his crucifixion and chose to rise with his wounds retained so that he is, really and truly, the Disabled God -- Paul’s letters are the foundation of my disability theology as a Christian desperately seeking God’s good news for disabled persons. 

Paul himself was likely disabled -- and not just for those few days that he was blind. He speaks of a “thorn in the flesh” that some interpret to be chronic pain or illness. And because of that experience Paul was able to grasp at least a little the advice he gives in Romans 12 to avoid conforming ourselves to the world -- he recognizes that what the world calls weakness, God calls strength:

“Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that [the thorn] would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). 

society perceives impairment as brokenness, disability as weakness, and disabled persons as lesser in some way -- but God does not see as human beings see. when i wrote a paper on disability theology this past summer, Paul’s letters had a prime place in it; the following is an excerpt from my paper:

Rethinking of disability comes in recognizing that our current notions of impairment as brokenness, disability as weakness, will not endure once God’s Kin(g)dom is fully upon us. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, theologian Amos Yong finds a new hermeneutic of disability. 

In Corinth Paul finds a faith community that values the rich at the expense of the needy, and sets about to show them that “the most disregarded, despised, and denigrated individuals associated with the Corinthian congregation are as important if not more important than the power brokers.” After all, God has chosen not the world’s wise but the world’s foolish (mōra), not those the world calls strong but rather the world’s weak (asthenē) (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). This is why, Yong says, a serious reading of 1 Corinthians will transform “our understandings of strong and weak – and ability and disability –” themselves. 

I think also of the exhortation of Romans 12:2 to conform ourselves not to the world but to be “transformed by the renewing of [our] minds.” The world has saturated us with ableist notions of disability as weakness and wrongness, any deviation from the norm to be fixed or shunned; God calls us not to conform ourselves to this worldview but to find new ways of conceptualizing strength that make room for or even center people with disabilities. 

Eiesland does much of this work of rethinking strength in The Disabled God, explaining how the resurrected Savior’s wounds urge us to recognize “that full personhood is fully compatible with the experience of disability,” that interdependence and vulnerability are not our weakness but our strength. The value of interdependence shines through as one reads further down Romans 12, where the writer reminds us that just as one body has many members with unique functions, “so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and…have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us” (4-6). This body metaphor is expanded in 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul reflects on how a body where all members were the same would not be much of a body at all (v. 19). For this reason “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (20-22). No longer can we say that we have no need of disabled persons in our communities, for they possess gifts and functions that we cannot be whole without.

...and that is why i love Paul in a way that outshines my hatred and aggravation; i have a tenderness for him despite the way he makes me grind my teeth and shake my fist. 

because every now and then Paul was able to see past his own flaws and biases and privilege, his unthinking acceptance of much of his day’s status quo, and truly glimpse a little bit of the liberation and equity and justice that the Kin(g)dom of God brings. 

i understand 100% when people who belong to one of the communities that Paul’s letters harm cannot bear to read him anymore. i stand with them in their decision to avoid him -- that’s valid. but personally, i cannot do it. he is too important to my disability theology and my overall theology of a Body of Christ that centers the ones our world tries to push to the margins. 

i hate the man. i love the man. i wrestle with the man. i pray to him (as i do to many Saints) daily. i hope he has some remorse for how his writings have been used to oppress. and i accept that somewhere in the Body of Christ, he is present -- regardless of my feelings for him, in this Body i am joined to him. 

[rtarara]

On Supergirl and Homophobia

I am seeing a lot of posts saying how calling out what happened at SDCC as homophobic is ‘ridiculous’. I’d like to address first the scope of what homophobia is, then move onto how the incident was driven by homophobia. 

Definitions:

When you hear the term homophobia, it conjures up images of assault or of slurs being thrown out in the open. This is often not the case. Incidences of homophobia can range from the above to smaller instances that make you question whether of not you’re being ‘hysterical’ or ‘dramatic’ for thinking you’re being discriminated against or not. Merriam-Webster defines homophobia as: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals. 

An example that I have in my own life is that my conservative Christian relatives often ‘forget’ to call and invite me to gatherings. Another is that they will avoid any talk saying I’m married. In these cases, it falls under aversion for not wanting to be around us because we’re gay, and discrimination for not treating our marriage as equal to that of my sister or cousins. It would be easy in the silence to say that these things were the result of personality conflicts or something in my own behavior (Was I too touchy? Did I say something that mentioned homosexuality or gay culture when they didn’t want to hear it?), but time, study and the support of allies in my family has helped me to see the behavior for what it is: homophobia. 

The Issue:

In the case of the SDCC video, we see Jeremy Jordan start off singing about the season and joking that hoover was the only thing that rhymed with Vancouver. It was fun and silly. He moved on to sing that Kara Met Lena and they were best friends. This was great. He then, unprompted, turned to the camera and shouted that they were only friends. By changing his focus to the camera, he shifted the address to the people watching and those who shipped Supercorp specifically. This is an audience of predominately young queer women. Melissa Benoist loudly joined in and Jeremy continued that they were not getting together and they were only friends. The rest of the cast present was laughing. 

The cast gleefully mocked and dismissed a group of young queer fans. By addressing them directly, this action was a form of silencing and bullying. Part of his message was to shut up about queer things because they won’t be canon. It was a JOKE to think they could be.

The greater societal context of that is that they won’t be canon, BECAUSE it’s two women. The level of joy in the mockery was really a way of distancing themselves from gay people and othering them. This is an act of homophobia because wlw (supercorp supporters) were singled out for mockery and silencing. It had a profound negative effect on a lot of people. This is a natural human reaction to being mocked, especially for disenfranchised groups because it is devaluing those who are already devalued by society.

During the recap they also failed to mention the canon lesbian storyline, which was one of the bigger ones for the year, lending to the overall impression that gay people were not important or welcome or worthy of any sort of inclusion. 

The interviewer spoke that, “Any show like this naturally has such a fandom that there’s the natural shipping that goes on.” He gestures to Melissa and Katie and says ‘your two characters, you know about this...” They joked about having no idea while Mechand was like ‘I know about this.” Between that and the singing, this shows that the fandom is one that the show is aware of, members of which (young queer girls), they have been seeing online and at various events. They have a context for who they are talking about. 

Jeremy then took over and said that he felt like he was going to get destroyed, Melissa said something along the lines of, “Maybe, yes” and Jeremy gave a joking ‘I’m sorry’ and said “I just debunked Supercorp live.” Melissa said, “That’s pretty brave.” 

Yes, Supercorp is a vocal fandom. It’s a large fandom, but calling it brave to mock a group of wlw publicly because they might be called out on their homophobia speaks to the self-congratulatory martyrdom of those who speak out against gay marriage and then point out how ‘cruel’ gay people are when they get blowback for it. It’s a lousy thing to do and it serves a greater homophobic purpose as setting up wlw as the ones perpetrating bigotry and ‘forcing their beliefs on people’.  

The interviewer asked if they were caught off guard by fans seeing things that might be there or could be there and what they made of it at this point. 

Melissa said that, ‘It was surprising, not what Katie and I expected to say the least.” She looked very uncomfortable at the prospect of a character she plays being perceived as queer, but did not say anything further negatively. 

Katie was very affirming/not at all uncomfortable. She spoke about how she often plays character with that subtext and she thought this time that it wasn’t there, but, “Wow I was wrong, apparently.” She went on to say that they’d talked about it and was adamant about how wonderful it was that people could take away so many things from the art that they created—that anyone could read into and see anything and that was what THEY saw in it, then to take that away. This was wonderful and a great example of being a great ally. Melissa did nod along at this point as Katie tried to elevate the conversation.  

Chris broke in and said, “Sexuality is all about others perceptions of yours.” He tried to cover it by saying, “That was sarcasm.” This was really a particularly vicious jab because what he was implying was that it’s terrible of gay people to see themselves in this characters because they’re straight. It implies that by not seeing them as 100% straight, queer people are invalidating their (the fictional character’s in this case) straight sexuality and that is wrong. He is saying that a queer reading of the text has no value. It is homophobic because it devalues queer people and plays into a heterosexist world view that because something seems straight it CAN’T be queer.  

Jeremy played the, “I went to musical theater school. I know all about other people’s perceptions of sexuality.” As to say that being perceived as gay was a negative experience that he knew a lot about. 

There was a lot to unpack in a relatively short interaction, but I hoped this helped explain to some extent. There is also the fact the wlw representation has historically been treated as a joke, ratings stunt, or way to titillate straight men. Mocking what would be a really healthy ship based on mutual support as some sort of lunacy is incredibly harmful. 

A Few Themes:

1. It wasn’t that supercorp was gay. It was just that those fans are annoying/intense.

There is definitely a section of fans who is too intense and lacks boundaries and manners. I’ve seen this section of fans in a lot of fandoms, both in wlw ships and in sci-fi fandom in general. It does not make it right, but young wlw fans are the ones being singled out AS A GROUP for it. This is really common with minorities and it in no way excuses degrading them because they are girls who like girls. Mocking a group of queer people and making them a punchline is not an appropriate response to this. 

2. Well Eliza says things about Bellarke so it wasn’t just Supercorp.

The possible Supercorp relationship in no way degrades either of the characters or a marginalized group of people (as is the case when Eliza speaks about Bellarke). She has also, to my knowledge, never directly mocked those shippers in song. There is no history of straight ships being mocked or derided. This is an apples to oranges comparison. 

3. They were shitty to Rahul so they deserve it. People are just responding.

There were some very shitty things said to that man and he didn’t deserve it. Some were from Supercorp shippers and some were from people mocking Supercorp shippers (the tweet that he retweeted and called out was mocking the wlw fans by being shitty to him). This is why it was completely acceptable for him to talk about the intensity of the Supergirl fandom and even Supercorp. He didn’t mock anyone and people were not mad at him, they just wished that the hate was less visible and that things had gone down differently.

That doesn’t mean that the cast has a free ticket to mock wlw shippers.

4. It’s just a fanon ship, so they’re sick of being asked about it. They are being too pushy.

Content creators decided to tap into fandom as a revenue stream and way to increase ratings/merchandise sales. I think this shift started around Twilight and the Jacob vs Edward debates. Content creators encourage shipping to promote sales. It’s not altruistic. They almost always leave any mention of queer ships out. Queer people have stopped accepting that because they are less afraid than they used to be. It’s actually pretty brave to ask in the vast flurry of Peeta vs Gale, to declare yourself Team Joanna and ask about that. It isn’t rude to be gay and engage in the same way as straight shippers do. It isn’t rude to see your ships as equally valid. There are those who take it too far in all aspects of shipping, but gay people aren’t terrible for pushing for representation. 

I think it would be more productive to ask why actors were so bothered by the idea of a main character being bisexual that they decided to mock a large swath of their fanbase. 

5. They didn’t mean it. They have done X, Y, Z things for gay people in the past.

Doing something homophobic, doesn’t mean you are strictly a giant homophobe. Everyone is a little homophobic in the way that everyone is a little racist. Growing up in a heterosexist society does a lot of damage. What matters is learning and moving on. I’m going to give Jeremy a chance to show change. Good allies listen when they’re told that they’ve made a mistake. The rest of the cast has not apologized yet, but if they can do so meaningfully and show change as well, then that would be for the best. 

6. People are Overreacting

You don’t get to decide how people feel about being mocked for their sexuality. They are not being awful for posting things like this, calling out bad actions and asking for change. They aren’t even wrong for saying that they no longer wish to watch the show or interact with a certain actor or actress.  

You CAN call out individuals if they are using hateful language themselves, as always, but you can’t lump all the hurt wlw shippers together in one boat and say negative things about them. 

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Hi, I just recently found your blog and it's amazing! I'm so happy there are still people there are as invested as I am in the Animorphs series! I especially love your Adult AU and your analysis of the books. In fact I was reading one of your posts where you said that Cassandra Clare's book glorify violence - if I'm remembering correctly - and I was curious if you could expand on that. If you prefer you can message me privately since this is strictly an Animorphs blog. I hope I'm not bothering u

No bother at all.  I sometimes feel like I spend half my blog space whining about how every other book on the planet is inferior to Animorphs, which isn’t actually the kind of vibe I’m going for.  I SWEAR I LOVE YA SF.  Just… Not Mortal Instruments.  I’ve tried.  I tried so hard to like that series.  It is objectively well-written and creative.  I just… I can’t with Cassandra Clare’s work.  I can’t.

First of all: a confession.  I’ve only ever read City of Bones, City of Ashes, and about half of City of Glass, and then several different issues (the glorification of violence, the glorification of “slender” or “skinny” bodies, the way Jace’s Freudian Excuse gets used to let him get away with all kinds of bad behavior, the borderline-pathological worship of True Love in City of Ashes) conspired to drive me away from the series as a whole.  So I don’t actually know if Clare improves in the last 80% of the series.  Thus everything I say has that big honking grain of salt. 

However, I do take issue with the way that, from what I’ve seen, the Mortal Instruments series portrays violence.  Individuals are portrayed as all good or all bad (literally, they’re on the side of the angels or else they support demons) and—from what I’ve seen—there are literally no good demons, nor are there angels worse than “morally grey.” This Manichaeisan worldview (which I think is no accident given the overtly Christian overtones of the series) basically justifies pretty much any acts of violence on the grounds of “they are bad and we are good and therefore pretty much anything we do to them is good, regardless of the means we use to get to that end.”  One extension of this principle which pops up again and again and again with regards to the Shadowhunters is that Might Makes Right.  Clary is the best at coming up with new runes to kill demons, which is a sign she is the best good; Izzy is the best at stabbing demons very dead, which is a sign that she is good too.  Morality comes about by way of violence in that series.

It’s troubling because it glorifies war as “we are the good guys wiping out the bad guys” and utterly dehumanizes the bad guys in the process.  Given that we live in a world where pretty much any group can be potentially cast as “the bad guys,” and that we as humans have an implicit bias toward casting ourselves as “the good guys” no matter what group we belong to… It can reinforce bad behavior.  To say the least.  

Case in point, the first scene in the series is one of Clary witnessing a major fight between (apparently) several children her own age, who are using deadly weapons to launch all-out attacks against each other and (again, apparently) succeed in killing at least two individuals at the end.  The narration doesn’t focus on her shock or horror or utter terror; it spends a long time dwelling on how cute Izzy’s dress is and how nice Jace’s cheekbones are and how cool they all look swirling around with their magical weapons.  (And slender bodies. Can’t ever, ever forget to mention that every single one of them has a slender body.  I confess that’s the #1 pet peeve in the writing that drove me away from the series.)  I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that Clare has probably never witnessed a real fight, or even a video of a real fight, because this is not only unrealistic (real fights are short, chaotic, hard to interpret, and incredibly disturbing—kind of like how they’re described in Animorphs) but it also suggests that violence is cool. 

Meanwhile, I don’t want to suggest that Clare is by any means the only author with this problem.  There was a great article (which I have since lost—I’ll have to send a link if I find it) which pointed out that American Clinton supporters and American Trump supporters and American independent voters all cast themselves as the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars and cast their political nemeses as the Galactic Empire.  Because it’s easy to do: the narrative of Star Wars dehumanizes the stormtrooper enemy (although I could have cried with happiness when Finn took his helmet off in the latest film) while glorifying the individuated, special, blessed-with-magic heroes.  It literally says that there is “light” and “dark,” and that the light is justified in (for instance) blowing up a space station with dozens of prisoners of war and possibly hundreds of innocent sanitation workers on board, just as long as doing so advances the cause of the Light.  Avengers, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and a simple majority of sci-fi/fantasy suffers from this problem. 

I also specifically said that Clare doesn’t so much glorify violence and other troubling content as much as she fetishizes violence, which I do view as a problem specific to Mortal Instruments.  It leads to this attitude of “people did bad things to me, therefore I can do bad things to [totally unrelated individuals].” Clary nearly forces Alec to out himself to his parents (which, I admit, hit all of my own personal “NOPE” buttons when I was reading the series as a closeted queer kid) because she idly experiments on him without fully informing him of what he’s getting into, but she’s special and this is how they discover she has the best angel powers of them all and that means that it gets brushed over.  Jace and Clary are jealous and possessive jerks toward each other while also pushing each other away throughout City of Ashes and City of Glass, but this is portrayed as excused because They’re Doing It For (unhealthy, selfish, possessive) True Love.

The one that drives me furthest up the wall is the scene where Jace stalks into a bar, orders a Scotch (because Scotch is a Man’s Drink, never mind that the Man in question is a bratty 16-year-old), throws the Scotch at the wall because he’s Overcome By Emotion, shouts at the people in the bar, and then demands a replacement from the bartender.  This whole sequence gets portrayed as “look how much Jace is suffering” but I couldn’t get away from thinking about how much the bartender, the random patrons, and everyone else who has to deal with his temper tantrum must be suffering.  Seriously, that’s the kind of behavior that I would punish in a six-year-old, because I’d expect a six-year-old to know better, whether or not the six-year-old thinks that he’s in love with his sister and that their father is an evil demagogue (Luke Skywalker called and he wants his plot back, by the way) and whether or not the six-year-old has a Sad Hawk Backstory™. 

Anywhoo, I find Clare’s work… frustrating.  Obviously.  I have ambivalent feelings about most of the other sci-fi/fantasy for which Animorphs has ruined me forever, but Clare’s work is high on my personal “nah” list.

Quick inevitable aside to How Animorphs Did It Better: the kids view avoiding violence as the ultimate end for which they are fighting this war.  Any time the protagonists have to choose between a violent means and a nonviolent one, they struggle to find a nonviolent one.  There are good yeerks (Aftran, Illim, Niss), bad andalites (Estrid, Alloran, Samilin), and even bad Animorphs (mostly David, but to a lesser extent Marco and Rachel).  Even then, the good-bad dichotomy gets complicated and continuously questioned, such that the “good” guys do a lot of things that everyone can agree are “bad” and get condemned for it.  Marco acts like a jerk toward Tobias early on in the series, and the fact that he’s doing it partially because he’s (reasonably) terrified of dying thanks to what Visser One did to both his parents and partially because he’s whistling in the dark very clearly doesn’t excuse his behavior.  Visser One spends AN ENTIRE BOOK trying to argue that her bad behavior is the product of her having had a rough life, and at the end of it Applegate succeeds in getting us to hate her more, not less.  Predominantly “good” characters do “bad” things (Ax killing Hessian soldiers, Cassie letting Tom’s yeerk have the morphing cube, Jake flushing the yeerk pool), just as predominantly “bad” characters do “good” things (Visser Three helping defeat the nartec and helmacrons, Visser One protecting Darwin and Madra, Chapman’s yeerk agreeing to help Melissa), and the series doesn’t offer a moral dichotomy any more absolute than “try not to harm people, I guess.  Oh, and do your best to prevent other people from getting harmed, if they can’t protect themselves.”  The series shows that Tobias’s sad human backstory doesn’t make it okay for him to annihilate the mercora or even to snap at Rachel when he’s hangry.

I just… really love Animorphs.  And it ruined me for every single other book series on the planet. 

[intergalactic-zoo]

My experience with "It" has been a bit of a roller coaster. My dad's a big Stephen King fan, and I know the book was around the house when I was a kid, but I didn't see the TV miniseries until sometime in the last couple of years (and perhaps consequently, never had a fear of clowns). I only started digging into King's novels with 'Salem's Lot a year or two ago, so my knowledge of the story was limited to that miniseries and a lot of jokes about a child orgy scene. So I went into the audiobook expecting that I wouldn't really like it, and I was pleasantly surprised. Meanwhile, I went into the new film with high hopes and high expectations—a far cry from where I was a week or two before. I mentioned on Twitter that I thought the new version of Pennywise fell into the same trap that so much modern horror falls into, making every monster scary in and of itself, rather than having the horror come from placing this common thing in a scary context. In short, it looked a bit like Rob Zombie's Pennywise, and I thought that was an emblematic error. But reviews have been largely positive, and from people I generally respect with regard to horror movies, so I figured I was wrong. I went into "It" expecting to be wowed. I wasn't. Or, well, I guess I was, but only at the breadth and depth of wasted opportunities. Spoilers ahead for "It" (2017), and "It" (1990) and It (1986), I suppose, as well.

The most common critique I've heard since watching "It" is that it isn't actually all that scary, and I think that's accurate. The thing is, I don't know how much of a problem that really is. The story isn't all that scary, either. Not in the conventional horror movie sense, anyway. There's a lot of dread and cosmic horror in places, but surprisingly little death and gore and suspense for a movie about a killer clown monster—and what there is isn't central enough to the plot to be likely to make it through the cuts necessary to bring the story down to movie-length. The horror moments that made the cut relied mostly on jump scares and Bill Skarsgård's acting chops for their effectiveness. I'm usually kind of a soft touch when it comes to jump scares, and maybe they would have been more effective if I hadn't heard ahead of seeing it that the movie was non-stop jump scares (which isn't exactly accurate). Whatever the reason, I wasn't actually scared by anything in the movie, and I thought the only scene that was effectively scary was when the kids were watching the slide projector. There are several things about the movie that worked really well. For one thing, the production values are great, especially in contrast to the 1990 version, which looked every bit the TV miniseries that it was. I was worried that the story wouldn't work updated so that the flashback sections were in the 1980s, but that turned out to be a stroke of marketing genius, if nothing else. There is, perhaps, no better time to release a 1980s-nostalgic horror film about children fighting an otherworldly evil that stole one of their friends than in between seasons of "Stranger Things." The biggest change to the overall plot was shifting the focus from murdered children to missing ones, tying in with the stranger danger/kid on the milk carton concern of the time. The kids were great, particularly Sophia Lillis (Bev), who should, if there's any justice in Hollywood, have an amazing career ahead of her. I think the only misstep in casting for the children was Nicholas Hamilton, whose small size and weaselly looks never quite gave Henry Bowers the sense of real menace that he's supposed to have. I never quite bought Jaeden (Bill) Lieberher's stutter, but I attribute that less to his performance and more to how lightly it was used in the movie, and how natural Steven Weber's stutter sounded in the audiobook. I really don't want this to be just a list of things the movie did differently from the book; for one thing, that's inevitable, because the book is an enormous tome that builds the lore of Derry going back a hundred years, bounces back and forth between two main time periods, features a pretty large cast of characters, and has a climactic moment where a bunch of ten-year-olds have sex in a sewer (in a scene that, were it written today, would hopefully be less heteronormative if not less creepy). I understand departing from the book, but there are ways to do that well, and then there's the ways that "It" chose. And the first, most significant of those changes is in how it treats Beverly Marsh. Bev in the books is not a great character. She is almost entirely defined by her relationships to the boys and men in her life, from her abusive father to her abusive husband to the boy who has a crush on her to the boy she has a crush on to the five other boys she has sex with in a desperate attempt to rebuild a cosmic bond at a critical moment. She doesn't have a whole lot of agency to begin with, but what she does have is skill and perseverance. She's the one who knows yo-yo tricks. She's the one who's best with Bill's slingshot, who actually manages to wound It. She takes down her father when It pushes him over the edge. She keeps her cool when they're trapped in the sewers coming back from It's lair. And she sacrifices the most to make it back as an adult. She doesn't really get those moments in the movie. She gets to stand up to her father (whose abuse in the film is never as physical as it is in the book, but is much more heavily implied to be sexual), but the rest goes away, and even that feels less significant since there's so little buildup and no indication that her father isn't just acting on his own. The slingshot is gone, replaced instead by Mike Hanlon's slaughterhouse bolt pistol. So Bev doesn't get the moment of wounding It, a fact made more significant by the way the movie compresses that scene into the climax. She does get to go swimming in her underwear, so at least she still gets to be objectified by all her male friends and family. The novel gives Bev fairly little agency to begin with, but I suppose there's no amount of female characterization too small that Hollywood can't shrink it a little more. So, with the slingshot replaced by Mike's bolt pistol, you might expect that that would expand his role a bit. Indeed, Mike gets the biggest changes from book to film, and the clearest narrative arc. In the book, Mike is a farm kid from the other side of Derry, where the black families live, and he goes to a Christian school. His relationship with his father (and his father's relationship to the town) is one of only two really positive parent-child relationships in the book, and it informs a lot about Mike's character, including his interest in town history that leads him to be the researcher and the one who stays behind when they all grow up. It's his father's history with Henry Bowers' racist father that drives Henry's targeting of Mike. The book loses all of that, killing Mike's parents in a fire, and making him work the farm with his hard-nosed grandpa. Early on, Mike can't bring himself to kill sheep with the bolt pistol, and it's implied that he's a vegetarian. After the group experiences horrors and has an act-two falling-out, he's able to kill much more coldly. So the closure to that narrative arc is obvious: he gets to use the bolt pistol on It, striking the killing blow. But he doesn't. That moment goes to Bill. So, if you're following along at home, they gave Bill's slingshot to Mike, removed Bev from that aspect of the story entirely, changed the narrative so that Mike's character arc would end most naturally with using that weapon to kill It, and then gave that moment to Bill. They broke two characters with one change. And all the research and history that define Mike's character? Those go to Ben instead, who's now also the new kid in town (presumably to fuel the New Kids on the Block gags, which are genuinely funny). I'm not sure if all that is meant also to code Ben as queer, but it's easy to read that into the story as presented. Just as it was easy to read queer coding of Mike in the book. Again, it wasn't at all explicit or even clear (and was, at least in part, a result of me mishearing "vags," short for "vagrants," as something else), but I caught that Mike was gay before I caught that he was black. Speaking of which, racism is one of the more mundane horrors in the book, but one that was pretty omnipresent, especially in the 1950s sequences. Not so in the movie. When Henry and his cronies attack Mike, they tell him "get out of my town!" but we never get any indication why they say that (especially when it would make more sense to be shouted at Ben, the new kid in town), certainly not the explicit racism that's in the book. Neither do we get the personal connection of Henry killing Mike's dog. That moment shows up here, but it's Henry saying "I wish I'd killed your family!" Between this and the fact that they made Henry's father an abusive police officer rather than a washed-up farmer with serious psychoses, it seems like some earlier draft of the film might have leaned heavier on the racism angle, might have been trying to say something, probably had Henry starting the fire that killed Mike's parents, but none of that made it to the screen. What we got instead was entirely flattened. Everything that defines Mike's character in the book is stripped away and either sanitized or given to other characters, and so is a good portion of what would make sense to define his character in the movie. It's a mess. The only character who benefits at all from changes between the book and movie is Stan Uris, and that's arguable. Stanley's first act in the book is to commit suicide as an adult, so the book never really lingers on his character in the flashbacks. We get little bits of his personality and a decent amount on his interest in birds, but that's pretty much it. Here, his Jewish heritage is emphasized with a plotline about his Bar Mitzvah, and that could be really interesting. In particular, it'd make an interesting contrast with the plot about Bev's period, both stories about kids struggling with becoming adults. That contrast is never actually made, though, and Stan's encounter with It loses the moment of triumph. Again, what's distinct about Stan's character gets stripped away. Also, like Mike, we never see Stan encounter any bigotry. Derry has monsters, murderers, rapists, and hooligans, but no anti-Semites. That stripping of characters' unique qualities is almost universal, and weirdly consistent in that we never see the kids' weapons against It. In the book, the power of belief makes Bill's speech therapy mantra, Stan's bird book, Eddie's aspirator, Bev's silver slingshot slugs, and Richie's voices into potent weapons that hurt It at key moments, but none of those show up here. As a result, we never really get an idea why the kids are able to defeat Pennywise. For some reason, they're able to beat up the clown and then kill it with an empty bolt pistol, but there's nothing to contextualize those moments. And there's a lot of that out-of-context stuff, little bits left over from the book that don't work because the context was cut out. Why does a thirteen-year-old in 1989 shout "hi-yo Silver, away!" while riding his bike? What's with the references to the Turtle if we're not going to go cosmic with it? Why does Pennywise turn into a mummy at one point near the end, when we've never had mummies even mentioned in the film up to that point? Why do the kids say "beep beep" to Richie? Why does Eddie encounter a "leper" in 1989—especially after talking early on about his fears over AIDS (another moment where it seemed like maybe an earlier draft had something to say)? Why have the big Paul Bunyan statue if you're not going to bring it to life? They even removed Georgie's question about balloons, the line that contextualizes every comment about things floating in the rest of the movie. And then there's Pennywise, who just did nothing for me. I talked before about how I think it's less effective to make him outwardly creepy from jump, and nothing in the movie dissuaded me from that. When Skarsgård is meant to be a normal clown, he's too creepy, and when he's meant to be scary, he's not creepy enough. There's none of the juxtaposition that made Tim Curry's version of the character so effective, and while anyone's going to suffer in comparison to Curry, Skarsgård was hamstrung from the start by the bizarre choices they made in Pennywise's design and mannerisms. He frequently talked too fast, which swallowed up his dialogue on more than one occasion, and the film often gave him those herky-jerky movements that have been popular in monsters since "The Ring," but here they always just looked goofy. They further served to make Pennywise less distinct as a horror movie monster; here he's just another Samara or Annabelle, a creepy monster who talks and moves in a creepy way and never surprises you when it turns out he's creepy. A similar thing happens with the rest of the adult characters. We lose Richie and Mike's parents entirely. Bill's dad is hostile to Bill, having accepted Georgie's death in a way that Bill hasn't. Eddie's overbearing mother becomes even more cartoonish. Even Bev's passive-but-enabling mom is gone, leaving us only with sinister and hostile adults throughout the story. There's probably a lesson in there, but it means we don't get the creeping horror of the kids realizing they're alone in their fight, that It has isolated them by making the adults oblivious or by feeding their basest impulses. When Bev's dad gets slightly more physical in his abuse, it's the next logical step for his character, not a sudden disinhibition of what was kept slightly beneath the surface. By removing the juxtaposition and mingling of mundane and cosmic horrors, by removing the contrasts that make the horror function, the story—and the horror—is diminished. And that's my overall impression of the movie, really. It's diminished. Everything feels smaller. The stakes are smaller, the real-world horrors are smaller, the methods they use to fight the monster are smaller. Everything that made the story distinct has been stripped away for one reason or another, leaving a mess of a story that feels like it's coming out of half a dozen different script revisions and focus group decisions. Instead of a story about children caught in an ancient war against a Lovecraftian cosmic horror, it's The Goonies vs. Freddy Krueger. That's a fine pitch, but it's not It.